Buried Cinema: Jonathan Hensleigh's 'The Punisher'

I wrote an article a while back (and for no particular purpose) about The Punisher (2004), and I thought I would share it with you.  Please think of this as a defense of a movie that you can probably find for $5 in the bargain bin on DVD and for $7 on Blu-ray, a movie that has been buried by critics.  I don't think many people watched this in the right mindset; nor do I think that anyone besides fans of the comic books paid this any heed.

Reading my article a few years later, it's not half bad.  Read it after the break, and visit the links I will include after the article if you're interested.

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This Guy was Better than Ridley Scott

Shoot, here's a post that's actually about movies.

Ridley Scott is a master craftsman because of his ability to, as he explains it, realize a vision on film. I love a few of his films, most notably Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator. Blade Runner is probably in my top ten movies of all time.

But that guy up there is John Martin Aloysius Feeney, a.k.a. John Ford (1894-1973). Ford made stuff like Stagecoach and The Quiet Man and How Green was My Valley. John Ford crafted lyrical poetry, and he did it with such surety that he could actually put his hat in front of the camera when he knew he had the footage he needed but was unhappy with the time it took for the cameraman to stop rolling.

Ridley Scott has been known to shoot about 5.3 million miles of film for every scene. Think about that.

And these are just the two gentleman that come to mind. I'm not picking on Scott; there are plenty of good and bad directors with both of these reputations.