Death On The Nile, Jackass in theaters, and some love triangles are coming this February

Jackass Forever

Theaters everywhere February 4

It’s been more than a decade since the last big-screen outing for the Jackass boys, and Paramount is taking no risks that we’ll somehow miss the comeback party: The trailer for this fourth installment of Johnny Knoxville’s group therapy seemed to play in front of almost every multiplex release between July and November of 2021, as the studio finally settled on—and loudly announced—a date for fans to gather en masse, then laugh and scream again. Hopefully Omicron will be receding enough by early February to make that an easy decision, and not a Jackass-style stunt.

Moonfall

Theaters everywhere February 4

While the big studios have excused themselves from the Roland Emmerich world-destroying business, his apocalypses can apparently carry on indefinitely without them. The director’s latest is a sci-fi disaster movie about the moon getting knocked out of orbit and heading for a collision course with Earth, featuring dubious alternate history. The characters are astronauts (Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson) and a conspiracy theorist (K.C. Houseman) who turns out to be right. Presumably, a dog or perhaps a large housecat will triumphantly jump out of the way of a fireball’s path at the last minute.

The Worst Person In The World

Select theaters February 4

A.V. Club favorite Joachim Trier completes his Oslo trilogy—see previous stunners Reprise and Oslo, August 31st—with this digressive, conceptually energetic drama about a thirtysomething (Renate Reinsve) torn between her longtime beau and a new infatuation. Trier makes stylish, novelistically digressive portraits of restless youth, and he seems poised to finally earn the ardent fanbase his work deserves with The Worst Person In The World, which landed on our list of the best movies of 2021. (It’s expanding into more theaters now after a very quiet awards run last autumn.)

Kimi

HBO Max February 10

Steven Soderbergh’s latest for HBO Max comes, characteristically, less than a year after his last one, the excellent No Sudden Move. He appears to be in Unsane mode while possibly rejiggering The Net for an even more digital era with this story of a techie shut-in (Zoë Kravitz) who discovers evidence of a murder and must leave the house in order to report and/or solve the crime–during the pandemic, no less! There are few filmmakers better-suited to maneuver around that last potential stumbling block than the resourceful, fast-moving, socially conscious Soderbergh. And if he doesn’t pull it off, hey, he’ll probably have another movie ready before the year is out.

Death On The Nile

Theaters everywhere February 11

Kenneth Branagh scored an unlikely smash with his extravagant adaptation of the Agatha Christie locked room (make that locked compartment) mystery Murder On The Orient Express. So why does the inevitable sequel still feel like something of a gamble? Perhaps because, thanks to the pandemic, it’s been five years since Murder hit theaters. Or maybe it’s that the sprawling cast is lower wattage, with Gal Gadot the only major movie star in an ensemble that—unfortunately for the publicity team—also includes Armie Hammer and Letitia Wright. Will any of that kill this budding franchise of old-fashioned whodunits? Or will Branagh, returning to direct and reprise his leading role as master detective Hercule Poirot, again crack the case of the old-school, adult-targeted hit, even without a Imagine Dragons song in the trailer?

Blacklight

Theaters everywhere February 11

It was a cold January without any Liam Neeson vehicles to warm our action-loving hearts. Thankfully, the star hasn’t, ahem, taken the whole winter off; his annual care package of AARP ass-kicking is just arriving during a different Hollywood dump month. Reuniting with Honest Thief director Mark Williams, Neeson this time plays a black-ops fixer who decides to remove himself from the government’s payroll once he discovers that the FBI has (newsflash!) been targeting Americans. In other words, it sounds like another glorified B-movie with a political conscience—business as usual for the aging Irish-brogued bruiser with a particular set of skills.

​​Marry Me

Theaters everywhere and Peacock February 11

The return of gritty, crime-movie Jennifer Lopez with Hustlers all but assured that we would also witness the rebirth of rom-com J-Lo, pop-star J-Lo, and middle-age-dynamo J-Lo. All three of those personas appear present and accounted for in Marry Me, an unlikely rom-com where a massive pop star (guess who) decides to marry a stranger (Owen Wilson) from the audience of her concert, after a splashy on-stage wedding to a fellow singer falls through. Will this mismatched couple actually make it work? Well, this Valentine’s Day-timed movie isn’t called Acrimoniously Divorce Me.

