We don’t step evenly into Sons. Over the stretch of a long, grim elevator ride––face-to-face with Eva (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a middle-aged woman working as a guard in the Danish prison system––we descend into it. The initial reveal is light-hearted, the opposite direction one might expect from a prison thriller. But only briefly. Like its Scandinavian neighbors, Denmark has been renowned for its relatively humane approach to mass incarceration: low rates of recidivism, fewer instances of violence, and anti-punitive philosophies. But “relatively” and “has been” are the key words here.
The Danish Prisons and Probation Service is still a modern, westernized prison-industrial complex. And one in sharp decline. Where it once swam upstream alongside its Nordic siblings in the name of ethics, it’s now accused of taking cues from more penal, profit-bent countries such as the US. In 2019, Bo Yde Sørensen, Head of the Danish Prison Federation,...
The Danish Prisons and Probation Service is still a modern, westernized prison-industrial complex. And one in sharp decline. Where it once swam upstream alongside its Nordic siblings in the name of ethics, it’s now accused of taking cues from more penal, profit-bent countries such as the US. In 2019, Bo Yde Sørensen, Head of the Danish Prison Federation,...
- 2/26/2024
- by Luke Hicks
- The Film Stage
Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four stands before the Illuminati, a gathering of the smartest and most influential figures in the Marvel Universe, to make a declaration. “Everything dies,” he states. “You. Me. Everyone on this planet… This is simply how things are. And I accept that.”
This scene from New Avengers #1 (2013), written by Jonathan Hickman and penciled by Steve Epting, perfectly captures Reed Richards, one of the most important characters in Marvel history. It shows Richards approaching a catastrophic, multiversal problem with cool reason and intellect. It feels undeniably modern, building up to the universe-shaping events in Secret Wars, while still remaining faithful to the sci-fi influences that drove Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s original vision in 1961.
And with Avengers: Secret Wars already planned as the capper to Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is the type of Reed Richards that the MCU needs.
As the...
This scene from New Avengers #1 (2013), written by Jonathan Hickman and penciled by Steve Epting, perfectly captures Reed Richards, one of the most important characters in Marvel history. It shows Richards approaching a catastrophic, multiversal problem with cool reason and intellect. It feels undeniably modern, building up to the universe-shaping events in Secret Wars, while still remaining faithful to the sci-fi influences that drove Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s original vision in 1961.
And with Avengers: Secret Wars already planned as the capper to Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is the type of Reed Richards that the MCU needs.
As the...
- 11/16/2023
- by John Saavedra
- Den of Geek
Infinity Pool.In the early 2000s, American filmmaker Eli Roth landed on a dark web page offering so-called “murder vacations,” an idea which became the key for his 2005 gore-fest Hostel, in which overseas tourists find themselves abused and killed in Bratislava. While the concept sits neatly within the “torture-porn” genre conventions for excessive, brutal violence, transposing an abstraction—or a scam premise—onto a real place has material consequences. Hostel, a controversial landmark of noughties horror cinema, had Slovaks complaining to the Ministry of Culture and has certainly reinforced already existing stereotypes of Eastern Europe as depraved, fraught with danger, and vengeful towards foreigners. What David Rimanelli and Hanna Liden in jest call “the evil New Europe” encompasses both the anxieties about the ex-Eastern Bloc that have germinated in the mass imaginary since WWII and the Cold War, and the latent fear of the Other which sits at the...
- 9/19/2023
- MUBI
There’s something about gambling that makes us want to see it on the big screen. Whether it’s a comedy, crime drama, or romance, there’s something special about watching our favourite actors and actresses play around with cards and dice. In honour of this topic being quite popular lately (and because we just love movies and casino royale film locations), we’ve compiled a list of popular casino film titles in New Zealand. If you need a recommendation for your next movie night, take a look!
