10 of the best films to watch in March

“10 of the best” has become a familiar phrase for anyone seeking a curated list of top recommendations. And as March rolls in, the cinema world is abuzz with new releases and classics alike.

Including Dungeons & Dragons, Creed III and the latest John Wick starring Keanu Reeves – Magembe Solomon lists the 10 of the best films this month.

1. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Dungeons & Dragons, the hugely influential role-playing game, was made into a film in 2000, but that was Dingy & Dragging. Now comes another attempt to turn the game into a swashbuckling fantasy blockbuster, this time starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez and Regé-Jean Page as its luckless heroes, and Hugh Grant as its sneering villain.

Its directors, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein are best known for a beloved comedy, Game Night. “They’re really funny guys,” Pine said to Tamera Jones at Collider. “They have a history of making great comedy. And their idea for how they wanted to tell the story was exactly what I like about big-budget filmmaking, which is not too cool for school. There’s an earnest, real heart to it with a really sweet message.”

Releases on 31 March

2. Shazam! Fury of the Gods

The brightest and funniest of DC’s superhero blockbusters gets a sequel from the same director, David F Sandberg. Asher Angel is back as Billy Batson, a schoolboy who can turn into a Superman-like demigod, played by Zachary Levi.

And now his foster siblings can turn into superheroes, Billy also has to deal with the fury of the gods – or rather goddesses. Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu and Rachel Zegler play the vengeful Daughters of Atlas, so if you’ve ever wanted to see Dame Helen flying into battle alongside minotaurs, harpies and unicorns, now’s your chance.

Releases on 17 March

3. John Wick: Chapter 4

Keanu Reeves puts his black suit on for a fourth time to play John Wick, a retired hitman who is drawn back into a shadowy assassins’ guild. Since the release of the first film in 2014, the stories have grown more complicated, and the series’ mythology has grown more elaborate.

Is John Wick becoming a globe-trotting action franchise to rival James Bond and Mission: Impossible? The new film is two hours and 49 minutes long, with a supporting cast that includes Donnie Yen and Bill Skarsgard, and a plot that takes Wick around the world.

Releases on 22 March

4. Luther: The Fallen Sun

Now that Idris Elba is 50, his fans might have to give up on their dream that he will eventually being cast as James Bond. But they can console themselves with Luther: The Fallen Sun, a Netflix spin-off of the long-running BBC series.

Since we last saw John Luther, the disgraced police detective has been in prison, but he breaks out to track down a wealthy serial killer played by Andy Serkis. Can John catch the maniac before another police detective (Cynthia Erivo) catches John? The series’ creator, Neil Cross, promises to answer that question with more locations and elaborate action sequences than the TV series ever had.

Releases on 10 March on Netflix

5. Creed III

In the third film in the post-Rocky boxing series, Adonis “Donnie” Creed gets in the ring with an estranged old friend played by the formidable Jonathan Majors, who was the best thing about the recent Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

This is the first Creed film to be directed by its star, Michael B Jordan – but the biggest change is that the franchise’s creator, Sylvester Stallone, won’t appear as Rocky Balboa, having fallen out with its producer, Irwin Winkler.

Releases on 3 March

6. Infinity Pool

The latest body-horror chiller from Brandon “son of David” Cronenberg stars Alexander Skarsgård as an author who kills someone in a car crash while he’s on holiday in a tropical resort. The local government sentences him to death – unless, that is, he pays to create a cloned duplicate who will be executed in his place.

Releases on 24 March

7. 65

The film stars Adam Driver as an astronaut who crashlands on what seems at first to be a distant planet but turns out to be Earth, 65 million years ago. He and the crash’s only other survivor (Ariana Greenblatt) have to trek through the primaeval wilderness, but various hungry dinosaurs soon pick up their scent.

Releases on 10 March

8. Inside

Vasilis Katsoupis’s provocative debut feature stars Willem Dafoe as Nemo, an art thief who is robbing a luxury New York penthouse. When he trips the high-tech alarm system, he expects security guards to come running.

But something worse happens: security guards don’t come running, and nor does anyone else. Instead, the faulty system locks Nemo in the apartment with no running water and no way of communicating with the outside world and the owner isn’t due to return for weeks or even months. What good are all the apartment’s priceless paintings and sculptures to Nemo now?

Releases on 15 March

9. A Good Person

Almost 20 years on from Garden State, Zach Braff’s debut as a writer-director, the former Scrubs star has made A Good Person, another indie comedy-drama inspired by his own life and his own hometown in New Jersey.

Florence Pugh (Braff’s ex-girlfriend) plays Allison, a successful and happily engaged young woman. But after she is in a car accident that kills her prospective sister-in-law, she plunges into alcoholism and substance abuse. Could her salvation be her friendship with Daniel (Morgan Freeman), a widowed Vietnam veteran who would have been her father-in-law?

Releases on 24 March

10. Close

Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele) are as close as brothers, if not closer. They spend every moment together in idyllic rural Belgium, and can’t imagine life being any different. But at the age of 13, the boys enrol in a new school where their casual intimacy prompts questions and rumours that could push them apart.