THE
CARD COUNTER (2021)
Occasionally, if it is to remain a viable
art form, movies need to make viewers uncomfortable, explore the dark side of
society and introduce characters you’d rather not know.
Paul Schrader, as both a screenwriter and
director, has been doing just that since the mid-70s, when he wrote “Taxi
Driver” for Martin Scorsese. In such films as “American Gigolo” (1980), “Patty
Hearst” (1988), “Light Sleeper” (1992), “Affliction” (1997), “Auto Focus”
(2002) and “First Reformed” (2017)—as director—and his contributions to the
screenplays for “Raging Bull” (1980) and “The Last Temptation of Christ”
(1988), he has brought characters and issues to screens that rarely show up in
Hollywood pictures.
Add “Card Counter” to his list of impressive, disturbing films, and William Tell, played with steely precision by Oscar Isaac, to the roster of memorable characters created by this unflinching observer of the human condition.
The film tells two stories, simultaneously.
While travelling the country playing poker tournaments, having learned to count
cards in prison, Tell is recruited to play for big time purses and a spot in
the World Series of Poker, by a smooth talking young woman La Linda (a very
cool Tiffany Haddish). Around the same time, Cirk (Tye Sheridan), a young man
whose father served with Tell in Iraq, tracks down Tell in hopes that he’ll assist
him in a revenge plot against the man who was their commanding officer in Abu
Ghraib.
Tell’s prison stretch was for his role in
what went on in that U.S. detention center, where he and others followed orders
and then took the blame after the scandal was revealed in a CBS News report in
2004.
As this
mismatched, trio traverses the country, following the poker circuit, nothing
much happens even as Schrader keep upping the intensity through Tell’s flashbacks
to Abu Ghraib. Even watching Tell “prepare” his hotel rooms is disconcerting.
Schrader, as usual, doesn’t ask audience
to warm up to his characters, just to understand their place in the world and
Isaac serves him well; convincingly an unpredictable loner with more than a
little Travis Bickle in him (Tell keeps a journal like the “Taxi Driver”
character.)
Very
quickly, Isaac has established himself as one of the most interesting
contemporary actors with a series of chameleon-like roles. He was a
mild-mannered folk singer in “Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013), a maniacal AI
inventor in “Ex Machina” (2014), a 1970s trucking firm boss dealing with the
mob in “A Most Violent Year” (2014), a heroic Resistance pilot in the recent
“Star Wars” episodes and the 19th Century painter Paul Gauguin in “At
Eternity’s Gate” (2018).
The weakest link in “The Card Counter” is
the performance (and Schrader’s dialogue for him) of Sheridan. He never
convinced me that Tell would find him interesting enough to drag him along, let
alone entertain his amateurish revenge plans.
Chilly and distant, with more poker
playing scenes than most viewers need to see, yet it’s hard to turn away from
this troubled man and the road Schrader sends him down.
THE
LAST VOYAGE (1960)
I have little patience for disaster films
(including that ridiculous melodrama “Titanic”), which is probably why I had
never taken the time to see this pre-CGI tale of a luxury liner sinking. Turns
out, it’s a compelling, startlingly realistic movie that had me completely rivetted.
(It was billed at the time as “91 minutes of the most intense suspense in
motion picture history.”)
Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone (both of whom
had scored supporting Oscar nominations for “Written on the Wind”—she won) star
as the Hendersons, a married couple taking a cruise across the Pacific to Japan
with their young daughter. This was to be the Claridon final trip, but it turns
out it was one too many. In what has become the clichéd first clue, the
pressure gauges skyrocket and soon the engine room is bursting with holes in
the hull.
Jack Kruschen, Edmond O’Brien and Woody
Strode are the main engine room guys trying to patch things up while warning
the arrogant captain (a perfectly cast George Sanders) that the ship may not
stay afloat.
While Sanders ignores his executive
officers’ suggestion to evacuate the passengers, explosions begin to decimate
the liner.
Written and directed by Andrew L. Stone,
the film alternates between Cliff Henderson’s frantic attempts to save his
family after their quarters are destroyed in one of the explosions and the work
by O’Brien and others to save the ship. This is edge-of-your-seat suspense,
nonstop action and daring-do that is all the more enthralling knowing this was
made long before computers started doing the heavy lifting of special effects.