Nr 1 Casino Movie: The Hangover
Playing at casinos has always been a popular form of entertainment for many, and The Hangover is a classic comedy film that captures the fun and excitement of a trip to Las Vegas. Whether you’re a fan of online casinos or prefer the real-life experience of playing at a brick-and-mortar establishment, this movie is sure to resonate with you.
Nr 1 Casino Movie: The Hangover
Playing at casinos has always been a popular form of entertainment for many, and The Hangover is a classic comedy film that captures the fun and excitement of a trip to Las Vegas. Whether you’re a fan of online casinos or prefer the real-life experience of playing at a brick-and-mortar establishment, this movie is sure to resonate with you.
- 5/11/2023
- by Martin Cid Magazine
- Martin Cid Magazine - Movies
Fifty years ago, two unknown filmmakers named Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham released their low-budget thriller “Last House on the Left.” Or, given its effect on audiences, maybe it’s more accurate to say they unleashed the film. Either way, the horror genre was never the same: Craven, who was making his feature directorial debut with “Last House,” went on to helm several of the smartest, scariest, and most imitated horror films of all time, including “The Hills Have Eyes,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” and “Scream.” Cunningham, his producer, would exert an equally pervasive influence on the genre as the director of the original “Friday the 13th.” Ironically, neither filmmaker had a strong desire to make horror movies. “I do not think Sean or Wes had any personal affinity for horror or set out to make an influential mark on the genre,” David Szulkin, author of “Wes Craven’s...
- 10/31/2022
- by Jim Hemphill
- Indiewire
It's a common lesson learned amongst directors that any judgment call on a script isn't always final. One minute they're tossing it aside out of indifference or disgust and the next they're engrossed in its possibilities. Such was the tenuous relationship Alfonso Cuarón had with "Children of Men" when he was first pitched it. His feelings towards the screenplay — which was adapted from a 1992 sci-fi novel by P.D. James — could be described politely as more than a little apathetic.
Then tragedy struck, and suddenly Cuarón felt intimately connected to parts of the script he could remember. Yet instead of doing a straight adaptation of the novel, he decided to just use some of the core elements as a starting point. The movie Cuarón would eventually create both bombed at the box office and contained an abundance of differences from James' original story. Yet it remains today a frighteningly prescient reminder...
Then tragedy struck, and suddenly Cuarón felt intimately connected to parts of the script he could remember. Yet instead of doing a straight adaptation of the novel, he decided to just use some of the core elements as a starting point. The movie Cuarón would eventually create both bombed at the box office and contained an abundance of differences from James' original story. Yet it remains today a frighteningly prescient reminder...
- 10/16/2022
- by Steven Ward
- Slash Film
There is a paradox at the heart of Master Gardener. In their respective worlds—one of abstinence and iconography; the other of money and risk—priests and gamblers are kind of sexy. In their own ways, so are gigolos, drug dealers, porn stars, sex addicts, even taxi drivers. Gardeners? For all their charms, maybe less so. The latest from Paul Schrader rounds out an idiosyncratic trilogy: without breaking the mould, and for three films in a row, the director has placed his man-in-a-room archetype into the fraught, divided milieu of contemporary America. With First Reformed and Card Counter, Schrader could bank on audiences already being attuned to the quasi-culty vibes of his characters’ extreme callings. Master Gardener, the story of a diligent horticulturist, has a bit more heavy lifting to do; but there’s fun to be had in the labor.
This one stars Joel Edgerton, entering the Schraderverse as...
This one stars Joel Edgerton, entering the Schraderverse as...
- 9/4/2022
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Paul Schrader woke up in New Orleans with four days of shooting left on his new movie, “Master Gardener,” when he thought he was going to die. He had severe breathing problems and trouble seeing out of his left eye, so he decided to get up and go to work.
“I knew if I called 911, those bastards would never let me out of the hospital, and the film would not be finished,” Schrader said. “So I lay there in bed and said, ‘Well, maybe I won’t wake up tomorrow — but would I rather not wake up tomorrow or wake up in the hospital room, knowing I can’t finish my film?’ And so I made my decision.”
