The movies you should see this month

The LEGO Movie

You don’t really have an excuse to miss out on phenomenal cinema this month as the PHI Centre has hopped on board with the TIFF: Canada Top Ten Film Festival to screen some of the best Canadian flicks of 2013 for free. Among the titles are Tom à la ferme, Gabrielle, Rhymes for Young Ghouls, When Jews Were Funny, The F Word, Sarah préfère la course, Vic+Flo ont vu un ours, Asphalt Watches and more. Feb. 5–13, check here for showtimes.

Fear not, mainstream cinema this month is more than a long list of rom-coms — there’s much to look forward to. An ordinary LEGO minifigure is accidentally chosen to save the world from a villain who’s gluing the universe together in The LEGO Movie (Feb. 7). In George Clooney’s The Monuments Men, a small group of soldiers are tasked with rescuing art and architecture during WWII. The stellar cast includes Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman and Cate Blanchett (Feb. 7). Mark Waters (Mean Girls) brings Richelle Mead’s best-selling novel Vampire Academy to life on Feb. 7, keeping the teen-vampire-obsessed happy.

On Feb. 12, the 1987 cyborg cop classic Robocop gets an unnecessary remake. Then it’s Valentine’s Day, so here come those rom-coms: Hot Tub Time Machine director Steve Pink delivers About Last Night, wherein two new couples navigate their relationships outside of the bedroom; Endless Love, a modern-day star-crossed lovers scenario; and Winter’s Tale,  the story of a reincarnated man’s search for his lover, starring Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly and Jessica Brown Findlay.

In 3 Days to Kill, a dying secret service agent (Kevin Costner) is offered a drug that’ll buy him more time to find his estranged daughter (Hailee Steinfeld), in exchange for a favour (Feb. 21). In action-romance Pompeii, Kit Harington (aka Jon Snow from Game of Thrones) plays a man trying to save his lover (Emily Browning) amid his city’s epic self-destruction (Feb. 21).

Come Feb. 28, check out animation master Hayao Miyazaki’s latest, Oscar-nominated film The Wind Rises, about the life of WWII fighter plane designer Jiro Horikoshi. A teen-made time machine causes all kinds of trouble in sci-fi thriller Welcome to Yesterday, aka Almanac (Feb. 28), produced by Michael Bay — enough said. Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore star in Jaume Collet-Serra’s (Orphan) thriller Non-Stop, about an air marshall trying to save passengers on a plane that he’s being accused of hijacking. And if you’re a Christian gettin’ amped up for Easter and Passion of the Christ is too passé, see another adaptation of the Jesus (Christ) story, Son of God (Feb. 28).

At Cinéma du Parc you can check out the Oscar-nominated documentary The Missing Picture, which uses clay figures, archival footage and narration to recreate the atrocities of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, and local director Pat Kiely’s rom-com Three Night Stand (read our interview with Kiely here) (Feb. 7). On Feb. 14 you can check out a recounting of Jack Kerouac’s adventures in a cabin in Big Sur. And on March 2, Parc offers a free live screening of the Oscars. ■