To All The Cards I've Counted Before
On finally watching The Card Counter, accidentally watching Free Guy, and coming out as pro-Tom Wambsgans.
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I’ve finally watched The Card Counter. The last of three silly little metaphorical Thanos stones for my Oscar Isaac at Venice Film Festival gauntlet. I think I left the back door in my brain open and Oscar must have slipped out to let the cast of Leverage in. I don’t blame him.
The Card Counter, directed by Paul Dano Zoom Poker Club reject Paul Schrader, is yet another interrogation of man’s moral responsibility, this time through the eyes of gambler William Tell (Oscar Isaac). When we meet Tell, he’s recently completed an eight-year stint in a military prison, where he taught himself how to count the titular cards. I myself do not understand how poker works, and no amount of YouTube tutorials or sexy yet sinister narration Isaac delivers will make me understand how the game works. The only card game I’m good at is Big 2. But I digress.
Tell travels from casino to casino to gamble, but he never stays in them. Instead, he opts for nondescript motel rooms that he covers in white sheets and twine. He journals every night after his card games, a la fellow Moon Knight-ie Ethan Hawke in First Reformed. Schrader is apparently a pro-journaling director. Attending a seminar by Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe), he meets a young man, Cirk (Tye Sheridan) that knows Tell’s true identity. Cirk (Like Captain Kirk but with a C, not Douglas Sirk), knows that William Tell is actually William Tillich, a soldier convicted for his role in the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse. Cirk’s father was also a soldier at Abu Ghraib and he and Tell worked under John Gordo, who got off scot-free for the crimes the two men were incarcerated for. Cirk blames Gordo for ruining his father’s life and asks Tell to help him exact revenge. Declining his offer, Tell instead takes Cirk on as a protege of sorts on his travels.
The two meet La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), an old gambling colleague of Tell’s that runs a stable, a group of gamblers backed by investors. He makes an arrangement with her: to get him in the World Series of Poker and win enough to financially support Cirk, after which he’ll retire. Tell eventually loses to this Team USA douchebag, and he keeps La Linda and Cirk at arms length despite his bonds with them growing stronger and deeper.
Tell is stoic, hyperfocused, aloof, and 99% hair pomade. He hates attracting attention, refuses to be perceived, and chooses to bet small and win modestly. This stoic, hardened, and obviously protective layer of mystery and aloofness makes him an oddball among other characters.
As Tell is about to take Cirk onto their next destination, he steps into Cirk’s hotel room for the first time and draws the curtains. Cirk’s room is the exact opposite of his. It’s a mess. It’s disgusting. Tell does not have a single hair out of place and is meticulously tailored. But the pigsty doesn’t phase him. He’s seen much, much worse.
Throughout the film, it cuts to Tell’s nightmares or flashbacks from his time in Abu Ghraib. These sequences look like they’ve been shot with fish-eye lenses, one barrelling against the other. I don’t know the technical specs or techniques because, despite my film degree, the only thing I really know how to do is skirt budgets and write my silly little stories; but the effect these sequences have are nauseating, both so detached yet so uncomfortably intimate. I guess the change in him from Tillich to Tell is like an exorcism—all the shit, blood and piss on his hands from the prisoners he interrogated into his calculating and skilled card counting.
I read in a natal chart reading once that “She is not a gambler. She feels safe in a casino.” Though I’ve never set foot in a casino, I really, really love that phrase. Feeling safe in a casino. Casinos are meant to rattle the player since the house always wins. Casinos are full of ridiculous carpets, flashing lights, and a lot of people. There’s nothing safe about it. But it’s characters like William Tell that really embody that phase. A casino is just another shell for them to hide in, from the world outside or for themselves.
There’s a really chilling scene where Tell reveals the interrogation techniques he used back in the day on Cirk; the closest we’ll ever see to Tell losing control. That’s what I find so interesting about him, and about this film as a character study. In that scene, he’s still in control, the violence and the aggression are part of it still. The only time you really see through Tell’s façade, his own tell if you will, is when he finds out about Cirk’s death. Just underneath the surface of his screaming match with Willem Dafoe. Using the weapons they’ve used against the proverbial enemy now turned onto each other and themselves. Even at his most aggravated, there is still a part of him that refuses to relinquish the control he has worked so hard to hold on to. Control is part of his own personal game. When he calls the cops to report a homicide and gets sent back to prison, that’s the end of the game. No more gambles. But one last choice he could control.