Schrader still hasn’t figured out the specific cause of those ailments, but the 76-year-old’s commitment to filmmaking at all costs isn’t a surprise. “Master Gardener” is another of Schrader’s man-in-the-room dramas,...
“I knew if I called 911, those bastards would never let me out of the hospital, and the film would not be finished,” Schrader said. “So I lay there in bed and said, ‘Well, maybe I won’t wake up tomorrow — but would I rather not wake up tomorrow or wake up in the hospital room, knowing I can’t finish my film?’ And so I made my decision.”
Schrader still hasn’t figured out the specific cause of those ailments, but the 76-year-old’s commitment to filmmaking at all costs isn’t a surprise. “Master Gardener” is another of Schrader’s man-in-the-room dramas,...
- 9/2/2022
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Click here to read the full article.
Just one year after wowing Venice critics with The Card Counter, Paul Schrader returns to the world’s oldest film festival with the latest iteration of his self-styled “man alone in a room” stories, Master Gardener.
Like the signature character studies before it – Taxi Driver (Robert De Niro), American Gigolo (Richard Gere), Light Sleeper (Willem Dafoe), First Reformed (Ethan Hawke) and The Card Counter (Oscar Isaac) — Master Gardner begins, naturally, with a socially disaffected man, alone in a room. This time, Schrader’s anguished protagonist with a mysterious past is played by Joel Edgerton, who stars opposite Sigourney Weaver and Quintessa Swindell.
In a restrained and beguiling performance, Edgerton plays Narvel Roth, the meticulous horticulturist of Gracewood Gardens, the sprawling botanical estate of the wealthy dowager, Mrs. Haverhill, chillingly inhabited by Weaver. As we meet him, Narvel is as fastidiously devoted to tending...
Just one year after wowing Venice critics with The Card Counter, Paul Schrader returns to the world’s oldest film festival with the latest iteration of his self-styled “man alone in a room” stories, Master Gardener.
Like the signature character studies before it – Taxi Driver (Robert De Niro), American Gigolo (Richard Gere), Light Sleeper (Willem Dafoe), First Reformed (Ethan Hawke) and The Card Counter (Oscar Isaac) — Master Gardner begins, naturally, with a socially disaffected man, alone in a room. This time, Schrader’s anguished protagonist with a mysterious past is played by Joel Edgerton, who stars opposite Sigourney Weaver and Quintessa Swindell.
In a restrained and beguiling performance, Edgerton plays Narvel Roth, the meticulous horticulturist of Gracewood Gardens, the sprawling botanical estate of the wealthy dowager, Mrs. Haverhill, chillingly inhabited by Weaver. As we meet him, Narvel is as fastidiously devoted to tending...
- 9/2/2022
- by Patrick Brzeski
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The Sarajevo Film Festival will fete U.S. director and screenwriter Paul Schrader with its Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award at the festival’s 28th edition, which runs Aug. 12-19.
The filmmaker is being honored for a decades-spanning career that includes the screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Raging Bull” (which he co-wrote), as well the dozens of films he directed, including “American Gigolo,” “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” and “The Comfort of Strangers.”
In 2019, Schrader was nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay for “First Reformed,” which he also directed. He was in Venice last year with “The Card Counter,” starring Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish, which has been a critical and box office success.
The filmmaker will receive the Heart of Sarajevo Award at a ceremony on Aug. 13, which will be followed by a special screening of “The Card Counter,...
The filmmaker is being honored for a decades-spanning career that includes the screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Raging Bull” (which he co-wrote), as well the dozens of films he directed, including “American Gigolo,” “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” and “The Comfort of Strangers.”
In 2019, Schrader was nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay for “First Reformed,” which he also directed. He was in Venice last year with “The Card Counter,” starring Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish, which has been a critical and box office success.
