February movies

February is a weird month for movies. Let me go through the top two February movies from the last 10 years to illustrate my point.

2015 – Fifty Shades of Grey, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water

2014 – The LEGO Movie, Non-Stop

2013 – Identity Thief, A Good Day to Die Hard

2012 – The Vow, Safe House

2011 – Just Go With It, Justin Beiber: Never Say Never

2010 – Valentine’s Day, Shutter Island

2009 – Madea Goes to Jail, Friday the 13^th

2008 – Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour, Jumper

2007 – Ghost Rider, Norbit

2006 – Madea’s Family Reunion, When a Stranger Calls

So on that list we have: 

4 romanticish films. I add ish because I don’t know if Grey is considered to be romantic and I only assume Just Go With It is a romance film. The Vow is the film where Rachel McAdams gets into a car accident and forgets she was married to Channing Tatum, right? I saw Valentine’s Day, it’s exactly what you think it is.

4 movies aimed at kids. Those concert films are for kids right? SpongeBob and LEGO are also for kids but you better believe that I saw them in theater.

5 action films. Jumper is a pretty forgettable movie to most but it was the film my wife and I saw on our first Valentine’s Day together so I’ll always love it. Oh and A Good Day to Die Hard is horrible but of course I saw it. Non-Stop is another Liam Neeson action film so of course it’s awesome (well not of course, but it really is good). Safe House was a surprise hit that began to show a turn-around in the quality of films released in February and Ghost Rider is Nicholas Cage as a comic book motorcycle rider from Hell- not figuratively, that’s the actual plot. 

4 comedies, two of which are Madea films. Tyler Perry seems to be the only person capitalizing on February, releasing two films in the early oughts. Norbit was another Eddie Murphy film seeing him play numerous roles, which was something that helped him shoot to fame in the 80’s.  Identity Thief is like the last film starring Melissa McCarthy that wasn’t a summer release.   

3 horror films, one featuring DiCaprio and two remakes. Shutter Island was a big hit but, spoiler alert, it had the ‘it was all in his mind’ twist ending that all too many thrillers utilized since, spoiler alert, Fight Club. When a Stranger Calls is like the perfect February release for teens who wanted to be scared on Valentine’s Day as it stars a babysitter being stalked and Friday the 13^th was another film featuring the hockey mask wearing Jason who kills all that come near his lake side resting place.

So as you can see, over the past 10 years there have been some films that make one think, “yeah, I could see that as a date film,” and some films that make very little sense at all.

This year the choices are:

Hail, Caesar – a new Coen Brothers film starring George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Frances McDormand, Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansen and many more. It’s about a Hollywood star, played by Clooney, who gets kidnapped and the ‘fixer,’ played by Brolin, hired to find him, and all of the others – portrayed by pretty much the rest of Hollywood - he has to deal with in trying to solve the case. Coen Brothers at their best churn out some of my favorite crime-comedies of all time and this one looks great, too. The February release doesn’t bother me because their films are rarely huge hits so it makes no sense for a company to release it during the summer months. I can’t wait to see this.   

Zoolander 2 – This film was going to be made one way or another. The first one was a huge hit. People are still familiar with Ben Stiller’s character. After 15 years was a sequel necessary? Probably not but it looks to be in the same vein as the first one, so that’s a good thing. The first one dealt with evil Mugatu, Will Ferrell, brainwashing stupid male model, Derek Zoolander, to kill the Malaysian Prime Minister to ensure Mugatu’s cheap labor can continue in Malaysia. Derek gets help from a reporter, played by Stiller’s wife Christine Taylor, and his male model nemesis Hansel, played by Owen Wilson. I actually hated the first one when I first saw it but I watched it again and again and learned to love it - so much that I am able to recite the entire plot from memory. Now 15 years later, Derek and Hansel are washed up and no longer relevant, which I’m sure will be played up for meta-hilarity, but when ‘beautiful’ people like Justin Beiber and Usher start turning up dead they are leaving only one clue behind: they are each wearing Derek’s signature facial expression, Magnum. So then a high stakes, worldwide chase begins that I’m sure will have dozens of cameos. Watch the first one again to familiarize yourself with the formula and to see a great appearance from the late David Bowie.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – The Jane Austen classic has taken many forms. It’s been a film, a miniseries, a short film, another film, another miniseries – okay so not that many forms but people won’t stop retelling this story on film. So why not update it? Well from the writer of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and directed by the guy who Samuel L. Jackson shoots on the couch in Pulp Fiction - which is followed by the line ’I’m sorry did I break your concentration?’ - comes a new version of the story, but this one features the people in 19^th century England fighting off zombies. It sounds like a cool idea, but Vampire Hunter didn’t quite work so I’m skeptical. Still it’s probably a good movie for young people to see when they can’t get a ticket to see anything else and don’t know what Zoolander is because they weren’t even born when the first one came out. 

How to be Single – Now this to me sounds more like a fun party movie than your typical date movie. It’s about single women in the city partying and having fun. The partier Rebel Wilson, whose presence in any film guarantees a rise in ticket sales, shows the quiet Dakota Johnson, who starred in last year’s top grossing Valentine’s Day movie 50 Shades of Grey, how to have fun while single. This is my assumption from a trailer I watched a few weeks ago. It does not sound like a date film so I imagine people on dates thinking they’re seeing an old school typical cheesy Valentine’s Day film will be in for a surprise. 

Deadpool­ – The fact that this film is being released is pretty mind blowing. Studios rarely take chances with an R-rated comic book film because the PG-13 ones make billions at best and 100 million at worst. So why risk it when the R-rated ones rarely come near those numbers? Well here’s one reason, you can potentially have a better film if you make an R-rated movie. Deadpool is a foul mouthed killer who can’t be restrained by the editing board and from what I’m hearing this film goes above and beyond to be over the top- reportedly it’s already banned in China. Ryan Reynolds is the lead here and he already played a PG-13 version of Deadpool’s alter-ego Wade Wilson in Wolverine which, for my money, is the worst X-Men film to date. But Reynolds wanted to do the character again and he wanted to do it right and he did not give up.  He campaigned for this film for years and this Valentine’s Day we will finally have it. Many people will see it and many kids will buy tickets for that Zombie movie or that Zoolander movie and sneak in. Or they’ll do something stupid like make a petition just a month before the film gets released and request that a PG-13 version be released instead (this actually happened). 

So my question to you is do any of these strike you as Valentine’s Day films? The only one, as far as I’ve seen, pushing a Valentine’s Day marketing scheme is Deadpool and that’s what I’ll be seeing.