March Movies Part 1: Dune Part Two, The Eras Tour, Lift

Well the Oscars are over so it’s back to watching a hodgepodge of films for me. I managed to watch one in theatres and the rest on streaming so read on to find out what might float your boat this month.

Dune: Part Two: If you saw Dune, then you already know what you're getting into right? I don't really know what to tell you about this film. First off, it's nearly three hours long. So surely that is already a bridge too far. Did I think this movie needed to be three hours long? Absolutely not. Did I think it was filled with sci-fi jim jams, Game of Thrones tropes, and truly spectacular desert cinematography interspersed with lots of lingering shots of beautiful actors looking out onto the vista or at each other with ambiguous intent? Absolutely yes. 

Listen, this is a long fantasy epic that feels exactly like the first movie except now we spend way more time in the desert riding a bunch of phallic-seeming sandworms. This movie is...fine. I sat through it all, enjoyed all the cinematic sequences, and remembered exactly 5% of it after I left. It looked like a lot of effort went into putting it together, and I'm sure the fans of the novel are so spectacularly glad to have this cinematic ode to it, much like I was when the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out. So this is not my jam, but if you're a Dune person? Go ahead and run to the theaters.

The Eras Tour: Um, again, you already know what you're getting into right? It's a 3-hour concert film and Taylor Swift is going to go through all of her greatest hits. As someone who only got into her music when she released the Folklore album, I definitely spent the majority of this movie waiting for the Folklore section to come up. But there were plenty of good bops along the way that I recognized from their periodic resurgence on the UK Top 40 and other pop culture tidbits that have been popping up throughout the year as this record-setting tour took over the United States. I might not be a Swiftie, but I don't live under a rock people. 

This concert is an absolute extravaganza and is choreographed to perfection. Swift is the consummate entertainer, and between the production design, costumes, and yes, the music, this is definitely an incredible way to spend a long weekend afternoon. Obviously, having some knowledge of Swift's music is helpful, but as long as you know some of the songs, I highly recommend you give this film a watch. If nothing else, you can feel like you're part of the zeitgeist without having to bankrupt yourself for actual concert tickets. 

Lift: Do I remember 5% of this movie? Um, maybe less. But is it a perfectly serviceable action thriller when you're home and on the couch and need a new Netflix jam? You bet!

Kevin Hart plays Cyrus, a high-end thief who is enlisted by Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a former flame who now works for Interpol (of course), to help her catch an evil billionaire with a plot to take over the world (of course). The plot involves an NFT heist, so this is definitely a movie of our times, but otherwise the rest of it is a standard series of tropes and action set pieces throughout Europe, including some shenanigans in Venice, which is always a grand place to have some chase sequences. Will you be surprised by anything in this movie? No. But will you be entertained? Sort of!