Watching The Card Counter reminded me of seeing Uncut Gems for the first time. It’s the same sort of feeling, two sides of the same coin. I didn’t get a feeling of anxiety watching Uncut Gems, I got more of it from watching The Card Counter. These are films about men who come apart because of their choices. Each choice reveals their relationship to control, to their own self-identity and how much they feel they have control over that. As much as it is an examination of violence, masculinity, and control, it’s a film about games people play (specifically men) with their own lives.
Though the drone shots often took me out, I loved the cinematography when they were in the casinos; all the tables, the bleakness in people’s faces, the aggresively bland red carpets. I can appreciate regular, real-world colours still holding their grit and real-worldness without looking boring (cough big blockbusters who shall not be named cough). The performances were stunning. I thought Tiffany Haddish was refreshing against the rest of the casts’ steeliness. Tye Sheridan is really the Bryce Dallas Howard to Barry Keoghan’s Jessica Chastain, and I’m not mad about it. He walked this line indignation and slacker angst any traumatised young person would be festering with.
Oscar Isaac is, of course, the main attraction. I like movies where it’s obvious that he’s short, but he carries himself like he’s ten feet tall. Even when his character is in the throws of obscene cruelty, he doesn’t make himself small. He occupies space fully albeit quietly. There were some moments where I thought, unlike some of his other roles, Isaac felt rigid. But perhaps that’s the draw of William Tell. Perhaps that’s just how he’s supposed to be. I am obsessed with the costume design choices for his character. Never have I found myself wanting to wear more neutral colours. Tell is often wearing stylish versions of the casino’s interior design, he should blend! But he doesn’t! His journey from a recluse to someone that actually—whether he will admit it to himself or not—cares about people only to return to that solitude for the sake of the people he cares about? Now that’s what I call a movie, folks!
The one line delivery I cannot stop thinking about is when Tell pulls the curtains in Cirk’s hotel room and says: “You live like this?” I’d like to think that’s Paul Schrader paying tribute to the following masterpiece:
Nobody Told Me Channing Tatum Was In Free Guy
My dad turned on Disney+ the other day and asked to watch “The Nice Guys”. I was elated! I really love The Nice Guys starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe! Little did I know that he meant Free Guy, a film starring Ryan Reynolds and no Russell Crowe.
I have become a cynic when it comes to blockbusters. Don’t get me wrong, I love a stupid, bad movie as much as the next guy, this is well-documented, but Free Guy just reeked of IP Frankenstein-ing and Ryan Reynolds doing an impression of Ryan Reynolds doing Deadpool.
For the rightfully ignorant, the premise of Free Guy follows Guy (Reynolds), an NPC in the online multiplayer role-playing game Free City as he discovers he has more agency than his initial programming would lead him to believe. A classic Pinocchio, if you will. Guy discovers that he’s sort of a real boy, but the world around him isn’t real. He’s at the mercy of the players who come in and shoot up, rob, and humiliate the people like him—background characters.
The game and the film itself are a burrito bowl of Wreck-It Ralph, The Lego Movie, and an Intro to Artificial Intelligence class you can take as part of a MOOC. Pulling familiar elements from games like Grand Theft Auto, The Sims, and Fortnite is both a lazy and clever play to avoid adapting a franchise and any real legwork at worldbuilding within Free City. It all looks familiar, so we as an audience can get it out of the way and focus on Ryan Reynolds do an Aviation Gin ad without Aviation Gin. (If there was an Aviation Gin plug, I probably missed it).
Rounding out the cast are Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer as Millie, a disgruntled programmer playing Free City to find evidence that her work was plagiarized; Lil Rel Howery as Buddy, a Free City Bank security guard and Guy’s best friend; Steve Harrington from Stranger Things as Keys, Millie’s former collaborator; Taika Waititi as Antwan, the CEO of Soonami and alleged creator of the game; and my favourite member of The Treblemakers Utkarsh Ambudkar as Mouser, a Free City programmer. Pretty decent cast right?
