Jon Bernthal

Comic-Con may belong to The Defenders, but you knew The Punisher would steal the spotlight at some point. Jon Bernthal himself showed up to debut the Daredevil spinoff’s first footage, in the process teasing an international bloodbath.

I kind of liked The Accountant. It was goofy, sure, but it had a kind of absurd purity as well. It “has a bit more interesting stuff creeping around its edges than a lot of the superhero movies based on established properties,” I wrote in my review for ScreenCrush. The mythology was engrossing, and the action scenes were surprisingly good. If The Accountant had come out 10 years ago, before I had kids and I gave up all my free time forever, I could easy envision a scenario where I watched it over and over on basic cable. It’s the perfect TNT movie.

Marvel’s Punisher spinoff is still something of a mystery; given an ambiguous 2017 release date around The Defenders, without any confirmation of episode order. At the very least, we may now have a look at the cast and key art, courtesy of a new Quesada-style poster.

Like Daredevil before him, Jon Bernthal’s Punisher took an entire season to finally suit up in his classic comic costume. Anyone following the Netflix spinoff has likely been wondering if another scant wardrobe is in effect, but at long last, Bernthal is back behind that classic skull with new set photos.

Right now, at this very moment, there are people in Austin, Texas who have seen Edgar Wright’s new film Baby Driver. And yes, I’ll admit it, I’m insanely jealous. It’s not just that Baby Driver is the first film by Wright since 2013’s The World’s End; it’s also not that Wright has assembled one of the more effortlessly cool heist film casts in Jon Bernthal, Jon Hamm, Lily James, and Kevin Spacey; it’s also that the first trailer for Baby Driver seems to show Wright pushing his own stylish sense of rhythmic editing to the max, going all in on his visuals in a way we still haven’t seen in one of his movies. You thought you liked Wright before? Try him with a couple of machine guns a few really fast cars.

If you know Taylor Sheridan’s previous screenplays, the drug cartel thriller Sicario and the heist movie Hell or High Water, then watching Wind River will occasionally feel like déjà vu. Character types, motivations, social commentary, even a couple of scenes (like a law-breaking interrogation in the back of a police car) reappear in a way that goes beyond an auteur returning to themes and ideas he finds particularly interesting. For the work of a first-time director, Wind River feels oddly familiar.

We don’t yet have the clearest picture of how Marvel’s Netflix Punisher spinoff will fit in with the other Defenders series (beyond a 2017 premiere), but at least its cast is hard at work. See for yourself, as the full assembled roster behind The Punisher stands tall, not punishing things in a new cast photo.

Commercials have recently gotten a bit of an upgrade. Spike Jonze recently directed that Kenzo perfume ad starring Margaret Qualley that went viral, and now Neill Blomkamp has entered into the fray with his short film, “The Escape,” that also doubles as a slick action-packed BMW commercial. It’s the latest in a kind of series by BMW: a bunch of loosely-connected action shorts all starring Clive Owen as a nameless driver.

At what point does the line between marketing and original film and television content blur completely? For years, automobile giant BMW has been producing a series of loosely connected short films starring Clive Owen as an anonymous character known only as ‘The Driver.’ While these films are obviously meant to help BMW sell cars  —  or at least sell a certainly lifestyle centered on their cars  —  they have also pulled in some of the brightest stars Hollywood has to offer. And now BMW Films and The Driver are back.

Marvel and Jon Bernthal officially confirmed that The Punisher had gotten to work on the streets of New York, though you’d never known it by the newest set photos. Even as Frank Castle has been sporting a different look, it looks like Marvel’s violent anti-hero has found a much more constructive line of work.