DVD/Blu-ray Release Calendar: March 2020

▣ Dark Waters Trailers

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A relatively straightforward affair from director Todd Haynes (Carol), this true-story legal thriller adapted from a New York Times Magazine article centers on an attorney Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) who took on chemical giant DuPont, whom he accused of covering up decades of pollution that caused multiple deaths. Anne Hathaway and Tim Hobbins also star.

▣ Queen & Slim Trailers

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The feature directorial debut from Grammy-winning music video director and frequent Beyoncé collaborator Melina Matsoukas is a modern-day take on a crime thriller reminiscent of Bonnie & Clyde, with a mostly black cast led by Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith as a couple on the run after a first date goes horribly wrong during a traffic stop. The script comes from Emmy winner Lena Waithe, working from a concept by author James Frey.

▣ Bombshell Trailers

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Jay Roach's drama heads behind the scenes of the recent sexual harassment scandal involving late Fox News head Roger Ailes (played by John Lithgow). Charlize Theron stars as Megyn Kelly and Nicole Kidman plays Gretchen Carlson—their incredible transformations earning the film an Oscar for hair and makeup—while Margot Robbie, Kate McKinnon, Allison Janney, and Connie Britton also star.

▣ Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project Trailers

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Teenage director Matt Wolf returns with a look at an ordinary person who undertook an extraordinary project. From the late 1970s until her death in 2012, Marion Stokes used a VCR to record 24 hours a day of television broadcasts—every day, and often on multiple channels—in an attempt to preserve history that no one else was archiving. (The resulting 70,000 tapes will indeed be made available to the public.) Critics admired this documentary about her life and work when it screened at Tribeca last year.

▣ Uncut Gems Trailers

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If you expected the Safdie brothers to take it easy after Good Time, you’d be mistaken. This manic crime thriller follows Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler in a performance that rivals his work in Punch-Drunk Love), a New York City jeweler always on the hustle. Failing his family and with gambling debts coming due, Howard makes a series of ill-advised decisions, resulting in a film of almost unbearable suspense. Sandler earned raves and plenty of awards for his work, but was one of the year's bigger Oscar snubs (along with the film as a whole, which was ignored by the Academy despite the stellar reviews and box office success).

▣ A Hidden Life Trailers

The latest from Terrence Malick tells the true story of Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), an Austrian farmer who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May, the film provoked strong reactions from critics, with some proclaiming it a triumphant return to form and others seeing another muddle made up of Malick’s now overly familiar moves. Still, it's Malick's best-reviewed film since The Tree of Life nearly a decade ago.

▣ Richard Jewell Trailers

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Clint Eastwood's latest directorial effort traces the true and tragic story of Richard Jewell and the media scandal that turned an innocent, heroic man into a pariah. I, Tonya's Paul Walter Hauser stars as Jewell, a security guard at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics who saved countless lives by finding a pipe bomb and clearing spectators before it exploded. Eventually, he would become the FBI’s main suspect. Hauser and supporting stars Sam Rockwell and Kathy Bates earned praise for their work, with Bates even picking up an Oscar nomination.

▣ 1917 Trailers

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One of the most honored films of 2019—with 10 Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe win for best drama, among other accolades—director Sam Mendes’ tribute to his grandfather’s experiences in World War I follows two soldiers (George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) on a mission to save 1,600 men. Filmed in long takes edited together to appear as one long shot, it is a feat of virtuosic filmmaking (and excellent cinematography from Oscar winner Roger Deakins)—though some critics found the gimmick to be more distancing than enveloping.

▣ Clemency Trailers

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Writer-director Chinonye Chukwu's second feature stars Alfre Woodard in what many critics believe is one of the best performances of her career. She plays Bernadine Williams, the warden at a maximum-security prison where she forms a bond with a death-row inmate (Aldis Hodge) who is scheduled to be executed. Clemency took home the biggest prize at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, and the film later earned three Film Independent Spirit Award nominations, including best feature and best female lead.

▣ Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailers

Easily the most recent of all Star Wars films, The Rise of Skywalker is also ... well, not very good. The concluding chapter in the nine-film "Skywalker Saga" returns Episode 7's J.J. Abrams to the director's chair and adds new characters played by Naomi Ackie and Keri Russell and also features the return of fan favorite Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian. Critics deemed it an unsatisfying finale. Within the Saga, only The Phantom Menace has a lower Metascore.

In addition to the stand-alone movie, Disney is also selling a 27-disc Blu-ray set containing the entire Skywalker Saga in 4K. (The films will also be available individually in 4K, marking the first 4K appearances for most of the saga.)