Well, January fucking sucked. Let us never speak of this January ever again. Dear god in heaven, what the hell was Hollywood thinking? The Legend of Hercules was enough to make the typical moviegoer want to stab their eyes out, but I, Frankenstein made us want to cauterize the wounds with boiling lemon juice. And don’t get us started on The Nut Job, Ride Along and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. We all know that January is a dumping ground for the crappy movies that studios actually want to be overshadowed by the expanding national releases of their serious Oscar contenders, but yikes. 2014 took the cake, ate the cake, regurgitated the cake and tried to feed us that cake like it was an Entemann’s.
But the time for healing is now. Unfortunately the salve is February, which looks an awful lot like January but with a bigger budget. We’ve got another sword and sandal epic (Pompeii), another disappointing-looking sci-fi/fantasy film (RoboCop), another animated movie about being yourself (The Lego Movie), another spy movie with Kevin Costner (3 Days to Kill), another comedy with Kevin Hart (About Last Night), and now we’ve got some damned silly-looking Valentine’s Day releases to deal with as well.
But they can’t all suck, can they? Besides, we’ve got some kick-ass Blu-ray releases to look forward to, so it won’t be quite as much of a chore this time. Let’s take a look at what the next month has to offer in CraveOnline’s February 2014 Movie Calendar, and just hope for the best.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
February 2014 Movie Calendar
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Feb. 4 - Dallas Buyers Club (Blu-ray)
Over the past few months Dallas Buyers Club went from being a respected drama about the AIDS crisis to a surefire Oscar contender. Find out what all the buzz is about when the film hits DVD/Blu-ray on February 4, alongside releases like Escape Plan, Free Birds, Jules and Jim (Criterion) and Justice League: War.
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Feb. 7 - The Lego Movie
Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt plays a generic Lego dude who becomes the chosen one, teams up with Batman and Morgan Freeman, and fights to stop the evil President Business, played by Will Ferrell. It's probably just a big, long commercial for Lego but under the direction of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) it just might be a really funny one.
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Feb. 7 - The Monuments Men
Originally slated for an Oscar-ready December release, George Clooney's World War II saga The Monuments Men, about an American troop ordered to rescue great works of art from the dastardly Nazis, finally hits theaters February 7. Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Bob Balaban and Bill Murray co-star.
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Feb. 7 - Vampire Academy
The teen fantasy genre refuses to die. Maybe that's because it's undead. The latest entry in the increasingly unpopular genre, Vampire Academy, stars Zoey Deutch (Beautiful Creatures) as a half-vampire trained to protect mortal vampires from immortal vampires. Mean Girls directed Mark Waters is responsible for Vampire Academy, so maybe it won't suck as much as you think.
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Feb. 8 - Gertie the Dinosaur Turns 100
Sometimes (inaccurately) described as "the first animated film," Gertie the Dinosaur was nevertheless one of the earliest successes in the medium. Directed by Little Nemo creator Winsor McCay, Gertie was a lovable cartoon dinosaur who interacted with McCay, who used to appear live next to the screen and then jump into it. Gertie turns 100 years old on February 8. You can watch the original short online.
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Feb. 10 - Happy Birthday, Elizabeth Banks!
Actress Elizabeth Banks turns 40 years old on February 10. We bet she's having a busy one: Banks was just announced as the director of Pitch Perfect 2, the sequel to the hit 2012 comedy she produced and co-starred in.
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Feb. 11 - Blue is the Warmest Color (Blu-ray)
One of the best movies of 2013 hits DVD and Blu-ray from the Criterion collection on February 11. Blue is the Warmest Color is a three-hour, NC-17 rated story of a young woman's coming of age as a lesbian, and features two of the best performances in years from Adele Exarchopolous and Lea Seydoux. Also, be the on the lookout for All is Lost, Ender's Game, Haunter and Sherlock: Season Three, all hitting Blu-ray on February 11.
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Feb. 12 - RoboCop
Jose Padilha's remake of Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi classic RoboCop hits theaters two days before Valentine's Day, presumably because there's more robot fighting than kissing in the futuristic action movie. Advance word has been iffy, but we're reserving judgment on this one. Maybe it won't be absolutely miserable.
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Feb. 13 - Singles Awareness Day
Are you aware that there was a 1992 movie directed by Cameron Crowe named Singles?
Then our job is done.
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Feb. 14 - About Last Night
Steve Pink's remake of the already loose 1986 adaptation of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago stars Kevin Hart, Regina Hall, Michael Ealy and Joy Bryant as intelligent, well-spoken singles in both love and lust. If it's even remotely close to the source material, it could be the smartest romantic comedy in years. And if not, the cast is likable enough to get most audiences through just about anything.
