The Card Counter

screeners are out, watermark at bottom

director wrote some big famous movies like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Last Temptation of Christ, and First Reformed

Saw this last week.

A very sorrowful movie about a man coming to terms with his past, another movie like First Reformed where the spectre of the Iraq War hangs over it, and Oscar Isaac acting as hard as he can for 90 minutes.

Damn, Paul Shrader. What a blast from the past ! He wrote four scenarios for Scorsese, but he is very good as a director also. Mishima : A Life in Four Chapters is a masterpiece with an insane score by Philip Glass and a timeless performance by Ken Ogata. I remember Affliction being great also even though I don't remember much of anything of it. Seen Auto Focus in 2002 also, but since he did like 8 movies and saw none of them ! Apparently I did not miss much, except this First Reformed which is supposedly very good. Oh wait I have seen The Canyons too, the erotic thriller with Lindsey Lohan. That was a bit of a train wreck if I remember correctly, but more because of the Bret Easton Ellis's screenplay than anything else.

it was somewhere between mediocre and ok.

The movie has almost nothing to do with poker or blackjack, it just happens to be what the main character does for a living. The movie is actually about revenge, the consequences of such, what fucked up things happened during war, how a person could live with themselves afterward, etc.

I don't even know how it could be on a non-woke list, since one of the main focuses is on an interracial relationship.