Category: Movies

Direct Beam Comms #115

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

The Punisher ***/****

There was realistically no way I wasn’t going to like the first season of the Netflix series The Punisher. I’ve been a fan of the character most of my life, have collected Punisher comics for forever now and have watched all of the Punisher movies to date. So even if this new Netflix The Punisher was just good, I’d probably still be gushing over it no matter what. So it feels good to be able to write that The Punisher on Netflix isn’t just good, it’s great and is my favorite Marvel Netflix series to date.

Jon Bernthal
Jon Bernthal

What I was surprised most with The Punisher was just how it deviated from where I thought the series was going to go from where the character ended up in the last season of Daredevil. It would make perfect sense if the first season of The Punisher would follow Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) hunting down the men who killed his family with later seasons having the character expand and doing something more. Except that’s not what happened. Here, in the first ten minutes of The Punisher Castle eliminates all these people in some very creative ways which pretty much ends that story. And instead of being a great revenger of crime he becomes a laborer on a construction site trying, but not quite ever being able, to put his life back together.

But since this series is called The Punisher and not Frank Castle of course we know that at some point he’s going to have to start battling crime and that comes in a very unique way here. In the show Castle meets David Lieberman (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) aka “Micro” an ex-CIA computer expert who faked his own death in order to keep his family safe. So, while Castle doesn’t have a family to go home to Lieberman does but can only watch them at a distance in order to keep them safe.

Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach

As the two character’s paths cross, Frank realizes that the death of his family might have some connections within the government and more specifically within a secretive special forces squad he was once a member of. And Lieberman realizes that if there’s any chance he’ll ever get to be with his family again it’ll probably be through helping Castle.

In the past I’ve lamented over the lack of blood in the Marvel movies. There, characters can be pummeled to pulp, thrown against buildings and be exposed to colossal explosions which leads to the injuries in the films like maybe a trickle of blood out of the corner of someone’s mouth. While I get that a) these are superheroes and b) they’re in what’s ostensively family movies, none-the-less this is something that’s bugged me over the years. So when something comes along like The Punisher where characters can be hurt and there is a level of blood and gore not seen in any Marvel movie to date, it’s something I notice and appreciate. I like that The Punisher is a show created for viewers who are looking for something a little more intense than PG–13.

That being said, I think maybe the gore was overly done here. Well, maybe that’s not right — I thought the level of gore was good, but maybe the level of recovery time for people like Frank Castle was a little short. In some episodes Frank’s so badly injured that he has punctured lungs and broken ribs yet is up and ready to fight in a few hours time which realistically would mean weeks or months of recovery. Even a character like Billy Russo (Ben Barnes) at one point is shot in the shoulder. Which, even assuming the bullet missed the bone would require a long recovery in order to gain mobility back, is ready to have a knife-fight mere hours later.

Amber Rose Revah and Michael Nathanson

But this is a small complaint about a show that I liked a whole lot.

What I find most interesting about The Punisher is that in a lot of regards the character of the Punisher is someone the government can, and in the series does, categorize as a domestic terrorist. The guy carries rocket launchers around New York city and isn’t afraid to use them, assaults federal agents and has gigantic gunfights so there is a bit of people wanting to bring the Punisher to justice if just so that it cuts down on the open-street firefights in The Punisher. What’s fascinating is that while in The Punisher it’s shown that the media and politicians go after him for being a dangerous criminal, since he’s trying to eliminate crime and demolish corruption he can be a nice little tool for them to use as a means to an end. They don’t mind turning a blind eye to the tactics of the Punisher from time to time if it means furthering their agenda.

Movies

The Movie Chain: #7: Dunkirk (2017)

Last week: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

When the movie Dunkirk was announced I honestly didn’t think it would make for a great movie. It’s the story of the British army having to evacuate from France after being routed by German forces in the early days of the second world war. So how do you make an interesting movie about one of the greatest defeats in military history and not make the movie feel defeatist? How writer/director Christopher Nolan did that was that rather than making a movie about defeat, instead Dunkirk is a movie about survival and is one of the most timely films in memory.

