Hello, and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup – taking you through the week’s biggest new cinema releases and why you should be excited for them. This week: a man punches bad guys, some different bad guys punch a different man, and a woman sits in a garden. Are you excited yet?
Usual disclaimer: unless otherwise stated, I haven’t seen these movies yet so all of my opinions are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.
A Working Man
In A Working Man, Jason Statham plays a former counter-terrorist agent, who left his profession behind to be with his family and work in construction. But the disappearance of a local girl drags him back into the dangerous world he left behind. Can he beat the bad guys and track down the missing girl?
Of course he can, it’s a Jason Statham film and he’s Jason Statham. At this point, if you don’t know what to expect from the moment you see the Stath’s chiselled jaw on the poster, you probably need to watch more movies. He will be punching, kicking, shooting and headbutting his way through legions of terrorists and kidnappers like a one-man army, pausing only for the occasional sarky snarky quip.
Director David Ayer’s back catalogue is a mixed bag – there is greatness there (End of Watch, Fury), but there is also the likes of Suicide Squad (the bad one) and his last team-up with Statham, the Beekeeper. The early reviews haven’t been great and would suggest that this falls at the lower end of the spectrum. But even if it won’t win any Oscars, it’s a Jason Statham film. Sometimes that’s exactly what you’re in the mood for, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
- A Working Man on IMDB
- A Working Man on Rotten Tomatoes
Novocaine
Jason Statham may be the seasoned expert in laying out bad guys with deathly precision, but sometimes all a hero needs is a bit of determination and a high tolerance for pain. Novocaine follows Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid), who was born with a genetic defect that means he is unable to feel pain. He falls for Amber Midthunder’s bank clerk, but when she is kidnapped by bad guys he decides to take matters into his own hands to win her back.
Amber Midthunder was incredible in Prey, and it’s good to have her back on our screens even if it looks like her character will be sidelined for a lot of the movie. Jack Quaid was last seen playing a toxic and deeply unpleasant boyfriend in Companion, but he’s best known as Hughie in Amazon’s The Boys, where he plays a normal guy in a world of superheroes. Of the two, his character in Novocaine hews a lot closer to Hughie – he doesn’t have superpowers per se, but his heart is in the right place and he uses what he does have to fight people a lot more dangerous than himself. In that sense this also shares a lot of DNA with Kick-Ass – another action comedy based on a graphic novel about a non-powered person using his high pain threshold to fight crime.
But while Kick-Ass derived a lot of its humour from sending up the usual superhero tropes, Nate Caine isn’t out to play a superhero. The comedy here instead derives from the cartoonish levels of damage he is able to take. He’s not so much Batman as Wile E. Coyote. Some highlights from the trailer include the ridiculous spiked metal booby trap embedding itself in his back, causing more confusion than harm, and his casually sarcastic reaction to being tortured.
With this much invulnerability it almost feels like there are no stakes here, but, as his friend Roscoe (Jacob Batalon) points out, just because he can’t be hurt doesn’t mean he can’t die. The more he gets in over his head, the more the oil burns, explosions and broken glass are going to take their toll. I suspect that without the cartoony stuff, this could have been made as a gritty and difficult watch. Fortunately, they have gone down the comedy route and I think the result looks like a lot of fun.
- Novocaine on IMDB
- Novocaine on Rotten Tomatoes
The Woman in the Yard
In The Woman in the Yard, Danielle Deadwyler plays a young mother who is seriously injured in a car accident that takes the life of her husband, leaving her to raise their two children alone in a secluded farmhouse. One day, a mysterious woman draped in black appears in a chair in their garden and starts offering chilling messages as she gradually comes closer to the house. It soon becomes apparent that her intentions are evil, and the family must do what they can to escape her clutches.
