Here’s what to add to your Showmax watchlist this February. Happy viewing!
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING | Stream from 12 February
Rotten Tomatoes‘ Best Action & Adventure Movie of 2023, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning returns four-time Oscar nominee Tom Cruise to his death-defying role as Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt.
His mission, should he choose to accept it, may be his most dangerous yet – to track down a terrifying, all-powerful weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, a deadly race around the globe begins, and Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than his mission – not even the lives of those he cares about most.
Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie (Top Gun: Maverick, The Usual Suspects) is once again at the helm of an all-star cast that includes Emmy nominee Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), BAFTA nominee Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead), Critics Choice nominee Rebecca Ferguson (Silo, Dune), Oscar nominee Vanessa Kirby (Napoleon, The Crown) and Golden Globe nominee Hayley Atwell (aka Marvel’s Agent Peggy Carter).
The eighth-biggest box office hit of 2023, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning is up for Action Movie of the Year at this year’s People’s Choice Awards, with Cruise nominated for both Male Movie Star of the Year and Action Movie Star of the Year. It’s also up Oscars for both its Visual Effects and Sound.
As Empire Magazine says, “27 (!) years and seven films in, this saga — like its star — looks set to run and run, barely stopping for breath… An endlessly thrilling, continuously propulsive beast, tense from the start: even the quieter, conversational scenes have you on edge. Mission, once again, accomplished.”
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE | Stream from 18 February
Up for Best Animated Feature at this year’s Oscar Awards, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse reunites Brooklyn’s friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, Miles Morales, with Gwen Stacy and catapults him across the multiverse, where he encounters a team of Spider-People charged with protecting its very existence. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles has to redefine what it means to be a hero if he’s to save the people he loves most.
The second chapter of the Oscar-winning animated Spider-Verse saga, Across the Spider-Verse was the sixth-biggest blockbuster of 2023, and won Best Animated Feature at the 2024 Critics Choice Awards. It’s #30 on IMDb’s Top Rated Movies of All Time, with an 8.6/10 IMDb score, and a 95% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where it won the Golden Tomato for the Best Animation Movie of last year.
London Evening Standard calls it “a mind-breaking work of staggering genius,” and Empire Magazine says, “Across The Spider-Verse cranks every dial to 11… Visually astonishing, emotionally powerful, narratively propulsive — it’s another masterpiece.”
Miles is once again voiced by Critics Choice nominee Shameik Moore (Corey “Raekwon” Woods in Wu-Tang: An American Saga), with Oscar nominee Hailee Steinfeld (Hawkeye’s Kate Bishop) as Gwen Stacy. The insane voice cast also boasts the likes of Emmy nominees Issa Rae and Oscar Isaac, Critics Choice nominee Jake Johnson, Oscar nominee Brian Tyree Henry, and Oscar winners Mahershala Ali and Daniel Kaluuya, who voices the coolest Spider-Man ever, Hobie Brown (aka Spider-Punk).
NO HARD FEELINGS | Stream from 5 February
A girl’s gotta 𝘥𝘰 what a girl’s gotta 𝘥𝘰.
Jennifer Lawrence was nominated for Golden Globe and People’s Choice Awards as Maddie, who thinks she’s found the answer to her financial troubles when she discovers an intriguing job listing: wealthy helicopter parents looking for someone to “date” their introverted 19-year-old son, Percy, and bring him out of his shell before he leaves for college. But awkward Percy proves to be more of a challenge than she expected, and time is running out. She has one summer to make him a man or lose it all.
Nominated as Comedy Movie of the Year at the 2024 People’s Choice and Critics Choice Awards, No Hard Feelings was a #1 box office hit in North America.
As San Francisco Chronicle puts it, “Basically, No Hard Feelings is everything you like about Jennifer Lawrence, brought together in one movie and then magnified: her down-to-earth irreverence, her comic timing, her idiosyncratic naturalness and her unexpected sensitivity.”
