As Yoshi as They Wanna Be (CREDIT: Nintendo and Illumination)
Starring: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Benny Safdie, Donald Glover, Brie Larson, Issa Rae, Luis Guzmán, Kevin Michael Richardson, Glen Powell
Directors: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic
Running Time: 98 Minutes
Rating: PG for The Typical Peril
Release Date: April 1, 2026 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: The Mario Brothers are headed to outer … space! After subduing their iconic archvillain Bowser (Jack Black) in their initial Illuminated big screen adventure, Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) team up with a few new friends, like the dino-esque, tongue-heavy Yoshi (Donald Glover) and daredevil pilot Fox McCloud (Glen Powell). Then there’s the mysterious adoptive mother to a brood of squeaky-voiced star creatures, Rosalina (Brie Larson), who may just have a connection to the Mario brothers’ good buddy Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy). Getting to Rosalina is also a key part of the plan of the scrappy Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), who’s trying to retrieve his father and pull him back into the family business.
What Made an Impression?: Where’s My Controller?: After the massive success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, it’s no surprise that my biggest takeaway from The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is pretty much exactly the same. Which is to say: why not just play the games? The character designs and graphics are essentially identical, and the plot (such as it is) is just a series of jumps and flips into the power-ups of the Nintendo-verse. This outing felt at least a little different to me, as it’s primarily based on a game that was released at a time when I wasn’t playing too much. But different doesn’t necessarily mean exciting. An Egg of an Idea: To get real with it, a Super Mario movie doesn’t really need to have a full-on plot to succeed. At least that’s how I feel based on the one part of this movie that I did unequivocally enjoy: a brief sequence in which Yoshi bops around town to the tune of The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize.” If there could have been more of those diversions that offered a clear rush of imagination, then I would have been satisfied. Banana?: One other thing that I kinda, sorta liked (or at least explicitly noticed) was a crew of blue-and-yellow robots that some quick googling tells me are probably Gearmos. Their color scheme in this movie is inescapably reminiscent of fellow Illumination crew the Minions. I don’t know if that reference was intentional, but any reminder of a much better cinematic franchise was welcome to get through this profoundly straightforward enterprise.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is Recommended If You: Spend all your time hitting your head against boxes and hoping that a star or flower will pop out of it
Oh, how alive it is to feel to be dead! (CREDIT: Warner Bros./Screenshot; Cartuna x DWECK)
The Bride!
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Matthew Maher, Zlatko Burić, Jeannie Berlin, Julianne Hough, Louis Cancelmi, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Steve Purcell, Ego Nwodim, Nichole Sakura, Meryl Streep, Vanessa Bayer, Demetri Martin, Joe Spano, Eric Edelstein, Lori Alan, Karen Huie
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Running Time: 126 Minutes
Rating: R
Release Date: March 6, 2026 (Theaters)
Dead Lover
Starring: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Leah Doz, Lowen Morrow
Director: Grace Glowicki
Running Time: 84 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
Release Date: March 20, 2026 (Theaters)
Whoa, hey, two wacky romances inspired by Frankenstein coming out within a few weeks of each other? One of them’s a major studio release, while the other’s a super-independent low-budget scamp. What do you think about that? Well, here’s what I think about that!
They’re doing their thang (CREDIT: Sony Pictures Animation; Pixar/Screenshot)
GOAT
Starring: Caleb McLaughlin, Gabrielle Union, Aaron Pierre, Nicola Coughlan, David Harbour, Nick Kroll, Steph Curry, Jennifer Leis, Patton Oswalt, Jelly Roll, Jennifer Hudson, Sherry Cola, Eduardo Franco, Andrew Santino, Bobby Lee, Ayesha Curry, Wayne Knight, Adam Pally, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Love, Angel Reese, A’ja Wilson, Andre Igoudala, Joe La Puma, Rayaan Khan, VanVan
Director: Tyree Dillihay
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Rating: PG
Release Date: February 13, 2026 (Theaters)
Hoppers
Starring: Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco, Eduardo Franco, Aparna Nancherla, Tom Law, Sam Richardson, Melissa Villaseñor
Director: Daniel Chong
Running Time:
Rating: PG
Release Date: March 7, 2026 (Theaters)
There are a whole heck of a lot of talking animals in American animated movies, but somehow I don’t think I’ve ever paired two such movies together in my reviews. Or at least not intentionally, and not explicitly acknowledging it like I’m doing right now. (Feel free to fact-check me if that sounds fishy to you.) So let’s collect my thoughts about GOAT and Hoppers and determine how much they make me want me to be an animal.
