Films I Saw in March

In the past five years, I shared a year-end list of the films I saw throughout 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. For 2021, I decided to do this monthly and share a list of the films I saw during each month of the year. These are the films I saw in March, which make up a total of 16 titles. As always, films marked with a heart (❤) are my favourites.

John Rabe (2009) | Starring Ulrich Tukur, Daniel Brühl and Steve Buscemi
Hysteria (2011) | Starring Hugh Dancy, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jonathan Pryce
Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012) | Starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg
What If (2013) | Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver and Megan Park
Crown Heights (2017) | Starring Lakeith Stanfield and Nnamdi Asomugha
The Big Sick (2017) | Starring Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan and Holly Hunter
Wildlife (2018) | Starring Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ed Oxenbould
Endings, Beginnings (2019) | Starring Shailene Woodley, Jamie Dornan and Sebastian Stan
End of the Century [Fin de siglo] (2019) | Starring Juan Barberini and Ramón Pujol
Sound of Metal (2019) | Starring Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke and Paul Raci
❤ Escape from Pretoria (2020) | Starring Daniel Radcliffe and Daniel Webber
One Night in Miami... (2020) | Starring Kingsley Ben-Adir and Leslie Odom Jr.
❤ Palm Springs (2020) | Starring Adam Samberg, Cristin Milioti and J. K. Simmons
❤ Your Name Engraved Herein [刻在你心底的名字] (2020) | Starring Edward Chen
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) | Starring Lakeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya
The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021) | Starring Andra Day and Trevante Rhodes

One of my favourites of the films I saw in March was Your Name Engraved Herein. It's a Taiwanese film about two students at an all-boys Catholic high school who fall in love amid family pressure, homophobia and social stigma. The story is set in 1987, right after martial law ends in Taiwan. Even though the lifting brought greater liberties, such as freedom of speech and press, homophobia was still widespread and openly gay people were largely ostracized by society. As such, the two main characters, Jia-Han and Birdy, struggle with their growing attraction to each other and eventually fate takes them in different directions.

Your Name Engraved Herein is stunning in every sense of the word. The two young actors who star in the film, Edward Chen and Tseng Jing-Hua, are absolutely mesmerizing. They have beautiful chemistry, and they bring such emotion to their performances that you are instantly captivated by their story. Edward Chen, in particular, just took my breath away.

Another one of my favourite films was Palm Springs. It's the story of two strangers who meet at a wedding in Palm Springs and get stuck in a time loop. As they live the same day over and over again, they try to come up with new ideas to escape boredom, and they end up falling in love.

I don't usually go for comedies («modern» comedies, that is), but Palm Springs is fantastic. It was really refreshing to see a film with such an original concept (which is hard to come by these days), and the two lead actors, Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, are amazing together. Also, I get it now. Andy Samberg is hot. Sorry it took me so long to realize it.

My other favourite was Escape from Pretoria, which is based one the real-life prison breakout of three anti-apartheid captives in South Africa in 1979. They were able to escape by making wooden keys that fitted the locks to their cells, and other locks in the prison.

Escape from Pretoria is a proper thriller film. It's tense and dramatic, and it had me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. The accents threw me off a little bit, but the cast is simply outstanding. Daniel Radcliffe, in particular, delivers a beautiful performance that truly shows the horrors of being imprisoned under the Apartheid regime.

And that's it. These are all the films I watched in March. Have you seen any of them?

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