GRAN TURISMO | Stream from 12 February
From gamer to racer…
Gran Turismo is based on the unbelievable true story of a team of unlikely underdogs – a struggling working-class gamer (Archie Madekwe from Saltburn and Midsommar), a failed former racecar driver (Emmy nominee David Harbour from Stranger Things), and an idealistic motorsport executive (multi-award winner Orlando Bloom from Lord of the Rings). Together, they risk it all to take on the most elite sport in the world.
As Jann Mardenborough, Madekwe was nominated for the 2024 Black Reel Award for Breakthrough Performance. Also look out for Geri ‘Ginger Spice’ Halliwell Horner and Benin’s two-time Oscar nominee Djimon Hounsou (Guardians of the Galaxy).
Directed by South African-Canadian Oscar nominee Neill Blomkamp (District 9), Gran Turismo was a #1 box office hit in North America. Salon calls it “a nail-biting pleasure… arguably the most exhilarating rush of the summer.”
BABYLON | Stream from 29 February
The bigger the dream, the greater the fight.
From Oscar winner Damien Chazelle (La La Land), Babylon is a tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, which traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood in the 1920s.
Barbie star Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, and Diego Calva were all nominated for Golden Globes for their lead roles, opposite the likes of Emmy winner Jean Smart (Hacks), Emmy nominee Jovan Adepo (Watchmen), and multi-award winner Olivia Wilde (Don’t Worry Darling).
Babylon was nominated for nine Critics Choice Awards, including Best Picture, as well as three Oscars and three BAFTAs, winning 45 international awards. The Wall Street Journal calls the film “a loving warts-and-all portrait of late-1920s Hollywood.”
THE WHALE | Stream from 1 February
Brendan Fraser’s transformative Oscar-winning performance lights up The Whale, the story of a reclusive English teacher living with severe obesity who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter.
“The Brenaissance is here,” says BBC.com. Time Out says, “Brendan Fraser gives the performance of a lifetime,” and Variety calls it “a performance for the ages.”
From Oscar-nominated director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream), The Whale also won the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, with Hong Chau (The Menu, Asteroid City) nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
As Associated Press puts it, “This is a film that stays with you and changes you.”
PRAISE THIS | Stream from 22 February
Praise This centres on Sam (five-time Grammy nominee Chloe Bailey from Grown-ish), a talented aspiring singer who is forced to join her cousin’s struggling, underdog praise team in the lead-up to the national championships.
From the producers of Girls Trip and They Cloned Tyrone, Praise This was up for three 2024 Black Reel awards, including Outstanding TV Movie and Outstanding Musical Score, and was nominated for Best Song – Onscreen Performance at last year’s Hollywood Music In Media Awards (for Chloe Bailey, Loren Lott and Grammy-nominated gospel singer Jekalyn Carr).
Black Reel nominee Tina Gordon (Little, What Men Want) directs and co-writes.
CALL JANE | Stream from 29 February
Inspired by true events, Call Jane is set in late-1960s Chicago, where a married woman (three-time Emmy nominee Elizabeth Banks from The Hunger Games) faces a life-threatening pregnancy complication and an all-male medical establishment unwilling to approve an abortion to save her life.
Her journey for a solution leads her to Virginia (three-time Oscar nominee Sigourney Weaver from Alien and Avatar: The Way of Water), an independent visionary fiercely committed to women’s health, and Gwen (Nigerian-born BAFTA winner Wunmi Mosaku from Loki, We Own this City, and Lovecraft Country), an activist who dreams of a day when all women will have access to abortion, regardless of their ability to pay. Joy is so inspired by their work, she decides to join forces with them, putting every aspect of her life on the line.
Directed by Oscar, Emmy and BAFTA nominee Phyllis Nagy (Carol), Call Jane has an 82% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with IndieWire praising “a career-best performance by Elizabeth Banks,” and New York Times saying, “This is a story that needs to be told, again and again.”
Second on my list of addictions is Movies.. the only thing I could possibly love more is my Dearest Waakye lol. Nothing else does a better job of reminding me that ANYTHING is possible with the right amount of effort. I have great eye for details and flaws in scripts. Shallow scripts bore me. I am an avid reader.
Your everyday Mr Nice guy. Always the last to speak in a room full of smart people. Half Human, half Martian but full MOVIE FREAK.
