I am fully aware that this post is a million days late, but it's been sat almost-finished for the best part of a month so I thought I might as well post it just before February was up!
February's been a funny film month, with the remaining awards hopefuls opening in cinemas alongside a foul-mouthed fan-favourite superhero movie, numerous documentaries and the world's most popular ridiculously good looking male model.
As the Academy Awards roll into Los Angeles this evening, the season of serious dramas unsubtly vying for a shiny gold statue comes to an end. February opened with the successfully nominated Trumbo - Best Actor nomination: Byan Cranston - telling the tale of blacklisted Hollywood scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo who spent the large majority of his career ostracised due to his political beliefs, writing scripts in secret and even managing to win an Oscar for Roman Holiday despite no-one knowing it was him that really wrote the script. The rest of the month saw the unsuccessful, from the snubbed - Best Actor, Will Smith - in Concussion, to a film that failed to live up to its' excellent premise, Freehold. Expect both to be on severely limited release last month, so I wouldn't be surprised if you missed them (I did!).
The rest of the month featured no end of unrelated films. There were the half-term family friendly films of Goosebumps and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, and the more teenage-appropriate Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (totally bonkers but enormous fun if you're a fan of both the Jane Austen classic and zombies) and remake of Point Break. Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton are on top form in the astonishingly good A Bigger Splash, Chris Pine embarks on a seemingly impossible true Coast Guard rescue mission in The Finest Hours (for someone scared of the ocean, seeing this in IMAX was a huge mistake), Sacha Baron Cohen's back on controversial form in Grimsby, and there are corrupt cops galore in mild thriller Triple 9. That's not forgetting the remake of Dad's Army and hilarious comedy preaching the virtues of singledom days after Valentine's Day in How to be Single.
The two most anticipated of February had to be Deadpool and Zoolander 2. Both made their way to screens mostly in part thanks to the fans: the reaction to leaked Deadpool test footage led to the studios finally giving the go ahead for the feature film; and the cult status of the first Zoolander prompted the sequel. They're both utterly ridiculous, but while Deadpool triumphs in its individuality, destruction of the fourth wall, fight scenes and vulgar humour, Zoolander 2 is just 100 minutes of insanity. I love blue steel as much as the next person, but it's a bad film...
Follow the link below for the round up of what you might have missed in February... Hopefully they'll all still be in cinemas!