Veteran FX master Augie Lohman—who worked on everything from “The Lost
Continent,” a 1951 B film, to “Barbarella” (1968) and “The Cheap Detective”
(1978)—earned his only Oscar nomination for “The Last Voyage.”
Stone is a fascinating Hollywood success
story, having started in the industry during the silent era, making a few
shorts and a feature, but mostly working behind the scenes. He never stopped
making low-budget pictures and became known for his location shooting,
especially in his crime pictures in the 1950s. “A Blueprint for Murder,” “The
Night Holds Terror” and “Cry Terror!” are among his well-made noirs. He also
directed the all-Black musical “Stormy Weather” in 1943.
“The Last Voyage” should be on any list of
top disaster films for its realistic effects and high-spirited performances,
but also should be noted as the rare film from the era that portrays a Black
man (Strode) coming to the rescue of a white family. When no other crew member
will help, Strode’s Lawson goes above and beyond the call of duty to help.
DEATH
WATCH (1980)
I had no idea what this film was about when
I started streaming it off the LA County library site; all I knew was that it
starred Harvey Keitel and Harry Dean Stanton.
Based on a 1973 novel by D.G. Compton, the
film, set in the near future when humans rarely die of diseases, anticipates
the reality television craze that was still more than 10 years away. In this
case, an amoral TV producer (Stanton) and a doctor on his payroll convince a
woman that she has a fatal illness and has but a few months to live.
Katherine (European star Romy Schneider,
in one of her last roles) seems very accepting of her fate—not even seeking out
a second opinion—and, despite her disgust with the producer and his show, signs
a contract to have the end of her life filmed. But just before the filming is about
to start she disappears into the British countryside.
What she doesn’t know is that Roddy (Keitel),
a seemingly kindly young man she meets by chance, is actually video taping
everything she does or says. He was once
blind and his eyesight was replaced by a camera in his head that sends the
images he “sees” back to the studio.
Sounds preposterous and it is for the
first 30 minutes of the film, but once Katherine and Roddy are traveling
together—she wants to say goodbye to her first husband (Max von Sydow) who
lives off the grid—the film becomes more about what makes life worth living and
the strength of human relations than its sci-fi trappings.
Directed by the great French director
Bertrand Tavernier, who also adapted the novel with David Rayfiel (“Three Days
of the Condor”), “Death Watch” overcomes stilted performances by Keitel and Stanton
by virtue of Schneider’s moving portrayal of a woman struggling to find meaning
in the world. Just two years later, the 43-year-old Schneider, one of the
biggest movie stars in France, died somewhat mysteriously, either of a heart
attack or possibly from a sleeping pill overdose
Tavernier, who died in March at age 79,
started out as a film journalist and press agent before becoming an assistant to
the revered French director Jean-Pierre Melville. Tavernier went on to make
some of the best French films of the 1980s and 90s, including “Coup de Torchon”
(1981), “A Sunday in the County” (1984), “Life and Nothing But” (1989) and
“L.627” (1992). He is best known in this country for his English-language film
“’Round Midnight” (1986), which earned jazz legend Dexter Gordon an Oscar
nomination.
Tavernier’s 2016 documentary “My Journey
Through French Cinema” is a thoroughly entertaining survey of the topic, filled
with great clips and insightful commentary by this cinematic historian.
Twelve years after this movie, “The Real
World,” usually cited as the first of modern reality TV shows, first aired,
followed by “Survivor” and “Big Brother” later in the decade.
THE
LAST RUN (1971)
Just when I thought I’d seen every
worthwhile film from the 1970s, I caught this George C. Scott car-chase crime
picture on TCM.
In 1971, Scott was at the top of his game,
having won the Oscar for his larger-than-life portrayal of “Patton” (1970) and
followed it with his cynical physician in “The Hospital” (1971). On TV, he
starred in productions of Arthur Miller’s “The Price” in 1971 and as Rochester
in “Jane Eyre” in 1970. In the midst of these high-profile performances, “The
Last Run” has mostly been forgotten, rarely mentioned as among the actor’s best
work. But it is.
The movie opens with Scott’s Harry working
on his high-powered BMW sports car and then test driving it along a
treacherous, Portuguese seaside road before heading to Spain. Turns out, he’s
the getaway driver in a prison break, his first “driving” job in nine years.
It’s quietly established in this superb
Alan Sharp (“The Hired Hand” and “Night Moves”) script that Harry sees little
to live for; his young son died and his wife has left him. He’s looking for a
reason to make life worth living and he seems to find it in Rickard (Tony
Musante), the escapee/gunman, and his girlfriend Claudie (Trish Van Devere)
after Rickard’s former gang members turn on him.