The filmmaker will receive the Heart of Sarajevo Award at a ceremony on Aug. 13, which will be followed by a special screening of “The Card Counter,...
- 7/13/2022
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Lee Jung-jae’s writing, directing, and producing debut Hunt is a tricky film, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. At its heart this is a 50-50 blend of The Raid and JFK, but camouflaged in espionage procedure.
It’s 1983, South Korea. The 1979 assassination of the president / coup by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency has left a wake of political chaos and widespread distrust across and within every government agency, the kind that forms a melodramatic web of tension so knotted it would take 25 pages to unpack in narrative detail. Moreover, North Korean attacks are an ever-present threat, and intelligence is leaking from South Korean agencies like oil from a Bp oil rig, assuring the presence of a mole: Donglim.
Park Pyong-ho (Lee), the Kcia Foreign Unit Chief, otherwise known as the Head of the Exterior, and Kim Jund-do (Jung Woo-sung), the Kcia Domestic Unit Chief, otherwise known as the Head of the Interior,...
It’s 1983, South Korea. The 1979 assassination of the president / coup by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency has left a wake of political chaos and widespread distrust across and within every government agency, the kind that forms a melodramatic web of tension so knotted it would take 25 pages to unpack in narrative detail. Moreover, North Korean attacks are an ever-present threat, and intelligence is leaking from South Korean agencies like oil from a Bp oil rig, assuring the presence of a mole: Donglim.
Park Pyong-ho (Lee), the Kcia Foreign Unit Chief, otherwise known as the Head of the Exterior, and Kim Jund-do (Jung Woo-sung), the Kcia Domestic Unit Chief, otherwise known as the Head of the Interior,...
- 6/13/2022
- by Luke Hicks
- The Film Stage
As Russia-Ukraine tensions rise, dominating international headlines, director Maria Ignatenko talks about the hell of war in her Rotterdam Film Festival title “Achrome.” But her oneiric film, lensed by Anton Gromov, is not exactly a comment on the current situation in Europe. “This particular topic is becoming more and more timely these days, but my film is poetry,” she says.
“It’s more related to the world of art and I would like to keep it that way, so I am not ready to make that connection just yet. However, when we were working, I realized that people might ask me about it. There is a sense of responsibility that comes with making a film like that, so I guess I will be slowly putting myself in the position of being able to answer their questions.”
Born in 1986, Ignatenko debuted with 2020’s “In Deep Sleep,” shown at the Berlinale’s Forum.
“It’s more related to the world of art and I would like to keep it that way, so I am not ready to make that connection just yet. However, when we were working, I realized that people might ask me about it. There is a sense of responsibility that comes with making a film like that, so I guess I will be slowly putting myself in the position of being able to answer their questions.”
Born in 1986, Ignatenko debuted with 2020’s “In Deep Sleep,” shown at the Berlinale’s Forum.
- 2/5/2022
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2021, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.
Year Two of a global pandemic was, in many ways, more difficult than the first. As the urgency around the coronavirus died down and its novelty wore off, we each had to continue on with our lives as disease (and its repercussions) raged on about us. If 2020 was about exposing the fragility of our current systems, then 2021 was about having to live with the missteps we took to get here. It’s appropriate, then, that many of the best films of the year reckoned with the wrongdoings of the past, investigated the sins that embedded themselves in our present without our knowing, and searched for ways to extract the poison so that it could not harm our future. Some films were more optimistic than others; The Matrix Resurrections...
Year Two of a global pandemic was, in many ways, more difficult than the first. As the urgency around the coronavirus died down and its novelty wore off, we each had to continue on with our lives as disease (and its repercussions) raged on about us. If 2020 was about exposing the fragility of our current systems, then 2021 was about having to live with the missteps we took to get here. It’s appropriate, then, that many of the best films of the year reckoned with the wrongdoings of the past, investigated the sins that embedded themselves in our present without our knowing, and searched for ways to extract the poison so that it could not harm our future. Some films were more optimistic than others; The Matrix Resurrections...
