Josh Carroll

This is one of best shows that has ever been on TV. Vince Gilligan has a solid rule for his writers' room that NOBODY can say "Wouldn't it be cool if..." This avoids stupid plot contrivances that plague lesser shows like The Outsider, Westworld, and most others. Instead, they create a realistic situation and force their characters to act consistently and logically. It's superb writing, and from there it just gets better. Great direction, superlative acting, tight editing, and perfect VFX keep this show tense, engaging, and deeply human.

Long on concept, short on story. Women and people of color are about as meaningful as rodeo animals, seeming to exist only to allow the men to posture and react. I came to it with high hopes, but man is it disappointing. You also need to watch with subtitles on because the accents are often indecipherable (especially with all the metjod actor mumbling)

The Card Counter holds a lot of promise in its first half. It reminds me a lot of Hard Eight in the relationship between the protagonist and his scion. However, the narrative soon leaves logic behind, pushing the characters into situations that don't make sense. The unsatisfying denouement is especially galling, giving no resolution or clarity to what is already a muddy story. Shrader's best work was Taxi Driver, where he used the voiceover to give a distorted POV of a lonely and troubled man. The voiceover for this film is s dumb overview of blackjack and poker (referenced in the script as "for dummies," which this is) and even Oscar Isaac, who has done amazing things with much smaller parts, can't breathe life into it. Incredibly disappointing waste of a great cast and a decent premise.

Badly written dud. The backstory (which was much better told in Boardwalk Empire) is just another piece of boring exposition. The "present-day" scenario in which we see the struggling writer getting Keitel's Lansky to tell the "true story" plays like My Dinner With Andre, except with really dull actors. Keitel and Worthington do what they can, but the script is devoid of any life whatsoever. Lansky was the consummate survivor and the story of how he cleaned up the Cuban casinos is a terrific tale that Coppola barely hinted at with Hyman Roth, but the few minutes of Godfather devoted to him are worth more than this entire movie. Skip it.