Monthly Round-Up | March 2025

It's March! The sun is back! The news continues to be awful! There's too much TV to watch! Read more about what I enjoyed this month below. Skip to:

Movies

TV Shows

Books

Gaming

Other

Movies 🎬

March saw the release of Black Bag, a movie I'd eagerly anticipated: the combination of director Stephen Soderbergh (Oceans 11, Erin Brockovich), with Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender playing married spies, sounded exactly up my street. Luckily, it's as great as I hoped, a stylishly made, slick whodunnit with an extremely tight script by David Koepp. It's the type of film that, these days, would be made into an eight part mini-series on Apple TV+, but I'm so glad it turned out to be a theatrical experience.

Mickey 17, a sci-fi black comedy written and directed by Bong Joon-Ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer), also came out in March. I'd luckily tempered my expectations somewhat because of the early reviews and was largely able to enjoy it for what it is. It's worth watching just for Robert Pattinson's brilliant dual performance, even if the surrounding plot is a little messy. Read my thoughts on Letterboxd here

Perfect Days was one of the best things I watched this month, a Japanese slice-of-life with hidden depths and a touching message about recognising the beauty in the small things in life. Kôji Yakusho deservedly won the 2023 Cannes Best Actor award for his work, and Hirayama joins my list of favourite movie characters.

Speaking of adding things to favourites lists: I also watched the Oscar-nominated animation Robot Dreams, about the friendship between a dog and a robot in 1980s New York City. Though the film contains absolutely no dialogue and has a simple, colourful art style, it's a heartfelt but bittersweet story about loneliness and connections, evoking movies like Her and Past Lives. Will be adding this to my list of favourite animated movies.

Nominated at this year's Oscars for Best Picture, Sing Sing, was added to Amazon Prime. This is a really special movie, centering around the real life 'Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA)' program in which inmates participate in theatre as part of their rehabilitation. What's even more special is that lead actor Colman Domingo is joined by a cast of formerly incarcerated men who actually participated in the RTA program. The movie is an incredibly powerful testimony to the power of the arts, and I wish it had been a frontrunner this past award season.

Shows 📺

Amazon Prime's animated superhero show, Invincible Season 3, came to a gnarly conclusion. At times, the show can be held back by its budget or overburdened by its many subplots, but what it always does extremely well is viscerally conveying the stakes and impact of violence both physically and mentally. This is Invincible at its most brutal, most tense, most bloody. Hopefully the next season delivers us more Omni-Man!

As I wrote in February's round-up, Severance is just one of the best shows ever made, and the Season 2 finale was brilliant, tense, funny and heart-wrenching. That last shot will go down in the television hall of fame. Writer Dan Erikson utilises his unique concept to wring every bit of tension and moral complexity from the plot and characters.

What is there to say about Adolescence that hasn't already been said? It's a show that everyone is watching and talking about (at least here in the UK) and rightfully so. Consisting of four staggering episode-length oners (a single unbroken shot), the true power of this show is in its stark depiction of the challenges facing today's youth and the dangers of toxic masculinity.

And speaking of oners, Apple TV's The Studio has landed with an absolute bang, a show that is absolutely designed for a person like me (chronically online movie nerd), but impressively crafted in its own right. It's a comedy about the newly appointed head of a movie studio, who has to juggle corporate demands with creative ambitions. Seth Rogen is on acting, co-writing and co-directing duties here and he's never been better. The second episode, shot as a oner, about a film crew trying to achieve a oner is genius.

Oh, Timeless, cancelled far too soon. The show was recently added to Amazon Prime, and I rewatched both seasons within a week. It's the type of adventure of the week, long-form television that I absolutely adore, and that we don't get nearly enough of. I may write a longer piece on the brilliance of this show - I love it!

Other shows I watched: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Daredevil: Born Again, Abbot Elementary S4, The White Lotus S3

Books 📚

Sunrise on the Reaping was the main event this month, the latest book in The Hunger Games series. You can read my full, in-depth review here.

Often featured in 'best of fantasy' lists, Jade City thankfully lived up to its reputation. This is a Goodfellas-esque urban fantasy story with Asian influences, following two rival gangs with the ability to gain power from jade. The character work here is great, and I really enjoyed the exploration of morality, honour and loyalty.

Okay, so Much Ado About Nothing is a play, not a book, but I did spend much of March reading it in preparation for watching the play (see later on...). Honestly it made me wish I'd studied more Shakespeare at school because I really enjoyed the journey of understanding the text (in case you haven't noticed, I'm slightly nerdy).

Sometimes, a fantasy girl (me) needs a romantic-comedy cleanse (The Pumpkin Spice Cafe). The main reason I read this, in all honesty, was because it was available through Amazon Prime and I was missing Gilmore Girls. I knew it was a massively popular TikTok book and... it's only solidified my avoidance of TikTok endorsed books because, friends, this was not good.

Gaming 🎮

Another gaming-light month - I re-played a little of the brilliant Spider-Man 2 because zipping around New York City never gets old. Dredge and Balatro are still on my current roster, and I've just added Moving Out 2 to my 'great fun but also makes me want to murder my friend/family member' co-op game hall of fame, alongside Overcooked and Mario Kart.

Other! 🎭🎧

I was really happy to get tickets for Much Ado About Nothing, starring Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell as Benedick and Beatrice, the original enemies-to-lovers. I massively enjoyed this play, with its pop dance numbers, cheeky sense of humour and explosion of pink confetti. Reading the play beforehand was really rewarding too, especially as a Shakespeare noob, because the modern twist to the line readings became doubly funny. Hiddleston especially gets some brilliant physical comedy to play with, and Mason Alexander Park's musical interludes were an unexpected but welcome addition to the pop-party vibe of this adaptation .

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Read my round-up from January here.

Read my round up from February here.