Isaac gives a finely judged performance. His Tell is a tightly controlled but outwardly affable character who behaves as if he's given up all ambition beyond the desire to stay out of trouble.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 30, 2021

The Card Counter is an uncomfortable, meditative movie about guilt, risk, retribution, and the way America operates. It's also an extraordinary example of Oscar Isaac's power.

| Nov 23, 2021

The film has a broodingly commanding central performance. It's a pity, then, that much of its promise is squandered by sloppiness, both in the writing and elsewhere.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 7, 2021

For all its moody moralising, The Card Counter is a slowburn bluff with little new to offer.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 5, 2021

[A] clunky, self-serious dirge...

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 5, 2021

The film-maker shows his unblunted gift for writing riveting dialogue, peering into the heart of contemporary America and finding its black spots, while Isaac proves a solid bet.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2021

There's a horrible, queasy urgency to this high-stakes game.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2021

An ace in the hole from a filmmaker himself unafraid to gamble.The Card Counter's pacing won't be for everyone, but Schrader fans will be all-in on this gripping portrait of lament.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 1, 2021

The movie has real moral terror at its center. It gets ugly: It gives that word fresh resonance. This is where it gets things right -- what will, one hopes, make it worth remembering.

| Sep 24, 2021

Often prone to wearing thin his compulsions, Schrader's fealty to the work of Robert Bresson and his penchant for desultory narrative and aesthetic caprices are here tempered by exceptional performances from Isaac and Haddish...

| Sep 17, 2021

The best way to describe Paul Schrader's engrossing revenge drama [...] may also be the best way to describe the life of its protagonist: it's not for the faint of heart.

| Sep 16, 2021

Yes, life is a prison, life is a casino. It is not, however, a movie, or at least not "The Card Counter."

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 16, 2021

The Card Counter, the latest film from Paul Schrader, is undeniably auteurist...

| Sep 16, 2021

Schrader cuts from shot to shot and scene to scene as if tracing crudely covered wounds, the unhealed scars from the amputation of vital parts of the soul.

| Sep 14, 2021

The motif is specific, but the filmmaker deploys it to great effect: slowly drawing the audience into the psyche of a man who grows more frightening -- and more compelling -- the more you learn about him.

| Sep 14, 2021

This is a powerful film that fully earns its power.

| Original Score: A- | Sep 12, 2021

Rather schematic... Oscar Isaac, for me, the performance was a little bit too reigned in.

| Sep 10, 2021

Oscar Isaac is tremendous as always... I didn't love it and I really wanted to.

| Sep 10, 2021

I think the incongruities of "The Card Counter" also give it its power. Schrader's film is so self-evidently the impassioned work of a singularly feverish mind that its flaws add to its humanity.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 10, 2021

It's not for everybody, and it's far from perfect, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a more thrillingly necessary use of the filmmaking form this year.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 10, 2021