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist (Theaters)
–Alpha (Theaters) – Directed by Julia Ducournau.
–Forbidden Fruits (Theaters) – I didn’t give this a great review, but I’ll still recommend it, since it’s sufficiently unique.
–They Will Kill You (Theaters)
Music
-Various Artist, Help(2) (Released March 6) – A charity album with an interesting lineup.
-Courtney Barnett, Creature of Habit
-Flea, Honora
-The New Pornographers, The Former Site Of
-Raye, THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE
-Robyn, Sexistential
-Snail Mail, Ricochet
Sports
-College Basketball Crown (April 1-5 on Fox Sports and FOX) – I don’t usually pay terribly close attention to the non-March Madness college basketball tournaments, but Rutgers is in this one this year.
Starring: Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Chamberlain, Gabrielle Union
Director: Meredith Alloway
Running Time: 104 Minutes
Rating: R for Supernatural-ish Violence and a Round of Sexual Romps
Release Date: March 27, 2026 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Clothing store employees Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Pedretti), and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) run their little corner of the mall with a unique brand of witchy energy. That mostly consists of following strict interpersonal rules of conduct, dropping performative bons mots about femininity, and hitting their sales goals. When they lure over Pumpkin (Lola Tung) from the nearby pretzel store into their circle, she at first seems like a perfectly natural addition, but soon enough she’s upsetting the status quo. As it turns out, she just might know a heck of a lot more about these fruity gals than she initially lets on. Eventually they may very well have to confront the demons from their past instead of just hanging out in their weird little bubble.
What Made an Impression?: A Foreign Object: There are certain movies that make me go, “Nobody talks like this. Nobody behaves like this. This is not how the world works.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In some cases, those flicks are right up my alley. But in the case of Forbidden Fruits, my reaction is instead, “Maybe there are some people who understand this language, but alas I’m not one of them.” Perhaps I will come to understand it one day, but for now it just feels like a plate of spaghetti nonsense thrown against the wall. The Quip Hit Rate: While my Overall Vibing Level with Forbidden Fruits was fairly lukewarm, I must admit that it did amuse me here and there. It’s definitely not all bad when one character drops an all-time zinger like, “My job doesn’t define me. My hotness and personality do.” Flashes of wit are definitely present. More than flashes even! Director Meredith Alloway and her co-screenwriter Lily Houghton (the latter of whom wrote the play that FF is based on) undeniably have a knack for tickling our ears, and I don’t mind giving it up for them in this department. A Turn for the Bloody:Forbidden Fruits has one of those resolutions that is liable to make everyone in a crowded theater stand up and declare in unison, “That’s where this was going? Why wasn’t that clear earlier on?!” On top of that, there’s an end credits scene that looks like it’s setting up a sequel, which is an oddly audacious move for a humble indie flick. It’s analogous to a 10-episode streaming TV season that doesn’t start moving the plot forward in any significant way until Episode 8. Before then, all we have to subsist on are Vibes.
Forbidden Fruits is Recommended If You: Wish that all movies were just a variation of The Craft
Starring: Paula Beer, Barbara Auer, Matthias Brandt, Enno Trebs, Philip Froissant
Director: Christian Petzold
Running Time: 86 Minutes
Rating: Not Rated
Release Date: March 202, 2026 (Theaters)
Miroirs No. 3 is the first Christian Petzold movie officially entering my brain, and it feels pretty cozy, despite all the tortuous psychological angst. Part of that surely has to do with the temporal setting. (It looked like mid- or late spring to me, but other reviews seem to think it’s actually late summer. Perhaps German Augusts have a similar vibe as mid-Atlantic American Mays. Either way, there’s plenty of sunshine!) But it also has quite a bit to do with the fact that the vast majority takes place in and around a family’s house, with satisfying amounts of bicycling, dinner, gardening, and plum cake.
