A Marvel Television Special Presentation: The Punisher: One Last Kill (Disney+)

MCU movies have been in kind of a dire state recently, which is why “The Punisher: One Last Kill” is such a pleasant surprise.

Though the official title is as unwieldy as the movie is short – “A Marvel Television Special Presentation: The Punisher: One Last Kill” comes in at a mere 60 minutes – the results are fantastic. “One Last Kill” is everything fans loved about the long-mourned Netflix series condensed into a single story. It’s gritty, brutal, emotional, accessible to new audiences. Jon Bernthal continues to nail Frank Castle’s guilt, anger, and grief, and the movie spends some time exploring that. It’s not for everyone, but if you want to see Castle at his finest then “One Last Kill” is for you. 

For those not familiar with the character, Castle is a former Marine whose family was murdered by the mob. He went on an incredibly violent vengeance run, and even after that has no trouble shooting people to get rid of corruption. This leads him to have a fraught relationship with most heroes, though “One Last Kill” focuses on just him. 

Bernthal is fantastic as Castle, capturing both the violence and the far more complicated emotions beneath it. His Castle is both a little scary and someone you root for, and allows “One Last Kill” to shine a surprisingly nuanced light on mental health issues. He can also be surprisingly endearing, and though it only comes in flashes it makes those moments all the more special.

It’s a dark ride, but “One Last Kill” is the Punisher at his finest.

Grade: Three and a half stars

We Bury the Dead (Hulu)

Some movies are more interesting than good. 

That’s the case with “We Bury the Dead,” a zombie movie that focuses more on emotions than either scares or world building. That leads to some interesting scenes and one really amazing one, but it never quite gels into a gripping story. It mostly drifts through moments of sometimes-compelling imagery, propelled more by Daisy Ridley’s expressiveness than a fully fleshed-out script. There are some thoughtful ideas here, but it’s more of an outline than a complete story. 

The movie starts with America accidentally letting off an experimental bomb along Australia’s coastline, a plot that’s become alarmingly topical in the last year or so. Daisy Ridley joins the volunteers helping to clean up the bodies, hoping to slip away and find her husband. What she finds instead are zombies, corpses that have started walking around in some semblance of life. 

Though some of the movie’s ideas were already covered more effectively in “28 Years Later,” the movie does have some haunting thoughts about what it means to be human. This includes the best scene in the movie, a quiet, unexpectedly kind moment I’ve never seen in any zombie movie. The movie does have gore, and death, but it’s these quieter moments that hit harder. 

The best of the acting comes from Daisy Ridley, whose wonderful expressiveness fills in so many character details the script forgets. Mark Coles Smith does a good job with a smaller role, smoothly moving from sympathetic to chilling. 

Grade: Two stars

Jenniffer Wardell is an award-winning movie critic and member of the Denver Film Critics Society and the Utah Film Critics Association. Drop her a line at [email protected].