- 1/10/2022
- by Jonah Wu
- The Film Stage
Oscar Isaac excels at addressing life after “Star Wars.” Last year, when asked if he would return to play intergalactic pilot Poe Dameron if given the opportunity, he said he’d consider it “if I need another house.” At the Venice Film Festival in September, when pressed to explain why he signed up to play the guilt-stricken, gambling veteran at the center of Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter,” he called it a chance to escape “green screen alien space land.”
These cheeky replies almost certainly contain a kernel of truth, but in the case of “The Card Counter,” they only tell a fraction of a story that predates “Star Wars” by decades. The movie, which finds Isaac delivering a sullen, introverted performance as former Abu Ghraib soldier William Tell, feels like a natural extension of the self-defeatist pariahs he’s played in everything from the bashful musician of “Inside Llewyn Davis...
These cheeky replies almost certainly contain a kernel of truth, but in the case of “The Card Counter,” they only tell a fraction of a story that predates “Star Wars” by decades. The movie, which finds Isaac delivering a sullen, introverted performance as former Abu Ghraib soldier William Tell, feels like a natural extension of the self-defeatist pariahs he’s played in everything from the bashful musician of “Inside Llewyn Davis...
- 10/19/2021
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Paul Schrader, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Zurich Film Festival on Friday, is planning to start shooting thriller “Master Gardener” in February, with Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver starring, and the third role to be played by a young woman of color. Zendaya was his first choice, but they couldn’t agree on the fee, he told an audience at the Swiss festival.
“Master Gardener” is about a horticulturist torn between two women, one old enough to be his mother and the other young enough to be his daughter.
“I was thinking about that guy, but then two women showed up. He is having romantic relations with both, but what I liked the most is that now, they can talk to each other. What would happen in ‘Taxi Driver’ if Cybill Shepherd and Jodie Foster went out to get coffee?”
At Zurich, Schrader presented his drama “The Card Counter,...
“Master Gardener” is about a horticulturist torn between two women, one old enough to be his mother and the other young enough to be his daughter.
“I was thinking about that guy, but then two women showed up. He is having romantic relations with both, but what I liked the most is that now, they can talk to each other. What would happen in ‘Taxi Driver’ if Cybill Shepherd and Jodie Foster went out to get coffee?”
At Zurich, Schrader presented his drama “The Card Counter,...
- 10/4/2021
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
“America After 9/11,” the latest film from PBS’ Frontline team, is a must-see deconstruction of the War on Terror that lays out the United States’ foreign policy failures with details both enraging and illuminating. It’s also one of 19 films that director Michael Kirk, a longtime documentary filmmaker for Frontline, has created on the War on Terror over the last two decades, previously covering U.S. torture programs, the rise of Isis, and more. Kirk and his colleagues interviewed over 30 sources for their new film, ranging from civil rights activists and attorneys to former CIA officers, as well as a a wide variety of journalists and former White House staffers. Together, they paint a portrait of the United States that, through its own actions over the last 20 years, eroded much of the country’s goodwill at home and abroad in a misguided series of wars that killed scores of innocent people.
- 9/10/2021
- by Tyler Hersko
- Indiewire
Over the course of Paul Schrader’s career, he has gifted cinema audiences with absolute gems either as a screenwriter (most notably in his collaborations with Martin Scorsese) or a director. He has also fallen short on more than one occasion, The Canyons being the most recent example. So where does The Card Counter stand on Schrader’s list of hits and misses? Well, somewhere in between both camps.
One of the reasons this thriller is a hit lies in its leading man. Oscar Isaac, who stars in three offerings here at the Venice Film Festival, is in every scene, the camera often zooming in on his face, picking up every flicker, every twitch and every change of mood. Isaac plays ex-soldier turned card counter and poker pro William Tell. He has done time in military prison, where he learnt to count cards, and is now touring the casinos of the US east coast,...
