Venice Review: Paul Schrader’s ‘The Card Counter’

Focus Features landed another specialty success with , Paul Schrader’s biggest directorial opening in over 30 years since 1987’s Light of Day and with a likely No. 8 ranking at the North American box office this weekend.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorCinematographer Alexander Dynan got to know director Paul Schrader working on “First Reformed” and an earlier film, “Dog Eat Dog.”Dynan developed a shorthand with Schrader and with colorist Tim Merick that helped him light and color Schrader’s “The Card Counter,” which is in cinemas now.Told in an urgent, immersive style, the film follows William (Oscar Issac), a lonely and tortured man who once served at Abu Ghraib.

Lily Moayeri When the late Michael Been of the Call was working on the soundtrack to the 1992 film “Light Sleeper,” his then-teenage son, Robert Levon Been, later of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, would hide when the film’s director, Paul Schrader, came to Been’s home to check on the music’s progress.“Everything was recorded in our house, DIY style, on analog, in the living room,” recalls Been, speaking from Vienna, Austria.

In shades of the gunmetal gray that has become the grading palette of choice for Serious Historical Epics — possible because arterial blood spray shows up so nice and red against it —Ridley Scott‘s starry, surprisingly engaging “Rashomon“-inflected “The Last Duel” opens on the wintry December day of the duel in question.

Paul Schrader’s moves from Venice into 579 theaters this weekend — the first in a welcome stream of specialty films from the Lido, Telluride and Toronto that could, perhaps maybe, buck up the struggling arthouse market this fall. The film is 90% certified fresh and hails from Focus Features, which presented one of the rare specialty hits of recent months, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.

You would have to shuffle a lot of movie ideas to come up with one that pairs a card sharp with the horrors of Abu Ghraib.But writer-director Paul Schrader has for some time known his cards, playing variations of the same hand over and over again.

More than a year ago, it was reported that Jon Bernthal was signed to star in a new TV series inspired by the film, “American Gigolo.” At the time, not much was known about the series, specifically how involved the film’s writer-director, Paul Schrader, would be. Well, according to the filmmaker’s recent interview with GQ, he’s definitely not involved, and he honestly doesn’t know how a TV series based on the film would work in 2021.

The word “cinema” brings to mind many different thoughts and images. Some people might think of a Wong Kar-wai film.

“True Things” is a “romantic” drama that is not romantic in the slightest. In the tradition of films like Catherine Breillat’s “Romance” and Adrian Lyne’s “9 ½ weeks,” the focus is on what is revealed about a female protagonist by how much she is willing to sacrifice to briefly experience passion with an unreliable yet sexy man.

Andrea Bocelli On The Lido

Like finding a grubby, balled-up bill in your spangly g-string and uncrumpling it to discover doughy old Ben Franklin staring benignly back at you, Ana Lily Amirpour‘s third feature is a sweet, scuzzy surprise made all the sweeter/scuzzier because you don’t know quite what you did to deserve it.

A poetic meditation on film, history, and loss, “Three Minutes – A Lengthening” gives a glimpse into a lost world and then unpacks just how much can be learned from that brief fragment. While on a grand tour of Europe in 1938, David Kurtz, a Polish-American man, traveled to Nasielsk, the town of his birth, and brought with him a 16mm camera filled with Kodachrome, a novelty at the time.

“Why does it take so long to break up? Why does no one talk about the fact that [divorce] is endless trauma?” Jessica Chastain asks in a heartbreaking moment from HBO’s devastating marital and breakup mini-series “Scenes From A Marriage.” A modern adaptation of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s brutally emotionally honest 1970s series, now written, directed, and executive produced by Israeli filmmaker Hagai Levi, (“Our Boys,” “The Affair,” and “In Treatment”), this new HBO version is intimate,

There are shades of Ruben Ostlund’s “The Square”, if it were remade to target the film world, in Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat’s crowd-pleasing Spanish comedy “Official Competition” starring Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. Controlled pacing, visual punchlines, and an insider knowledge of the varied pretensions within filmmaking make this a consistently amusing – if never downright hilarious – vehicle for the well-honed comic sides of two of Spain’s most famous exports.

Benedetta star Virginie Efira plays a woman leading a double life in drama Madeleine Collins which premiered in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival today. Also doubling up in Venice by serving on the competition jury, Efira puts in a terrific performance in Antoine Barraud’s taut relationship pic that veers into thriller territory.

Ruth Wilson puts in a riveting performance in Venice Film Festival Horizons entry True Things, an impressive follow up to director Harry Wootliff’s debut Only You. Wilson and Jude Law are also among the producers for this intense story, based on the novel True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies.

“A great man doesn’t seek to lead; he is called to it,” Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) says somberly to his son Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), in Denis Villeneuve’s dynastic epic space odyssey “Dune.” The Duke speaks to duty, purpose, and destiny, but the words are laced with burden and uncertainty for Paul, seemingly undecided about his future. When Villeneuve (“Sicario,” “Prisoners”) once spoke about making “Dune” as a “’Star Wars’ for adults,” he wasn’t kidding.

“A great man doesn’t seek to lead; he is called to it,” Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) says somberly to his son Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), in Denis Villeneuve’s dynastic epic space odyssey “Dune.” The Duke speaks to duty, purpose, and destiny, but the words are laced with burden and uncertainty for Paul, seemingly undecided about his future. When Villeneuve (“Sicario,” “Prisoners”) once spoke about making “Dune” as a “’Star Wars’ for adults,” he wasn’t kidding.

Actor Oscar Isaac has been known to make character studies alongside large studio movies throughout his career; before “Star Wars,” he was making things like Zack Snyder‘s “Sucker Punch,” “X-Men: Apocalypse,” and Ridley Scott‘s “Robin Hood.” READ MORE: Oscar Isaac On Returning To Superheroes In ‘Moon Knight’ After ‘X-Men: Apocalypse‘: “We’re Making Something That’s Quite Different” However, while speaking to the press in Venice via Deadline, Isaac noted that he needed a break from green