I’ve seen very little about this one beyond the trailer, but it’s produced by Blumhouse who have made some great indie horrors in the past. I get the impression that, like The Babadook or Hereditary, the scares here are meant to act more as a metaphor than nightmare fuel (given the Woman’s funereal shroud and the family’s backstory, I’d guess it’s all about dealing with grief). When it’s done well that kind of horror can be really effective. I’m intrigued to see how frightening they are able to make a solitary woman sat in a chair in broad daylight, but from what they show in the trailer it would certainly give me the heebie-jeebies if she popped up in my garden.
If you’re a horror fan, or you just want something a bit more cerebral than “man punches bad guys for two hours”, this is the film for you this week.
- The Woman in the Yard on IMDB
- The Woman in the Yard on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
…take a hit of Novocaine.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Flow – Sweet, captivating, magical, and unlike anything else you’ve seen, Flow is every bit as good as its recent Oscar win would suggest. The animal characters are fully fleshed out despite not having a word of actual dialogue, each with their own personalities and priorities that make their interactions engaging and believable. The lack of exposition leaves plenty of mystery, but that just adds to the experience. What happened to the humans? Why is the world flooding? What is the significance of the colossal temple-like pillars rising on the horizon? Where did the benevolent whale-like creature come from? Where did the deer go? Flow leaves all of this open to interpretation in a way that has you thinking about it long after the credits roll (and stick around to the end for a nice parting shot that’s oddly similar to the end credits of Avatar 2). The music and animation are beautiful and the cat protagonist is adorable. I cannot recommend this highly enough – see it on the big screen while you can.
- Ne Zha 2
- Black Bag
Trailer of the week
I’m copping out slightly because this isn’t even really a trailer so much as a casting announcement, but as casting announcements go it’s a pretty exciting one. Over the course of the day yesterday, Marvel streamed a video on Youtube gradually revealing the actors (and by extension the superheroes) lined up to star in Avengers: Doomsday – the first big Marvel team-up since Endgame all the way back in 2019. And now you can watch it at a more manageable speed, set to some very exciting music.
A lot of the names are to be expected – we’ve just seen Anthony Mackie’s Captain America promise to reform the Avengers in Brave New World, and other veterans of the Infinity War such as Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man and Letitia Wright’s Shuri (who took over the mantle of Black Panther in 2022’s Wakanda Forever following the death of Chadwick Boseman) are also present and correct. Their respective side characters are also joining them, including Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier, Danny Ramirez’s Falcon and Winston Duke’s M’Baku. Then we get some of the new characters introduced to the MCU in Phases 4 and 5, such as Tenoch Huerta Mejia’s Namor and Simu Liu’s Shang Chi, as well as the stars of the upcoming Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four movies. But the most exciting prospect here is the official confirmation that the X-Men, with their original actors from the early 2000s, are finally coming to the MCU – Patrick Stewart (Professor X), Ian McKellen (Magneto), James Marsden (Cyclops), Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler), Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), Kelsey Grammer (Beast), and even Channing Tatum’s Gambit reprises his cameo from Deadpool & Wolverine. Finally, to cap it all off, Robert Downey Jr makes a personal appearance heralding his return to the MCU as Doctor Doom.
Some of the names on this list, and not on the list, give some hints as to what we can expect. We know that the Fantastic Four and X Men currently reside in alternate universes to the main MCU timeline, so there will likely be some multiversal shenanigans to bring them into the fold. But that won’t involve Doctor Strange or Deadpool, whose respective movies since Endgame had them jumping between universes like they were rooms in a house. More likely it will be Loki, who was last seen in his Disney+ series becoming the nexus of all the different timelines, who brings these heroes together. There are no Guardians of the Galaxy and no Captain Marvel, so this will likely be more Earthbound than Infinity War and Endgame were, and none of the teased Young Avengers (Ms Marvel, Kate Bishop, America Chavez, Ironheart, etc). There’s also no mention of Tom Holland, so presumably Spider-Man is still on his self-imposed sabbatical (even though a fourth Holland Spider-Man film is slated for release a few months before Doomsday).
That’s a lot of speculation and excitement for a 90-second video of a bunch of chairs! We’ll find out what happens when Avengers: Doomsday is released on 1 May 2026.
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