TWO MINI-REVIEWS

 

 

The Card Counter (dir. Paul Schrader)

Famed screenwriter/director Paul Schrader doing a film starring Oscar Isaac as a roaming Vegas gambler with a past, costarring Tye Sheridan as an eager-beaver tagalong, Tiffany Haddish as his patron/eventual love interest, and Willem Dafoe as the antagonist? Sounds like a winning combination, right?

Well…not for me.

Not that this was a bad movie, but it was a little too slow for my taste (and this is coming from the guy who liked The Green Knight), and ultimately didn’t add up to much for me. All the actors, particularly Isaac, are giving a really good performance, and the mostly-electronic musical score by newcomer Robert Levon Been is appropriately haunting, along with some great cinematography by DP Alexander Dynan. But overall, I was kind of left disappointed.

Maybe I’ll just have to watch this again when it comes to home media, but yeah, kind of a letdown.

Oldboy (dir. Spike Lee)

…yes, really.

This remake of the classic South Korean thriller really is as bad as you’ve heard from the film community, but there are times when it tips over into unintentional hilarity – particularly when it comes to Sharlto Copley’s hammy performance as the villain – that I actually kind of recommend seeing it out of morbid curiosity.

But other than that, this represents a low point for director Spike Lee’s filmography – oddly enough, this doesn’t feel like a Spike Lee film. Other than his signature double-dolly and some editing quirks, you could slap McG or Brett Ratner’s name on this, and it wouldn’t make a difference. DP Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography and composer Roque Banos’s score get the job done, but those are pretty much the only consistently good elements in this misguided remake.

And if you’re wondering how they handle the twist, the short answer is…not well. Without giving too much away, they change the motivation of the villain and a few other elements regarding to the twist, resulting in something that was originally horrifying and tragic suddenly becoming trashy and exploitative in a way that I’m not sure the director meant.

So…yeah, not a fan.