Any time Valentine’s Day falls on a weekend, it’s a great thing for movie lovers, as cinema chains ramp up their date night offerings. This week we have five new feature debuts in South Africa, in addition to the more niche release of Bollywood action thriller (with a dash of forbidden romance) O’ Romeo.
The biggie release of the weekend is undoubtedly “Wuthering Heights.” Those quotation marks are important because this is NOT a straightforward period adaptation of Emily Bronte’s romantic tragedy. Filmmaker Emerald Fennell has put the emphasis on style and passion, backed up by the unusual choice of a Charli XCX soundtrack. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are star-crossed lovers Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, caught in an intense ( re. toxic) relationship against the backdrop of the Yorkshire moors.
If you enjoy getting cuddly over horror films, your top pick for the week should be the Final Destination-esque Whistle. A group of high schoolers (including Logan’s Dafne Keen and Yellowjackets’ Sophie Nélisse) come across an ancient Aztec death whistle. Blowing it summons their future deaths to hunt them down. As the body count increases, they must investigate the artifact’s history to hopefully halt the sequence of events they’ve set in motion. Also with Game of Thrones’ Michelle Fairley, and Nick Frost.
Ensemble crime thriller fans are likely to be scheduling a date with Crime 101, which has been scoring strong reviews. A Los Angeles detective (Mark Ruffalo) pursues an elusive jewel thief (Chris Hemsworth), who has teamed up with a mistreated insurance broker (Halle Berry) for an ultra-high value heist. Crime 101 is directed by filmmaker Bart Layton, who has a background in crime documentaries, and you can expect this one to come to Prime Video eventually.
For those with a cynical attitude to love, spiky romantic comedy F Valentine’s Day (also known as F*ck Valentine’s Day) will keep you company in the coming days. With her birthday falling on 14 February, Gina (Beautiful Disaster’s Virginia Gardner) hates Valentine’s Day. So she goes out of her way to stop her boyfriend (Skylar Astin) proposing to her while on a Greek island holiday, recruiting fellow vacationers to realise her plan. In the process, she starts to question her relationship. Marisa Tomei plays Gina’s mom.
Finally, making sure everyone is covered this Valentine’s weekend, there’s animated movie Goat, from Sony Pictures Animation. Taking the form of an underdog sports tale, and definitely tapping in Zootopia’s popularity, the film centres on a goat named Will (Caleb McLaughlin), who gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot to live out his dream of playing roarball, a high-intensity, full-contact sport, at a professional level. Except he’s dismissed due to his size. Goat’s voice cast includes the likes of Gabrielle Union, Stephen Curry, Nicola Coughlan, Nick Kroll and David Harbour.