{"id":303265,"date":"2026-02-26T14:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T14:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/303265\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T14:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T14:01:09","slug":"10-of-the-best-films-to-watch-in-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/303265\/","title":{"rendered":"10 of the best films to watch in March"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772114468_522_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/p0n2zdj8.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Alamy (Credit: Alamy)\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>Alamy9. Project Hail Mary<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">If you fancy a deeply researched story of a scientist stuck on his own in space, then Andy Weir is your man. His debut novel, The Martian, was made into a hit film scripted by Drew Goddard, and directed by Ridley Scott. A decade on, Goddard has scripted another film adapted from one of Weir&#8217;s novels, Project Hail Mary. Directed by Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (the directors of The Lego Movie and the producers of the Spider-Verse cartoons), this sci-fi adventure stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, a biologist-turned-school teacher who is called in by the European Space Agency when energy-absorbing microbes are found to be dimming the light between the Sun and the Earth. With no trained astronauts available, Grace is sent on a solo flight to investigate \u2013 but he does bump into a friendly alien. &#8220;What&#8217;s great about this movie is that there are so many things that make it harder to make,&#8221; Miller said at San Diego Comic-Con, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/sdcc-2025-project-hail-mary-phil-lord-chris-miller-2000635172\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">as reported in Gizmodo<\/a>. &#8220;All of the zero G, all of the centrifugal gravity, the characters have to have a wall between them because their atmospheres are different\u2026 That difficulty is what makes it interesting and makes it special.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Released on 18, 19 and 20 March in cinemas internationally<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772114468_522_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/p0n2zdb4.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Mandarin &amp; Compagnie\/ Kallouche Cin\u00e9ma\/ Frakas Productions (Credit: Mandarin &amp; Compagnie\/ Kallouche Cin\u00e9ma\/ Frakas Productions)\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>Mandarin &amp; Compagnie\/ Kallouche Cin\u00e9ma\/ Frakas Productions10. Alpha<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Julia Ducournau, the French writer-director of Raw and Titane, returns with a typically dark, visceral and challenging drama that divided critics when it premiered at the <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/culture\/tags\/cannes-film-festival\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Cannes Film Festival<\/a> last year: it&#8217;s not so much a love-it-or-hate-it film as a love-it-or-be-baffled-by-it one. Its titular heroine, Alpha (M\u00e9lissa Boros), is a 13-year-old a schoolgirl who appals her mother (Golshifteh Farahani) by getting an amateur tattoo at a party. A deadly virus is turning its victims into stone, and the mother, a nurse, is afraid that her daughter and her drug-addicted brother (Tahar Rahim) will catch it. Despite having had <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/culture\/article\/20250520-alpha-review\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a sceptical review from the BBC<\/a>, Ducournau&#8217;s apocalyptic film is certainly a unique and haunting experience. &#8220;Alpha has continued to burrow the right sort of unease into my brain,&#8221; <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/film\/review\/2025\/11\/13\/alpha-review-ignore-the-sniffy-reception-at-cannes-this-is-awesome\/\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">says Donald Clarke in The Irish Times<\/a>. &#8220;Few will endure its attack without admitting they&#8217;ve sat through something out of the ordinary.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Released on 27 March in the US and Canada, and 17 April in the UK<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">If you liked this story,\u00a0<a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/cloud.email.bbc.com\/TheEssentialList_Newsletter_Signup?&amp;at_bbc_team=studios&amp;at_medium=Onsite&amp;at_objective=acquisition&amp;at_ptr_name=bbc.com&amp;at_link_origin=featuresarticle&amp;at_campaign=essentiallist&amp;at_campaign_type=owned\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">sign up for the Essential List newsletter<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a handpicked selection of features, videos and can&#8217;t-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BBCCulture\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/bbc_culture\/\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alamy9. Project Hail Mary If you fancy a deeply researched story of a scientist stuck on his own&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-303265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}