I’m not a big fan of long car chases—they
take up a quarter of the film---but here they serve as metaphors for Harry’s
determination to speed toward his doom. It’s only behind the wheel that he feels
in control and finds life temporarily rewarding.
“The Last Run” could easily have been a
B-movie from the 1950s, thus who better to direct than Richard Fleischer, who
made two film noir masterpieces, “Armored Car Robbery” (1950) and “The Narrow
Margin” (1952). While Fleischer’s later career was filled with some of the
worst films ever made—“Che” (1969), “Mandingo” (1975), “The Jazz Singer” (1980)
and “Conan the Destroyer” (1984)—his work here shows that given the right
material he remained a talented filmmaker. (And it doesn’t hurt that Sven
Nykvist serves as the film’s cinematographer.)
Musante nails the smart-ass tough guy who
seems, at first, to be nothing more than a gunsel, but he knows how to keep the
upper hand on Harry. (The actor later starred as a detective in the 1973 TV
series “Toma”).
This also may be the only film in which an
actor starred with two of his wives. Colleen Dewhurst, who plays a sympathetic
prostitute Harry relies on, was married to Scott from 1961 to 1965 and then
again from 1967 to 1972. Seven months after their second divorce, Scott married
van Devere, whose career from this film forward was almost always as co-star or
under the direction (on TV, Broadway and in movies) of Scott. She was married
to him for 26 years until his death in 1999.
Scott’s world-weary, gravelly voice, his
thoughtful cadence and seemingly eternally squinting eyes brings Sharp’s fascinating
character study alive, turning a straight-forward crime picture (originally a
John Huston project) into something much more substantial.
THE
PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN (1934)
Few on-screen performers are more important
to the early development of the American cinema than Douglas Fairbanks. Though
his star faded with the coming of sound, the influence of Fairbanks and his
wife Mary Pickford as the first couple of Hollywood cannot be underestimated.
Along with Charlie Chaplin, Fairbanks defined
movie stardom with his oversized personality and athleticism, turning heroes
like D’Artagnan, Zorro, Robin Hood and the Thief of Bagdad into versions of
himself.
His last starring role was in this biting satire about the aging Spanish playboy, Don Juan. Trying to avoid a reunion with his wife (the film is filled with jokes about marriage), the still beloved Don Juan slips out of Seville after a young doppelganger is killed in a swordfight by a jealous husband.
The picture’s centerpiece is the funeral of
Don Juan, observed with amusement by Don Juan and his friend. Attended by
dozens of women, most who never meet the famous Lothario, they are all
inconsolable at his demise.
Like an actor without a hit film, Don
Juan, under an assumed name, leaves town, but doesn’t much like being an
undistinguished middle-age man (Fairbanks was 51 and quite thick around the
middle). When he returns to Seville, expecting to be hailed as a returning
hero, no one can believe it is him. No, say all the women, Don Juan was
younger, taller and more handsome.
This British-made film, by legendary
director-producer Alexander Korda (he produced almost every important UK film
from the 1930s and ‘40s), is based on the French play, “L’Homme a la Rose.”
No doubt, Fairbanks saw the dual joke, on
the legend of Don Juan and the legend of Doug Fairbanks, but plays the role to
the hilt, unafraid to play the fool.
It turned out to be a worthy final turn—his
only other appearance was as himself in “Ali Baba Goes to Town” (1936)—as he
died after a heart attack in 1939 at age 56.
A
MAN CALLED ADAM (1966)
The history of jazz is littered with
brilliant musicians whose addiction ruined both their careers and personal
lives. This independent picture offers an uncompromising profile of fictional
coronet player Adam Johnson (Sammy Davis Jr. at his most anguished), whose
drinking, coupled with his anger over the daily racism he encounters, wreaks
havoc on his relationships on and off the stage.
The opening sequence in this Leo
Penn-directed film (Sean’s father) immediately defines the temperamental
performer: While on a nightclub stage with his band, he loses his cool with a
heckler and then walks out on the gig. Then, returning to his apartment
(apparently after being on the road for awhile) he flips out because an old man
is staying there (Louis Armstrong, playing a legendary trumpeter) along with
the man’s granddaughter (a 42-year-old Cicely Tyson still playing a “young
lady”).
