Kenneth Branagh's long-awairteed return as Poirot and a movie adaptation of hit video game Uncharted are among the best new movies coming to cinemas in February 2022...
Kenneth Branagh's long-awairteed return as Poirot and a movie adaptation of hit video game Uncharted are among the best new movies coming to cinemas in February 2022...
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Released February 4
To audiences outside the US, televangelism may seem like some odd and exotic niche to be found only in the higher numbers of your satellite or cable provider’s channel list, but a new film from director Michael Showalter offers an eye-opening look into this strange world via a portrait of one of its most flamboyant characters: Tammy Faye Bakker.
Jessica Chastain stars in this extraordinary tale, which includes everything from her unlikely rise to stardom, through the arrest of her husband Steve Bakker on charges of fraud and rape, to her subsequent re-emergence as an AIDS campaigner and an advocate for LGBT rights. Starring alongside Chastain are Andrew Garfield, Cherry Jones and Midland frontman Mark Wystrach. If you've ever wondered just how strange and murky the world of televangelism really is, this'll be a fun way to find out when it arrives in cinemas on February 4.
Death on the Nile
Released February 11
Kenneth Brannagh directs and stars in his second feature-length Agatha Christie adaptation, following 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express, with a reprisal of his role as moustachioed Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile, which finally makes its long-awaited arrival in cinemas on February 11.
Starring alongside him are Annette Bening, Gal Gadot, Tom Bateman, Russell Brand and Susannah Fielding. Originally slated for release in 2019, this whodunit has been a long time coming, but if Murder on the Orient Express was anything to go by it’ll be worth the wait.
Uncharted
Released February 11
From Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Bros. to Assassin’s Creed and Tomb Raider, video game to movie adaptations have, historically, been a bit of a mixed bag. Quite often, as with films such as Angry Birds, that’s simply because the source material isn’t particularly well suited to being stretched out over a two-hour narrative, but a game like Uncharted offers a solid starting point for cinematic adaptation and an upcoming film based on the adventures of its protagonist, Nathan Drake, looks very encouraging.
Due to arrive in UK cinemas on February 11, Uncharted stars Tom Holland as the young Drake as he is inducted into the ways of treasure hunting by the veteran Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) as the pair set off to find a fortune left behind by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Sofia Ali and Antonio Banderas also star in the new film, with Zombieland and Venom director Ruben Fleischer calling the shots.
The Duke
Released February 25
Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent star in this enjoyable true-crime tale, which revolves around the 1961 theft of a priceless painting (Goya’s The Duke of Wellington), a story which made headlines for a second time several years later when the painting was returned by the man responsible for the theft – not, as police had expected, an international art thief or organised crime boss, but a retired, disabled bus driver named Kempton Bunton.
Directed by the late Roger Michell, the film reveals Bunton’s attempts to persuade the authorities to part with a £140,000 donation to charity in exchange for the painting’s return, as well as his efforts to keep a priceless masterpiece concealed from his wife in their modest, terraced home. Delayed by several months due to the COVID pandemic, The Duke is finally set to arrive in cinemas on February 25.
Moonfall
Released February 3
Roland Emmerich has made a name for himself as Hollywood’s premier ‘disaster movie’ merchant and, over the years, we’ve seen the human race’s very existence threatened by aliens (Stargate), giant lizards (Godzilla), terrorists (White House Down), aliens again (Independence Day) and a variety of extreme weather events (The Day After Tomorrow, 2012). Now Emmerich is back with his latest big screen epic, and this time there’s a new, fearsome threat which spells doom for the human race: the Moon.
You would hope, in the extremely unlikely event that the Moon just fell out of the sky, that the team of people assigned to deal with the situation might consist of more than a pair of astronauts and a conspiracy theorist, but in Moonfall that’s exactly who is leading the quest for survival. Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, Michael Peña, Donald Sutherland and Kelly Yu all star in Emmerich’s latest film, which is sure to fill cinemas when it arrives on February 3.
