[EXPRESSO] A Working Man (2025) | Baba Yogurt

I know what you’re thinking, what everyone was thinking after seeing the trailer: why isn’t this The Beekeeper 2?! I mean, i’m sure there’s a sequel on the way for that one, but this plain isn’t, it’s just another Jason Staham movie where he’s some ex-soldier or super assassin that has retired but he’s pulled back into his older life of violence due to some criminals hurting someone close to him, etc.

This time around he’s a construction worker and they kidnap the daughter of the family that owns and operates the construction company he works for, so he swears to get her back… which would be fine but he also has his own biological daughter to look after, as his wife is dead and the grandpa believes Jason Staham (again, not bothering to remember his character’s name, nobody will) isn’t a good parent. His quest brings him to find out a human trafficking ring, piss off the russian mafia, and accidentally become a John Wick-esque figure to them….

Honestly it feels like they mashed two scripts together, now only due to the plot feeling like it should be less convoluted (it’s not complicated) as the new characters that keep showing up just increasingly feel like they should be in a completely different Jason Staham movie, even more as they keep getting more cartoonish, like the foppish pervert that “bought” the girl just missing a Dracula cape, or the psycho super assassins under the big russian mafia honcho giving off strong vibes of videogame minibosses.

It’s just kinda weird, untentionally funny, and yes, makes the whole thing longer than it needs to.

It’s not awful or the worse, but let’s be honest, it’s just a stopgag release until The Beekeeper 2 or Fast And Furious X Part 2 come out.

[EXPRESSO] Violent Night (2022) | Santa Hard

Tommy Wirkola is back after last year’s The Trip (available on Netflix) to the snow tinted realm of horror…. but not quite.

This time around he cooked up a christmas black comedy that has been described as “Die Hard but with Santa Claus instead of John McClain”… because it’s pretty much that, set in a rich family’s villa where a group of terrorists (with the leader played by John Leguizamo) lies in wait to get their hands on a big chunk of million money.

It just happens that by accident the real, factual Santa Claus finds himself in that very house when shit goes down, and decides to fight them to save the family, especially as the younger child earnestly believes in him, by way of some magic, a warhammer and a lot of gruesome violence.

Yeah, it isn’t strictly a horror movie, it’s definitely heavy on action and comedy as you would expect from this deliberate pastiche of Die Hard and christmas movie, but again, it’s a Tommy Wirkola film, so it doesn’t really matter that this isn’t a new installment of Dead Snow or a christmas slasher, because we also get to see Santa pile up a more than respectable bodycount, using everything from ornaments to shovel to woodchippers and even a warhammer (tied to his backstory/lore here)

Heck, for good measure there is a straight up Home Alone “trap scene” and even that provides a lot of gore effects played for laughs that will still make you go “OW”.

There’s also the “Bad Santa” angle to the main character, but not quite, since he IS real here, and otherwise the surprisingly decent emotional moments would lose any kind of weight.

Violent Night it’s a pastiche of familiar elements indeed, but it’s a bloody fun holiday romp, too.

[EXPRESSO] Black Widow (2021) | Velvet Assassins, Inc.

Marvel movies are back into theathers, a fact of life made accidentally more intriguing after the pandemic stopped the torrent of Marvel theatherical releases, and saturation gives way to acceptance and wishing to return to the “pre-Covid 19” habits.

At the very least this particular movie had already plenty of delays and issues behind the scenes before, but the Black Widow “origins” movie is here.

Not exactly my favourite of the Avengers, i will say this upfront, but still, easily more intriguing that anything they could come up with Hawkeye (at least judging what the Marvel movies did with him), i’d say. Like the previous movie hinted at, she had a troubled upbringing, was a KGB, and here we see her momentarily leave the Avengers team (in a timespan between Civil War and Infinity War) to meet up with her old “family”, leading her to take on the villain Taskmaster and confront a figure from her past youth as a selected trainee for the “Black Widow” program.

As Natasha Romanoff is simply human, her origin story uses this to give the movie a more “realistical” feel (though don’t worry, there’s the usual Marvel bombast), and aside from some of the inevitable mentions of the other Avengers, the movie does want to stand on its own and distinguish itself by tackling darker (and a bit more “grounded”) themes than usual, as this action thriller about child soldiers raised -at all cost – to be the most efficient assassins and spies, the new characters are good, there are some fun moments (alongside the usual, obligatory Marvel self-jab).

The cast is pretty dang good too (it has Florence Pugh), and while not sensational, it’s quite entertaining and willing to not really rely on other Marvel movies to tell its own story. Fun one.