Re-teaming together in short order after the success of 2024's The Beekeeper, director David Ayer and star Jason Statham return just one year later with A Working Man (2025)... if the former oozed an unbeatable action hero more along the lines of a John Wick, this newer effort clearly takes some inspiration from the Taken model of hustle and bustle. Actually taking its genesis from a 2014 Chuck Dixon novel entitled “Levon’s Trade”, it was Sylvester Stallone who snapped up its rights... originally adapting it for television through his Balboa Productions. Long story short, it was adjusted to become a movie, Stallone stepped away from starring in it (due to age constraints and a busy schedule with his series Tulsa King), with Ayer soon joining the production, making some additions to the script before directing.
Re-teaming together in short order after the success of 2024's The Beekeeper, director David Ayer and star Jason Statham return just one year later with A Working Man (2025)... if the former oozed an unbeatable action hero more along the lines of a John Wick, this newer effort clearly takes some inspiration from the Taken model of hustle and bustle. Actually taking its genesis from a 2014 Chuck Dixon novel entitled “Levon’s Trade”, it was Sylvester Stallone who snapped up its rights... originally adapting it for television through his Balboa Productions. Long story short, it was adjusted to become a movie, Stallone stepped away from starring in it (due to age constraints and a busy schedule with his series Tulsa King), with Ayer soon joining the production, making some additions to the script before directing.
Some might know that icon Mario Bava is often considered to be the first filmmaker to make a giallo with 1963's The Girl Who Knew Too Much... though unless you’re a big fan of the genre, many will probably not know that his son, Lamberto Bava, continued on with the gialli tradition well past its heyday in the early 1970s – releasing a number of horror tinged mystery thrillers, including today’s Delirium (1987)... sometimes also known as The Photo of Gioia. Welcome to what very well could be the Italian rival of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, fluffily called Pussycat – a high end nudie magazine that brings some class (and a bit of kitsch) to artistic nude photography. Run by former supermodel Gloria (Serena Grandi), she inherited the business when her husband tragically died.
Following in the recent action craze launched by John Wick, fusing it with The World is Not Enough Bond villain’s inability to feel pain, adding in some of the sadism found in Home Alone and its sequel, and throwing in some rough and tumble comedy to boot, Novocaine (2025), co-directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, holds no punches, or perhaps packs quite the punch if you’d prefer. Not for the weak of heart... an early warning to the wise – if you don’t like R rated violence then this movie is likely not for you, as it does not hold back in any which way. Though it does contain action, comedy, and romance, don’t let those last two genres suggest that this is a light date night foray for couples.
In 2025, dare I say that it’s nice to be highlighting a film made for mature audiences. Avoiding the pratfalls of sequels, remakes, comic book movies, and overly costly bombast, Black Bag, written by David Koepp (Mission: Impossible) and directed by Steven Soderbergh (Traffic), is most easily described as an old school spycraft feature. Opening with an extended tracking shot of spy George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) making his way through a happening nightclub in London, his contact soon informs him that there is a rat leaking some sort of tech software named Severus from within the agency. If there is one thing Woodhouse despises, it’s a liar, so he invites all of the suspects to a dinner party to try to get to the bottom of it.
There is no denying that gialli can be a bit out there. These Italian twisty murder mysteries can often combine abstract writing, new age technologies of the 1960s and 70s, and some sex and drugs to make for a trippy experience... but you ain’t seen nothing yet. The most surrealist giallo of them all might just be 1968's Death Laid an Egg, directed by Giulio Questi. Welcome to the most posh chicken farm you’ll ever see. With a scientist (Biagio Pelligra) working nearly around the clock to genetically produce a new form of poultry that will almost instantly fatten with limited bone structure... all while countless chickens are being prepared for market by some new fangled automated technology, wife Anna (Gina Lollobrigida) and her secretary cousin Gabrielle (Ewa Aulin) lounge around their resort-like swimming pool as the former’s hubby, Marco (Jean-Louis Trintignant), gets his kinky rocks off with prostitutes at a hotel as he falls deeper and deeper into a fugue state.
Park Chan-wook has never hidden the fact that he is a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock – frequently highlighting Vertigo as the movie that got him into film making. Like many before him, perhaps most notably Brian De Palma, he has found clever ways to integrate influences from The Master of Suspense within his own work, the easiest comparison being Stoker... a loose remake of Shadow of a Doubt. But his most recent feature, Decision to Leave (2022), which he co-writes and directs, might even be more so – though crafted so subtly that you really need to know your Hitchcockian filmography to see where he is pulling from. Originally getting the idea from the song “Mist” by Jung Hoon Hee and Song Chang-sik, which fuses quite nicely with the above quotation from Confucius, this mystery crime thriller flits between the always mist filled skies of seaside Ipo and the mountainous city of Busan. Though insomniac detective Jang Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) resides in the former with his wife Jeong-ahn (Lee Jung-hyun), he lives six days a week in the latter – a place that he has moved to for his job.