It’s a bit confusing as to why they are
there, but there’s nothing unclear about Adam’s character. He’s an angry,
unpleasant drunk who treats others like they’re fools and practically sexually
assaults Tyson’s Claudia. Turns out, Armstrong’s Willie Ferguson is an old
friend and mentor to Adams, which he remembers the next morning.
We are used to seeing Davis, one of the
most acclaimed entertainers of the 20th Century, as a sycophant in
Frank Sinatra films or as a slick hipster along side buddy Peter Lawford (who
plays an arrogant business manager in this film.) Playing the hard to like,
hot-tempered Adam, who manages to hurt everyone he comes in contact with, is a
stretch for the singer, but, overall, he creates a convincing character, whose
tragic past defines him.
Armstrong, in addition to being, arguably,
America’s greatest musician, had a lengthy career in film, mostly playing
himself and usually getting a chance to display his trumpet virtuosity. But
he’s done well in straight-acting roles, including with longtime pal Bing
Crosby in “Pennies from Heaven” (1936) and as Ralph Meeker’s buddy in “Glory
Alley” (1952). Here, he has a couple of poignant scenes as he tries to point
Adam on the straight-and-narrow.
The cast also includes Ossie Davis, a friend who tries to smooth things out after Adam’s inevitable outbursts; Frank Sinatra Jr. as a young trumpeter who Adam takes under his wing; and musicians Mel Torme and Kai Winding as themselves. Needless to say, the score is filled with superb jazz; the great Nat Adderley (brother of Cannonball Adderley) plays Davis’ cornet parts.
Made in an era when Hollywood rarely
examined the lives of African Americans with anything resembling reality (even
Sidney Poitier films were typically set in a very white setting), “A Man Called
Adam” stands out as presenting both the racist barriers even a successful Black
man faced and a lead character with a litany of problems. Lester and Tina Pine
penned the edgy script; he went on to write the screenplay for “Claudine”
(1974), which earned Diahann Carroll an Oscar nomination.
Penn, who only made one more feature in
his long career—“Judgment in Berlin” (1988)—directed episodes of virtually
every important TV series from the mid-1960s to the 1990s (“Dr. Kildare,” “I
Spy,” “Bonanza,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” “Kojak,” “Columbo,” “In the Heat of the
Night” and “Matlock,” to name a few.)
FLAG
DAY (2021)
As a director, Sean Penn is clearly Leo’s
son. Despite bigger budgets, his films have all the characteristics of B-movie
indies, focused on those on the fringe, struggling to find their place in an
often-unwelcoming world.
At his best, in “The Pledge” (2001) with
Jack Nicholson, and “Into the Wild” (2007), about the young man who found a
home in the Alaskan wilderness, Penn is a strong director of actors who pushes his
performers to dig deep into the emotions of relationships.
That’s his intention in his newest film,
but there just isn’t enough substance to sustain interest in the story of these
characters. Too much of the film plays like a two-person acting class exercise.
Penn plays John Vogel, a failed conman,
bank robber, drug addict and wannabe entrepreneur who tries to maintain a
relationship with his equally rebellious daughter Jennifer (played by his
real-life daughter Dylan). In some ways, the movie could be seen as a father’s
vanity project to promote his daughter’s acting career (the 30-year-old has had
just a few indie roles).
This true story, based on the Jennifer Vogel’s
book, keeps repeating the same cycle: Jennifer reaches out to her father, who
disappoints her again after they both remember better times. It grows
especially tiresome when the director keeps going back to the same car trip
when the daughter and (mostly ignored) son were young. The same hazy shots of
nostalgia are reused at least four times.
Jennifer eventually overcomes her horrible
childhood (the mother is equally irresponsible and, of course, there’s a sleazy
step-father) to become a working journalist. But I had a problem believing that
she could gain admission to the University of Minnesota after dropping out of
high school and then lying about it on her application. Maybe that was possible
in the 90s; today she’d need a 4.0 and tons of extra-curriculars.
Both Penns give good performances (the
cast also includes son Hopper playing his son), but except for close friends of
the family, I can’t imagine anyone caring about this predictable, slow-moving
story.
PHOTOS:
Oscar Isaac in "The Card Counter."
Douglas Fairbanks, with Merle Oberon, in "The Private Life of Don Juan."
Sammy Davis Jr. and Cicely Tyson in "A Man Called Adam."
