One-line spoiler-free movie reviews for March

This is a bumper month – I saw a lot of cinema – featuring: a brilliant silent film built entirely from archive train footage, a promising AI nightmare that spectacularly lost its way, giant fuck off radioactive ants and a gloriously entertaining undead crime romp (alongside multiple Bar Trash screenings reminding me that cinema is still best enjoyed slightly drunk in a room full of queer chaos).

The Zodiac Killer (1971), Tom Hanson – Bar Trash at Beer Merchant’s Tap, Hackney Wick – I went into this with very low expectations, after all, it is a curio made on a tiny budget with the express intention of luring the real Zodiac Killer to a theatre in San Francisco in the hope of catching them. Despite being absolutely littered with grim casual misogyny, it was very watchable.

Bar Trash, run by Token Homo, presents “Queer cult & curious cinema” in relaxed screenings with alcohol, a raffle, a quiz and lots of laughs – find out more at tokenhomo.com/bar-trash.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2025), Gore Verbinski – I really enjoyed the first two-thirds of this, like a Black Mirror episode about phones and school shootings and AI etc on the big ol’ silver screen, but then it had an incredibly janky CGI-laden final third that left me quite disappointed.

Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare (2026), James Jones – Incredible archive footage and present day interviews, and like everything I later found out about Chernobyl, it turns out it was bad but somehow as a planet we really dodged a bullet with a mix of people willing to sacrifice themselves and some luck.

Do You Love Me (2025), Lana Daher – This was like a fever dream collage working through 70 years of archival footage of Lebanon and Beirut which simultaneously made me want to visit the country and shows why nothing ever lasts there. Huge plaudits due not just to director Lana Daher but also editor and co-writer Qutaiba Barhamji.

Red Sonja (1985), Richard Fleischer – Bar Trash at Finsbury Park Picturehouse – A swords-and-sorcery type affair with a scantily clad young Brigitte Nielsen and every now and then Arnold Schwarzenegger would pop up to do something she wasn’t quite strong enough to do, as a character who was definitely Conan the Barbarian although everybody was careful not to mention that due to rights issues. Huge kudos to Ernie Reyes Jr who played the annoying brat character of Prince Tarn so well that I wanted to punch the little prick every time he was on the screen.

Empire of the Ants (1977), Bert I Gordon – Bar Trash at Genesis Cinema, Bethnal Green – This is generally regarded as the nadir of Joan Collins’ career but it was incredibly entertaining, like a Poseidon Adventure or Towering Inferno disaster movie set-up but with *checks notes* giant fucking radioactive ants. You know how sometimes movies say “no animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture”? Well, there was an establishing shot of some ants walking around licking what looked to be mercury posing as radioactive waste, and I immediately figured that a lot of ants got harmed in the making of this particular picture.

The Bride! (2026), Maggie Gyllenhaal – A hugely entertaining and sexy crime caper romp, but with additional cursed undead. I really enjoyed the production design and the performances, great fun.

Muppets from Space (1999), Tim Hill – A fairly innocuous entry into the Muppets canon, probably the highlight for me being prominent roles for two of my favourite latter-day additions to the gang: Pepe the King Prawn and Bobo the Bear.

Still with me? Yes, it is a lot. You’re roughly halfway through. If you’d like these reviews – plus my weekly Friday Reading round-up of things worth your time on the internet – sent straight to your inbox, you can sign up here.

Satan War (1979), Bart La Rue and The Burning Hell (1974), Ron Ormond – Bar Trash at Beer Merchant’s Tap, Hackney Wick – Satan War was undoubtedly badly written, badly acted, and barely lit, but nevertheless was entertainingly creepy and rather sincere in the story it was trying to tell, and had an absolutely brilliant minimalist eerie synth score leading to the caption [OMINOUS SYNTH MUSIC CONTINUES] appearing more often than any other dialogue

[Picture caption: Sally Schermerhorn in Satan War]

The Burning Hell, on the other hand, was batshit crazy, full of Biblical vignettes with all the characters being played by southern-drawled Jesus freaks, while some middle-aged white preachers were desperately contorting words from the Bible to “prove” that you were going to hell and be burned and have your face eaten by worms for billions of billions of years unless you have repented of your sins and turned to Jesus, which always, I dunno, seems a bit harsh on some random baby who dies of starvation aged five months. It’s the worms for you, m’laddie!

[Picture caption: Well this is awkward]

Sound of Falling (2025), Mascha Schilinski – I nearly went to see this on three separate occasions and each time baulked at the running length. Two hours and thirty-five minutes? Come on, get real.

Scarlet (2025), Mamoru Hosoda – An initially intriguing remix of Hamlet and Japanese afterlife mythology, plus one random modern-day dude, but I grew weary of this in the end and just didn’t warm to Scarlet enough to care if she was eventually going to get her revenge. Included a curious decision to have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern apparently based on Jedward.

Limbo (1999), Tina Krause and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), Nathan Juran – Bar Trash at Genesis Cinema, Bethnal Green – A very strange double bill. Limbo came across like an unfinished student art project with very little discernable plot, and then Allison Hayes is a hottie but it is very much Cameo of the 50 Foot Woman because we barely see her in her embiggened state at all.

The Testament of Ann Lee (2025), Mona Fastvold – I loved the music and choreography and the vibe of this, but much preferred the erotically-charged first act before, frankly, Ann Lee turned into a kind of over-sincere religious killjoy because she was fed up of getting knocked up by her husband and appeared to have grown weary of a little gentle 18th century spiritual BDSM.

Pociagi (Trains) (2024), Maciej J Drygas – One of the best things I’ve seen in ages – no narrative, no voiceover, just 80 minutes of found archive footage of railways from Europe in the early 20th century that somehow managed to tell the social history of a continent. I’ve written more about my thoughts on this movie here.

Dead Man’s Wire (2025), Gus Van Sant – I knew nothing about the true events this film was based on so didn’t know which way it would turn and really enjoyed it – Bill Skarsgård is particularly good as the twitchy neurotic main protagonist. I am tempted to watch the doco Dead Man’s Line which has all the original footage in it too now.

967-Evil (1985), Robert Englund – Bar Trash at Finsbury Park Picturehouse – Featuring a “Oooooh that’s the hologram Doctor off Star Trek!” cameo and an extremely camp rich performance by Stephen Geoffreys in the lead role, but the absolute star was an unhinged performance by Sandy Dennis as ultra-conservative batshit religious Aunt Lucy (pictured below).

Broken English (2025), Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard – She’s such a fascinating artist and character, and was so genuine in this as bits of her life were replayed to her in her frailer final years – some of her observations/barbs were proper LOL moments – but it had the slightly odd conceit of being an “investigation” by the Tilda Swinton-led “Ministry of Not Forgotting”, and I’d have maybe preferred them to have let the archive footage shine a bit more.

Two Prosecutors (2025), Sergei Loznitsa – I wanted to see this as I was obsessed with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. It brilliantly evokes a suffocating feeling of being trapped in a Stalinist tyranny with its glacial pacing, endless shots of corridors, doors being locked and unlocked, waiting rooms, personal paperwork checks and lengthy pregnant pauses.

Read more of my one-line spoiler-free reviews of everything I’ve watched in the cinema in the monthly archive. Last time out I wrote about the acoustic folk horror of Rabbit Trap, Rose Byrne – who got ROBBED of an Oscar – in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, music-themed cinema experiences from Paul McCartney, Elvis and Charli XCX, plus an unhinged 4D Bar Trash screening of Plan 9 from Outer Space.

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