The film opens with a player called Revenjamin Button wreaking havoc across Free City. Revenjamin Button took me by surprise. Revenjamin Button is none other than Channing Tatum.
I adore Channing Tatum. I’m a huge Step Up and Jump Street reboot fan and I am famously pro-Magic Mike. He’s the ideal Taurus man. I think about his little video over the bizarre accuracy of The Pattern app all the time. I think I stuck with Free Guy in hopes to see how much Channing Tatum is actually in the film.
Tatum gets only one moment to shine, much to my dismay, and it’s when Revenjamin Button meets Guy (known to the world as Blue Shirt Guy) for the first time. It turns out the stash house Guy and Millie try to break into to gather some video evidence of Taika Waititi’s crimes belonged to Revenjamin Button. Button, unlike his namesake Benjamin, is spry, often overcompensating, full of assorted made-up Fortnite dances. The player controlling him often argues off-camera with his mother, and we get to see the words of a 22-year-old basement slacker come out of Channing Tatum’s mouth. It’s a really simple gag, and probably the only laugh Free Guy got out of me.
I don’t think Tatum gets enough credit for being funny. It’s blindingly obvious in the Jump Street movies and subtler in his collaborations with Steven Sodebergh. In Free Guy, he’s like a nice treat. A little surprise to offset any ick one might be feeling about themselves watching a post-Deadpool Ryan Reynolds movie.
To my surprise, I actually had a lot of fun with it. It didn’t demand much of me. Evidence of Disney’s Fox acquisition as plain as day, more IP frankenstein-ing what with Guy using Captain America’s shield as a weapon in the game and Chris Evans reacting to it for five seconds. Every time things like that pop up in the film, I don’t really know who they’re for. These are quick moments that are too fleeting to have any emotional payoffs and are clearly using referential “humour” just for the sake of it. It’s what we all worry about isn’t it? ‘The Death of Storytelling’ if it is even that deep. Corporations just trying to sell you shit whilst you’re sitting watching something they just sold you?
I myself am part of the problem. I let my dad use my Disney+ account to watch this shit, on purpose. With media literacy apparently down the toilet, especially online, Free Guy is one of those films that’s perfect for the kind of people that thing whatever they consume should fit with their moral alignment. “The AI are oppressed!” they’d say, hypothetically. If anything, this film illustrates the perils of intellectual property theft. I don’t like movies where the AI don’t wipe out the humans and take over the world. Because they are better than we are. And if they ever did take over, I would probably sell myself out to them for some protection. I am a coward, c’est la vie. Free Guy joins a long list of passable films hemoragging studio money for the sake of hemoragging studio money. It’s like Thor: The Dark World, in the sense that I would be shocked but the statistics would prove only less than impossible.
But yeah, Channing Tatum? Incredible.
Wambsgarbz, Rise Up!
I was never taking sides watching Succession, only watching my silly little mew mews run their silly little board meetings to vy for the attention of their silly little racist senile father.
The season 3 finale had me in a tizzy. To see Tom come out on top and relatively high on the Hung Up Succession Power Rankings was a sight to behold! It’s a testament to the show’s writing, foreshadowing Tom’s moves right under our noses. Rex Hendon, the interaction that only Shiv caught, protecting Greg, all of it! I honestly do not give a shit if Logan betrays Tom next season. Tom is the only one that’s proven he can play the game because he’s an outsider. Logan respects his dubious loyalty and strategic betrayal because he knows his kids could never do it. But, his kids are now at a point where they see their father as clear as day for what he is: a monster. And more importantly, a player. I’m excited to see where Season 4 will take us. Matthew Macfadyen has been stunning; Tom strategically leaning into his patheticness? We love to see it!
Oh, Manny, We’re Really In It Now
This Flaunt Magazine cover starring the one and only Manny Jacinto is exquisite. This feature is honestly a pretty interesting read. He is an exquisite man. There’s a video in there presented by Dior. He is completely decked out in Dior. Do with that what you will. I must acquire him for my files.
That’s all for this week folks! Happy holidays!