Told via several different perspectives during the evacuation, including that of a pilot (Tom Hardy from last week’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), an army private (Fionn Whitehead) and a boat captain (Mark Rylance), in Dunkirk the British Expeditionary Force is trapped on the beaches of France waiting for rescue via the British navy from the encroaching German army. Except that the navy doesn’t want to risk too many boats picking up the stranded men when they have to save the craft for the next battle that will surly come. Enter private British citizens with boats of their own who can cross the short channel and rescue a few men at a time. But will this happen in time to save all the soldiers on the beach while the British airforce dukes it out in the air against the Luftwaffe in planes that run closer and closer to running out of fuel with each fight?

If there’s a theme to Dunkirk it’s to never, ever give up. Since when things are at their worst you never know if help is right around the corner.

“We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”

Next week: You can run, but they’re gonna catch you.

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

No one can keep Black Panther down

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Do popular comic book characters matter anymore? Last year DC Entertainment released their long-awaited Justice League movie to tepid reviews and weak box office. The film featured three of the most well-known comic book characters in history including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, yet rather than running out and seeing Justice League fans of the genera went and mostly saw Thor: Ragnarok instead.

Thor might be a well-know character these days but just a few years ago I doubt anyone outside of comic collectors were aware of him.

This has been a theme for Marvel Studios — taking characters few outside of fandom knew of, like Thor, Doctor Strange and Ant Man to name a few, building interesting movies around them and creating substantial movie properties audiences want to see. The biggest of which is the Guardians of the Galaxy, a superhero team that was completely unknown outside of comics fandom prior to their debut 2014. Since then, Guardians of the Galaxy has become a billion dollar franchise with the likes of Starload, Gammora and Groot becoming well-known characters.

So I wonder, does it really matter that audiences might not know who the character of Black Panther is, other than him having a role in the Captain America: Civil War movie a few years ago? And, more important, does it matter for the upcoming Black Panther movie if they don’t?

When I was collecting comics, if Thor, Captain America and Iron Man were second-string characters then Black Panther was a third-string character. At best. In fact, I collected lots and lots of comics from the 1980s to the 1990s and I can’t think of a single issue that featured Black Panther I ever bought. And, even more telling, I can’t think of a time when the character guest-starred in the comics I bought either.

Black Panther was one of the earliest African American superhero characters who was originally introduced in the pages of Fantastic Four in 1966. Black Panther was really T’Challa, king the fictional country of Wakanda that’s concealed from the outside world via special technology. Think Captain America with him being stronger than and faster than the average man yet still mortal and very human and you’re close to what kind of hero Black Panther is.

For a long while, Black Panther was an important character who had his own comic title and would turn up in other titles too. But over time his popularity would wain until he was surpassed by other characters over the years.

So, when I heard a few years ago a Black Panther movie was in the works I was a little surprised. I didn’t know anyone who collected Black Panther comics or was into the character at all. Well, almost no one. Calvin, the son of one of my friends, has been a Black Panther fan for years now. He said he discovered the character via the cartoon The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and had loved him ever since. Calvin said that he liked the idea behind the character, that he’s got a cool costume and is an expert at martial arts.

And now, of course, Calvin’s super-excited about the upcoming Black Panther movie, now in theaters.

Starring Chadwick Boseman as the title character, Michael B. Jordan and Lupita Nyong’o, in the film Black Panther must return home to Wakanda and defend it from outside forces and internal ones like the dreaded “Killmonger” who want to take the country’s riches for themselves.

Here’s the thing — I don’t think it matters at this point whether people, other than Calvin, of course, are all that familiar with Black Panther or not. I think audiences see the Marvel Studios brand as a sort of mark of quality. They mostly know what they’re going to get with a Marvel film and are willing to take a chance on an unknown character like Black Panther since every other time they’ve gone to see a movie from Marvel Studios they’ve had a good time.

And this has paid off handsomely for Marvel, and now Disney, with the top five Marvel Studios movies having earned more than $2 billion at the box office. And that’s just the top five — so far there has been 17 movies from Marvel Studios, the majority of which have been very successful.

So if I were a betting man I’d say that more likely than not, at this time next year Black Panther will be a fan-favorite character to millions of people and not just Calvin.