One of the reasons this thriller is a hit lies in its leading man. Oscar Isaac, who stars in three offerings here at the Venice Film Festival, is in every scene, the camera often zooming in on his face, picking up every flicker, every twitch and every change of mood. Isaac plays ex-soldier turned card counter and poker pro William Tell. He has done time in military prison, where he learnt to count cards, and is now touring the casinos of the US east coast,...
- 9/6/2021
- by Jo-Ann Titmarsh
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
The Card Counter There’s something uniquely thrilling about watching an old master spin their formulas and leitmotivs to create something that feels novel, enrapturing, and heart-shaking. Such was the case with Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter, one of the strongest entries in a remarkably solid official competition lineup. Written and directed by Schrader, his follow-up to his last Venice entry—the 2018 First Reformed—The Card Counter is an assaultive, unflinching piece of filmmaking in which a man’s path to atonement doubles as a reminder of a horrific stain in America’s history, and a vitriolic takedown of the military culture that enabled it.Oscar Isaacs plays William Tillich, a former special ops soldier who took part in the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the Guantanamo-like prison where US authorities tortured and killed Iraqi detainees in the early stages of the Iraq War. Once evidence of the human rights...
- 9/4/2021
- MUBI
Oscar Isaac is a blank-eyed poker player with a past in Schrader’s latest gathering of lost, tormented souls
Paul Schrader makes films about lost souls in torment and unachievable goals, the sort of bleak existential purgatories that speak to our own uglier moments. Ahead of the Venice press screening of his latest production, an impromptu security cordon makes more than 100 guests late, after which they are only allowed into the cinema in small dribs and drabs - a tense, shuffling progress that extends throughout the film’s opening half-hour. The critics are in uproar; the ushers get lairy. Wherever he is, I imagine that Schrader himself would approve of the show.
On screen, The Card Counter provides another stylish, slow-burning account of Schrader’s lonesome samurai, a figure who can crop up in all walks of life: as a taxi driver, an escort, a drug dealer, a priest. On...
Paul Schrader makes films about lost souls in torment and unachievable goals, the sort of bleak existential purgatories that speak to our own uglier moments. Ahead of the Venice press screening of his latest production, an impromptu security cordon makes more than 100 guests late, after which they are only allowed into the cinema in small dribs and drabs - a tense, shuffling progress that extends throughout the film’s opening half-hour. The critics are in uproar; the ushers get lairy. Wherever he is, I imagine that Schrader himself would approve of the show.
On screen, The Card Counter provides another stylish, slow-burning account of Schrader’s lonesome samurai, a figure who can crop up in all walks of life: as a taxi driver, an escort, a drug dealer, a priest. On...
- 9/2/2021
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
Green covers the screen as the opening credits for Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter” surface. The color and texture come from the felt distinctive to casino tables. But this isn’t a study on greed for cash, in spite of what the palaces of gambling where it mostly occurs might suggest. What’s bet on with every played hand is absolution, the potential cleansing of a specter’s soul.
Men with moral vendettas are the veteran writer-director’s objects of fascination. Saints are too facile to be subjects to inspire his sordid plots, but those with dubious pasts and a righteous, self-imposed mandate for vindication are dramatic aces. His vehicle for this latest oft-gripping but ultimately mild work is William Tell (Oscar Isaac), a former military interrogator jailed for carrying out the dehumanizing torture practices his superiors ordered. Not much else emerges about him as far as the specifics of his personal life.
Men with moral vendettas are the veteran writer-director’s objects of fascination. Saints are too facile to be subjects to inspire his sordid plots, but those with dubious pasts and a righteous, self-imposed mandate for vindication are dramatic aces. His vehicle for this latest oft-gripping but ultimately mild work is William Tell (Oscar Isaac), a former military interrogator jailed for carrying out the dehumanizing torture practices his superiors ordered. Not much else emerges about him as far as the specifics of his personal life.