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Feb. 14 - Endless Love
Catering to a somewhat younger crowd, the second big Valentine's Day release stars Alex Pettyfer as a hot poor person and Gabriella Wild as a hot rich person. They're hot for each other, but her parents aren't too hot about that. It sounds insufferable, but some people like that sort of thing.
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Feb. 14 - Winter's Tale
Colin Farrell, in a truly embarrassing haircut, romances Jessica Brown Findlay and fights to save her from an immortal Russell Crowe - and eventually takes up sidewalk chalk artistry - in Winter's Tale, a movie that looks utterly baffling. It's directed by Akiva Goldsman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of A Beautiful Mind, and the Razzie-nominated screenwriter of Batman & Robin.
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Feb. 15 - Happy Birthday, Chris Farley
Comedian Chris Farley would have turned 50 on February 15, 2014. The beloved "Saturday Night Live" star had a too-short career as a movie star before his death in 1997, but managed to headline one minor comedy classic, Tommy Boy, opposite David Spade. The "Fat Guy in a Little Coat" song is still funny, damn it.
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Feb. 17 - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Turns 25
Now we feel old: the time-traveling slacker comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure came out 25 years ago February 17, making Keanu Reeves a star in the process. His co-star, Alex Winter, is now a respected TV director, and the third film in the franchise - following 1991's imaginative Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey - is still allegedly in development. Let's hope it gets made before Reeves and Winter are 69, dudes.
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Feb. 18 - Darkman (Collector's Edition)
Over a decade before he transformed the superhero genre with Spider-Man, director Sam Raimi brought an original crimefighter to the screen in Darkman, starring Liam Neeson as a scarred, super strong, pain-immune scientist with the ability to steal his prey's faces. Shout Factory's collector's edition Blu-ray is on sale February 18, alongside "Game of Thrones: Season Three" and new Criterion editions of Alfred Hitchcock's The Foreign Correspondent and Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox.
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Feb. 21 - 3 Days to Kill
Kevin Costner stars in a theatrically released feature film for the first time in... quite a while actually. In 3 Days to Kill he plays a spy poisoned by Amber Heard (looking hot but sounding robotic in the trailer), and forced to turn assassin in order to get the antidote. Meanwhile, he's trying to be a wholesome father for his daughter, Hailee Steinfeld. It looks like Taken by way of Crank, but under the direction of McG, could it even be half as good as those modern action classics?
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Feb. 21 - Pompeii
Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson tries his hand at a serious disaster epic with a mismatched Titanic love story, and it looks goofy as hell. "Game of Thrones" star Kit Harington plays a gladiator who falls for Emily Browning, playing a wealthy young woman who's also being wooed by Kiefer Sutherland, playing an evil Roman senator. Then a volcano happens. Sounds like a blast.
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Feb. 21 - The Wind Rises
Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest animation directors in history, is back with an Oscar-nominated swan song about Jiro Horikoshi, the brilliant aviation engineer whose crowning achievement, the Zero Fighter, was sadly only used as an instrument of war. The Wind Rises had a very brief theatrical run in 2013 - CraveOnline called it one of the best films of the year - but it finally expands on February 21 with an English language cast that includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elijah Wood, Emily Blunt and Werner Herzog.
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Feb. 25 - Thor: The Dark World (Blu-ray)
Marvel Studios' Thor: The Dark World premieres on DVD and Blu-ray on February 25, so you'll all finally be able to freeze frame that Guardians of the Galaxy teaser for clues to the future of the hit franchise. Also on DVD and Blu-ray February 25: Oscar nominees Gravity and Nebraska, new Criterion editions of Steven Soderbergh's King of the Hill and Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, and "Adventure Time: The Complete Third Season."
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Feb. 28 - Non-Stop
Liam Neeson... aw, screw it we're already sold. But anyway, he plays an Air Marshal trapped in the sky with a kidnapping serial killer or something, and he gets framed for the crimes. Julianne Moore is in it for some reason. We can't imagine this movie sucking.
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Feb. 28 - Son of God
The umpteenth cinematic version of the life of Jesus Christ isn't actually a real movie, it's the hit TV mini-series "The Bible" edited down to a single feature film, although it supposedly includes scenes left out of the the History Channel broadcasts. Diogo Morgado plays Jesus in Son of God, a pretty cool guy by anyone's estimation, but whether the movie will satisfy a target demographic that's already expected to have seen almost every scene before - for free no less - remains to be seen.
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Feb. 28 - Welcome to Yesterday
Oh good, just what we needed: a found footage time travel movie. Welcome to Yesterday stars John Dies at the End's Jonny Weston who, along with his high school friends, builds a time machine and winds up in a situation that's eerily reminiscent of the movie The Butterfly Effect. Hell, by the end of the trailer it practically looks like a remake.