The Sky Is Everywhere

Select theaters and Apple TV+ February 11

Another love triangle for the holiday. This one’s an adaptation of Jandy Nelson’s YA bestseller about a bereaved teenage musician (Grace Kaufman) who finds her broken heart drawn to both a sensitive classmate and her deceased older sister’s fiancé. What makes The Sky Is Everywhere intriguing is the director handling its tearjerker material: Josephine Decker, whose last movie, Shirley, was a pitilessly caustic fictionalization of Shirley Jackson’s life and marriage. Needless to say, this looks like a change of pace, albeit one that’s provided Decker a chance to revel in some nifty fantasy flourishes.

Bigbug

Netflix February 11

Did you enjoy The Mitchells Vs. The Machines? The almighty Netflix algorithm has the data to prove that you did, and it’s back to recommend another comedy about puny humans fighting back against their plainly superior robotic help. Bigbug isn’t an animated movie, but French fabulist Jean-Pierre Jeunet—he of the whimsical Amelie, and also a bunch of much less whimsical science-fiction movies—has given it the bright, gaudy, colorful aesthetic of a live-action cartoon. Like most visions of the future, this one will eventually fascinate as a snapshot of the past; that it seems to take place entirely within a single besieged suburban home should help the carbon dating super-intelligent machines of tomorrow pinpoint when it was shot.

Tall Girl 2

Netflix February 11

Last year, Netflix put the lid on two hit franchises, wrapping up the All The Boys and Kissing Booth trilogies. To fill the content void, the streaming platform is now sequelizing another of its recent rom-com sensations with this follow-up to the 2019 teen movie about a towering wallflower (Ava Michelle) who feels self-conscious because she’s lanky. Part two appears to engineer some fresh romantic conflict for the titular Tall Girl, now a social butterfly struggling to balance her old relationships with her newfound popularity. “Tall Girl is seemingly designed to be viewed with the same casualness with which people binge-watch their favorite sitcoms,” we wrote in our review of the original. That’s not a very high bar, har har, for the sequel to clear.

I Want You Back

Amazon Prime February 11

This rom-com with actual comedy stars looks a bit like Sleeping With Other People crossed with Strangers On A Train: A pair of recently dumped emotional messes (Jenny Slate and Charlie Day) lean on each other for support—and then for zany-scheme generation when they decide to sabotage each other’s exes. Slate’s ex is played by Scott Eastwood, Day’s by Gina Rodriguez, and Jason Orley directs, hopefully bringing some of the unexpected charm of his previous movie, Big Time Adolescence.

Catch The Fair One

Select theaters and VOD February 11

Boxer Kali Reis joins the ranks of real-life fighters bringing their athletic skills to the big screen with this hard-hitting thriller she co-wrote with director Josef Kubota Wladyka. Reis plays an Indigenous boxer not unlike herself (they share the same nickname, “K.O.”) who goes undercover to track down the sex traffickers who have abducted her sister. The movie is modest in scale, more grim revenge procedural than all-out action movie, but Reis’s steely presence lends it some additional weight.

jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy

Netflix February 16

Miss the old Kanye? The straight from the ‘Go Kanye? The chop up the soul Kanye? There’s a whole lot of that Kanye in this four-and-a-half hour documentary, which co-director Clarence “Coodie” Simmons began shooting when the Chicago rapper was a rising hip-hop producer in his early 20s. Divided into three distinct chapters, jeen-yuhs follows West around as he hustles for a record deal and lays down The College Dropout, then catches up with him years later, during his recent tumble into Christian music and politics. This baggy Hoop Dreams-inspired epic, which premiered in part at Sundance a few days ago, suffers from some serious gaps in its timeline.