On the flip side, the whole thing is basically a Vertigo scenario, as Betty (Barbara Auer), the matriarch of the household, witnesses a car crash that kills a young man just outside her door. That man’s girlfriend, Laura (Paula Beer) decides she would like to stay and recover with Betty, who is all too happy to let her remain for as long as she likes… not least because she reminds Betty of someone from her past. Betty’s husband (Matthias Brandt) and grown son (Enno Trebs) are initially much more skeptical, but soon enough they’re all charmed by this captivating woman. It’s a creepy status quo, to be sure, but I would venture to hope that it could have been salvaged if everyone had just been a little more upfront from the get-go. Maybe I’m being overly pollyannaish, but we’re all dealing with our own grief and our own baggage, and what an act of grace it is to help us carry each other’s.
Ready as they’ll ever be (CREDIT: Searchlight Pictures/Screenshot)
Starring: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Elijah Wood, Néstor Carbonell, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Nadeem Umar-Khitab, Varun Suranga, Juan Pablo Romero, Masa Lizdek, Maia Jae, Dan Beirne, Antony Hall, David Cronenberg
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
Running Time: 108 Minutes
Rating: R for Lots of Blood and Just as Many F-Bombs
Release Date: March 20, 2026 (Theaters)
I don’t always give away key plot points when I write movie reviews, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.* Also, when I do I use spoiler tags and do my best to avoid getting overly specific. But that’s because I typically post my full-length reviews before a movie comes out. But since spring has sprung and all, I’m in the mood to mix things up, so let’s dive into my fully spoiler-riffic review of (the already-released) Ready or Not 2: Here I Come!
(*-I couldn’t resist.)
First off, a quick recap: the first Ready or Not was one of my most raucous cinematic pleasures of 2019, which leads me right into my first spoiler: I didn’t like the sequel quite as much. But now that we’ve made peace with not being able to quite clear that high bar, let’s focus on that explosive ending, which seems designed to prevent any further sequels. (Although in the horror world, you can never say never for sure.) Anway, after her first attempted wedding didn’t exactly work out, Grace (Samara Weaving) tries to save herself with another marriage, this time to the dastardly Titus Danforth (Shawn Hatosy). It appears to be an even more hellish match than the original matrimony, or at least this time the evil is more upfront to begin with.
But Grace’s blood-soaked wedding dress has always been her source of strength and wiliness. Along with that symbolic ensemble, let’s take the name of her sister (Kathryn Newton) very literally and have faith that everything is fated to work out for Grace and Faith. Well, maybe not everything, but enough for them to carry on for at least one more day of self-reliant freedom. Thus, my biggest takeaways from this movie’s ending are:
1.The wedding dress just upped its iconic status to Level Infinity
2. We are truly blessed to witness the Scream Queen Union of Weaving and Newton
Although, of course, it’s worth noting that that second takeaway is hardly a spoiler at all – it could’ve only been a spoiler if it had turned out that the opposite was true. And if I may drift away from the sisters for one last central point: there should surely be more movies that conclude with Elijah Wood dispassionately (but also with barely concealed relish) witnessing a bunch of people spontaneously combusting. (It shouldn’t be overdone, of course, but we could certainly afford a few more.)
Slanted slides into theaters with a devilish little premise: what if there were a medical surgery that would allow people of color to become white (in every possible way you can fathom)? For a business model like this to work, there would have to be people willing to erase their ethnicity for the sake of making a racist world easier to live through. Ergo our teenage protagonist Joan Huang (Shirley Chen), who gets the surgery and re-introduces herself to everyone as the white-presenting “Jo Hunt” (McKenna Grace). Slanted isn’t quite as unimpeachable as the similarly premised The Substance, but it is successful enough that I was still grappling with its repercussions days later. And that second life – that feels like home.
Grade: A Full Bowl of Potatoes Covered in 75% Sour Cream
Will this be my new favourite show? (CREDIT: Sky TV/Screenshot)
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–Dead Lover (Theaters)
–Miroirs No. 3 (Theaters)
–Project Hail Mary (Theaters)
–Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (Theaters)
TV
–Jury Duty Season 2 Premiere (March 20 on Amazon Prime) – This season is entitled “Company Retreat.”
–Saturday Night Live UK Series Premiere (March 21 on Sky One for Brits, Next Day on Peacock for Americans) – With host Tina Fey and musical guest Wet Leg!
–Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special (March 24 on Disney+)
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