Showmax has some great movies to checkout this month and having watched some of them ourselves we can more than back this up. We won’t mess about too long on this one and just go straight to the list:
MISBEHAVIOUR | Comedy drama
Two-time Oscar nominee Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Imitation Game) stars in Misbehaviour, which is based on the true story of the women who disrupted and subverted the 1970 Miss World pageant.
Directed by BAFTA winner Philippa Lowthorpe (Call the Midwife), Misbehaviour is a feelgood flick with 85% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes and costume and makeup awards from the 2021 British Independent Film Awards, not to mention a 2020 Women’s Image Network Awards nomination for Outstanding Feature Film. As Guardian says, you’ll find “a very British sort of wackiness to this bizarre and farcical true story from the annals of pop culture, told here with charm and fun.”
WILD ROSE | Musical drama
Jessie Buckley (Chernobyl, Fargo, I’m Thinking Of Ending Things) shines in Wild Rose as Rose-Lynn, a fresh-out-of-jail mother-of-two from Glasgow who dreams of becoming a Nashville country music star. The role earned Buckley a 2020 BAFTA nomination for Best Leading Actress. Wild Rose has won 18 awards internationally, including a Critics Choice Award for Best Song and a British Independent Film Award for Best Music.
Directed by BAFTA nominee Tom Harper (Peaky Blinders), Wild Rose has a 92% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with The Hollywood Reporter hailing it as “terrific… wonderful… a break-out, toe-tapping hit.”
VFW | Grindhouse
Action, crime and horror come together in VFW, a grindhouse movie that sees a group of war veterans put their lives on the line to defend a young woman taking shelter in their local VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) bar when a deranged drug dealer and his relentless army of drug-addled punks come for their stash.
VFW has an 81% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics consensus praises “VFW’s solid cast, deft direction, and surprisingly weighty subtext.” Consequence of Sound calls it “ultra stylish, pure cinema,” while AV Club says it’s “an 80s exploitation throwback that’s outrageous in all the right ways.”
21 BRIDGES | Action thriller
21 Bridges is the third last movie from the late Chadwick Boseman, aka Black Panther, who won the 2021 Golden Globe for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which also earned him an Oscar nomination. In 21 Bridges, Boseman was up for a 2020 Image Award as Andre Davis, an NYPD detective who shuts down the island of Manhattan to find two suspected cop killers.
Produced by the Russo brothers (Avengers: Endgame) and directed by BAFTA nominee Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones, Luther), 21 Bridges alsoscooped a nomination for Hardest Hit at the 2020 World Stunt Awards.
OFFICIAL SECRETS | Biographical drama
In Official Secrets, Oscar-winning South African Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Eye in the Sky) directs two-time Oscar nominee Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean) as whistle-blower Katharine Gun, who exposed illegal spying operations by the US and British intelligence services ahead of the Iraq War.
Official Secrets holds an 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and earned widespread praise for both Knightley’s understated performance and Hood’s co-writing and direction. As Financial Times says, “Hood knows how to crank the tension… a certain fury ticks under the story,” while New York Magazine adds, “Bloody hell, the Brits do low-key, paranoid procedural dramas like Official Secrets well, with a pervading chill and no flash. The crispness cuts like a knife.”
ANGEL HAS FALLEN | Action thriller
The #1 box office hit Angel Has Fallen – the third instalment in the Fallen film series – stars People’s Choice nominee Gerard Butler (300, Olympus Has Fallen) as Secret Service agent Mike Banning, who’s framed for a drone attack on the President of the United States (Oscar winner Morgan Freeman).
This action-packed crowd pleaser was nominated for a 2020 World Stunt Award, with the Observer calling it “a doom-invoking, cathartic and strangely satisfying head-trip” and the San Francisco Chronicle reminding us that Butler is “so good at doing this one thing that it has become his brand. […] That might be a blessing or a curse, but if it’s a curse, there are worse curses.”
As you probably have guessed there’s plenty more of where that came from, to view the full list, check here.
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