- 9/2/2021
- by Carlos Aguilar
- The Wrap
Paul Schrader says his movie “The Card Counter,” in which Oscar Isaac plays a former Abu Ghraib interrogator who did jail time for his actions, is “not about redoing history” but rather focusing on one soldier’s memory — a cinematic theme he predicts will recur as U.S. soldiers return from Afghanistan.
The Focus Features movie doesn’t pull any punches in depicting difficult scenes of torture and violence against inmates, but the set used is a reimagining that is based on what Isaac’s character, William Tell, remembers of his experience there, rather than the actual building.
“By using this set, we were able to get into a distorted memory of what remains,” said Schrader, speaking at a Thursday press conference at the Venice Film Festival. “I’m sure for these U.S. soldiers who were at the airport in the last 10 days, they are going to have some...
The Focus Features movie doesn’t pull any punches in depicting difficult scenes of torture and violence against inmates, but the set used is a reimagining that is based on what Isaac’s character, William Tell, remembers of his experience there, rather than the actual building.
“By using this set, we were able to get into a distorted memory of what remains,” said Schrader, speaking at a Thursday press conference at the Venice Film Festival. “I’m sure for these U.S. soldiers who were at the airport in the last 10 days, they are going to have some...
- 9/2/2021
- by Manori Ravindran
- Variety Film + TV
"The Card Counter," the latest movie from director Paul Schrader, is heading to theaters soon. The drama follows Oscar Isaac as a former military man named William Tell who served time because of his involvement in Abu Ghraib. Once out of prison, Tell turned to gambling and, as the story unfolds, he forms a bond with Tiffany Haddish's character, La Linda, a gambling agent and pimp.
Schrader sat down for an interview in the days leading up to the release of the film and shared how he directed Isaac and Haddish. Read on to find out more about his directing style...
The post The Card Counter Director Paul Schrader Explains How He Directed Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish appeared first on /Film.
Schrader sat down for an interview in the days leading up to the release of the film and shared how he directed Isaac and Haddish. Read on to find out more about his directing style...
The post The Card Counter Director Paul Schrader Explains How He Directed Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish appeared first on /Film.
- 8/26/2021
- by Vanessa Armstrong
- Slash Film
‘The Card Counter’: Paul Schrader on the Ways Scorsese and ‘Taxi Driver’ Informed New Gambling Drama
Some filmmakers write a hit movie and spend the ensuing years trying to escape its shadow. Paul Schrader never flinched. Forty-five years after his “Taxi Driver” script put him on the map, the writer-director has developed a body of work loaded with alienated anti-heroes compelled to violent and reckless extremes for the sake of a higher calling.
That includes “The Card Counter,” in which Oscar Isaac plays guilt-stricken Abu Ghraib vet William Tell, a man with a gambling addiction compelled to help the revenge-seeking son (Tye Sheridan) of a former colleague. Taking justice into his own hands, Isaac’s William Tell slithers through the Vegas strip in search of questionable salvation, not unlike a certain Vietnam vet named Travis Bickle did from the driver’s seat. As if to cement the comparisons, “The Card Counter” features Martin Scorsese as an executive producer, marking the first time the two men share...
That includes “The Card Counter,” in which Oscar Isaac plays guilt-stricken Abu Ghraib vet William Tell, a man with a gambling addiction compelled to help the revenge-seeking son (Tye Sheridan) of a former colleague. Taking justice into his own hands, Isaac’s William Tell slithers through the Vegas strip in search of questionable salvation, not unlike a certain Vietnam vet named Travis Bickle did from the driver’s seat. As if to cement the comparisons, “The Card Counter” features Martin Scorsese as an executive producer, marking the first time the two men share...
- 8/26/2021
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
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