Uncharted

Theaters everywhere February 18

Tom Holland, star of the biggest movie in the world right now, swings into the role of another agile adventurer: Nathan Drake, the cocksure fortune-hunter hero of Naughty Dog’s hit video game franchise. Uncharted has been in some form of development for so long that Mark Wahlberg, who plays Drake’s mentor Sully, was once in consideration for the lead role. This repeatedly delayed version from Venom director Ruben Fleischer has been billed as a prequel to the games, a kind of Batman Begins take on their globe-trotting, artifact-seeking derring do. Let’s hope it’s better than that last Tomb Raider reboot, which adapted another video game heavily indebted to the Indiana Jones movies into… an unmemorable Indiana Jones imitation.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Netflix February 18

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre timeline grows even more convoluted with this latest installment, which is supposedly a direct sequel to the original… you know, just like Texas Chainsaw 3D a decade ago. Possibly chasing that Halloween 2018 money, the film picks up decades later with an elderly Leatherface getting back into the butcher business when a bunch of young businessmen (blatant subtext alert!) interrupt his retirement. Will the old brute be as rusty as the saw he put down in the ’70s? If there’s any reason to be excited about this umpteenth return to the slaughterhouse, it’s the “story by” credit for Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, whose Evil Dead remake was better than most Hollywood horror reboots.

Dog

Theaters everywhere February 18

It’s oddly comforting that no matter the uncertain state of the industry, they’ll just keep making plainly titled movies for dog lovers. Channing Tatum gets in on the canine canon by both starring and co-directing this comedy about a U.S. Army Ranger who agrees to drive a seemingly aggressive service dog from Washington to Arizona to attend the funeral of her decorated military handler. It’s been a full five years since Tatum headlined a movie, and if this isn’t the triumphant return to the spotlight fans might want, the trailer suggests that he’s still more than capable of holding up his end of a classic comedy dynamic, even against a scene partner with a rather limited vocabulary.

The Outfit

Select theaters February 25

Screenwriter Graham Moore’s first feature won him an Adapted Screenplay Oscar, which must be why he gets to follow up The Imitation Game with such an odd-looking feature directorial debut. The Outfit is apparently a pun-based crime drama, following a tailor (Mark Rylance) who makes beautiful clothes, primarily at the service of Chicago gangsters. With some manner of assistant (Zoey Deutch) at his side, a particularly eventful night has him enduring various evidence-hiding, mob-doctoring, and blood-scrubbing scenarios. The intriguing bit is the pairing of Rylance and Deutch, an onscreen team-up no one especially anticipated.

Mothering Sunday

Select theaters February 25

Exquisite period costumes, tony manor homes, upstairs/downstairs romance, the private suffering of the aristocracy—all classic elements of British period pieces. Mothering Sunday approaches the genre from the perspective of Jane (Odessa Young), a housemaid in 1920s England whose forbidden affair with the upper-crust Paul (Josh O’Connor) sets her on her ultimate path as an acclaimed writer. (Paul is doomed to an arranged marriage and a career as a barrister, the poor thing.) Multiple cast members from The Crown, including Olivia Colman in a performance that earned raves at Telluride, further shore up the posh credentials of this drama from director Eva Husson (Girls Of The Sun), which seems to combine stiff-upper-lip manners and unbridled passion.

Plus:

In the romantic comedy Book Of Love (Amazon Prime 2/4), sparks fly between a writer (Sam Claflin) and the Spanish translator (Verónica Echegui) who reworks his failed novel into a tadry success. Mel Gibson really stretches himself to play a drunk, eccentric actor under investigation in Last Looks (select theaters, digital platforms, and VOD 2/4). Halloween remake star Scout Taylor-Compton trades a masked killer for the murderous cult of The Long Night (select theater and digital platforms 2/4). The psychological thriller Here Before (select theaters 2/11; VOD 2/15) casts Andrea Riseborough as a grieving mother convinced the neighbors’ kid is the reincarnation of her own. Cannes prizewinner A Night Of Knowing Nothing (select theaters 2/11) mixes fiction and nonfiction to tell a love story against the background of Indian university life. Playground (select theaters 2/11) is a drama of schoolyard bullying told from a grade-school perspective. Indemnity (select theaters and VOD 2/11) is the latest urgent import from South Africa’s Cape Town action industry. Fasting takes on nightmarish new dimensions in the mother-daughter psychodrama A Banquet (select theaters, digital platforms, and VOD 2/18). Acclaimed cult comedy Strawberry Mansion (select theaters 2/18; VOD 2/25) envisions a future where our dreams are hijacked by advertisers. Sharlto Copley stars as The Unabomber in Ted K (select theaters and VOD 2/18). And without a trailer or even a poster, we cannot in good conscience report with any certainty that delayed supernatural horror movie The Devil’s Light (theaters? everywhere? 2/25?) will actually open when they’re saying it will.