Black Jack
Former military interrogator William Tell (Oscar Isaac) has resigned himself to the repetitive numbness of counting cards at blackjack tables across the country. He fills his head with numbers and cards instead of remembering the torture he was forced to inflict by the US Government on inmates at Abu Ghraib1 and the fact that he took pride in doling out that suffering. Any time Tell recollects his horrible past, The Card Counter (writer/director Paul Schrader’s latest film) changes from an Edward Hopper-esque distance to an uncomfortably intimate closeness. The flashbacks to the torture facility are filmed in what appears to be a VR camera, lending a fisheye look that gives the audience an intense amount of detail of the cruelty happening 360° around them. Every detail is visible. Every act of violence the US did toward people in the name of “The War on Terror” is seen, so it is up to Tell’s narration to fill us in on the awful smells of such a place. Conversely, there’s a comfort to the sameness to the casinos Tell goes to and when he orders drinks, he tends to just copy someone else’s order. He blots out the details of the hotels he stays at by removing all the art on the walls and encasing all the furniture with white sheets and twine. This seems to be in an effort to absorb as few details as possible.
This is Paul Schrader’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed First Reformed (2017) starring Ethan Hawke as Pastor Toller, a priest who becomes a radical environmentalist. He can not grapple with the sins of Man against God’s creation, Earth, and takes drastic measures to do something about it. Tell has a lot in common with Toller, both of them are pushed toward great violence after being introduced to impassioned young men. For Tell, it is the son of another interrogator at Abu Ghraib, who wishes to enact the same violence that was done to the prisoners to a former-commanding officer at Abu Ghraib, Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe), as retribution for his actions against the inmates and for the mental scarring he inflicted on his father. Tell is hesitant, but audiences who have seen other movies written by Schrader (films like First Reformed and Taxi Driver) can anticipate what is to come.
The film is stylishly moody with beautiful cinematography and an excellent ambient score by Robert Levon Been that I’m still listening to, but the most poignant piece, the “enhanced interrogation” perpetrated by US Army, US Intelligence Agencies, and private contractors, is haunting. In a meta way, The Card Counter is enhanced by the fact that it was released on the weekend of September 11th 2021, ten years after 9/11. That tragedy marked a distinct rise in patriotism and nationalism across the country as well as xenophobia. One character in The Card Counter, a rival in the casino circuit, wears an American flag tank top and American flag hat. Every victory he achieves is followed by him and his cronies chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” despite the fact that he’s not even American. William Tell sees through this blatant shallow patriotism and thinks to himself how much he’d like to hurt this man. Considering Tell knows what horrible things the USA has done, I don’t blame him.
The Card Counter is in theaters now.
Hurt People Hurt People
Despite being a little over a year and a half late to the airing of the series finale, I managed to finish the Netflix original series Bojack Horseman. I alluded to watching the series in the Stray Observations section of a previous issue and drew comparisons to showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s incredible collection of short stories, Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory, in that the surrealist comedy of both the show and the short stories only emphasizes the human emotions in them. The world is a crazy and weird place and, often, its unfair, but the realest thing is your feelings and the people you care about’s feelings and everyone you don’t care about’s feelings.
Throughout this tragicomic cartoon, the titular Bojack Horseman (voiced by a gravelly Will Arnett), tries reckon with his own feelings and how his actions affect everyone around him. He is a washed-up 90s sitcom star who treats everyone around him like shit (through spite, apathy, or accident) and drinks all day. Bojack is not unlike other contemporary television alcoholic male anti-heroes, like Mad Men’s Don Draper or, to compare to another animated program, Rick and Morty’s Rick Sanchez, in that he had a hard painful life that he has no choice but to inflict on others and no matter how many times he is confronted with an opportunity to change, grow, and ultimately become a better person, far too often he picks the easier option of remaining this static force of self pleasure. Bojack chooses to hurt those around him instead of accounting for his actions. The show never venerates this and, in fact, spends an entire season mocking that sort of pop culture infatuation with “cruel but cool” masculinity through a direct parody and through a strikingly timely depiction of the consequences of that sort of behavior.
Bojack Horseman is, at least after the first season, a really sad show because you see Bojack and his supporting cast of friends try over and over to build better lives for themselves, but like Sisyphus rolling the boulder uphill in purgatory only for it to roll back down, some absurd twist of fate or some cruelty by someone they know squanders their chance at an incrementally better life. Across the six seasons, you see these characters grow and their struggles change, but only because they get more experience living. Some of them don’t let their struggles shape who they are and, sometimes, let the struggles make themselves stronger. It would be totally optimistic only if it meant you didn’t have to suffer at all and to say that all that damage is “good damage”. You do get a small dose of optimism toward the end of the series when one character says, “Life’s a bitch and you die”, but another character retorts with “Yeah, but sometimes life’s a bitch and you keep living.”
All six seasons of Bojack Horseman are available for streaming on Netflix.
Stray Observations
James Wan’s latest horror film, Malignant, hit theaters and HBOMax this past weekend and, unlike his The Conjuring and his Insidious movies, Malignant is not a straightforward modernist horror movie. In fact, Malignant feels likes an 80s direct to video slasher movie with the aesthetic of a mid 2000s horror film, but with a big budget and Wan’s skillful direction behind the camera. There are a lot of strange creative choices2 by Wan here that make this feel like a lurid schlockfest, but the third act takes Malignant to whole other level. I would have had a whole article about Malignant, but I didn’t want to spoil anything here because the directions this movie takes are so wild and so much fun. I highly recommend it.
Below you’ll find an excellent fan poster of the film by the great horror artist Trevor Henderson:We saw the passing of legendary comedian Norm Macdonald this week. Best known for his time on SNL and his numerous talk show appearances (most notably with Conan O’Brien3). One thing I always enjoyed about Norm’s work is that it always seemed like, when he was telling a joke, that he could burst out laughing at his own joke at any point in the delivery. It was always clear he enjoyed telling the joke more than the reaction it would get. There are countless appearances, podcast episodes, and clips that highlight his skills as a comedian, but I will link my favorites here, here, and here. Lastly, here’s a quote by Norm himself: “It’s the greatest gig in the world, being alive. You get to eat at Denny’s, wear a hat, whatever you wanna do.”
Thanks for reading! I realize this issue is a little bit of a bummer, but, just to assure you, I’m doing great! Peachy even. I just happened to watch some dark stuff this past week. Remember to tell your loved ones about I Liked It! and to like, comment, and share my newsletter. Have a great weekend!
To learn more about the horrible abuse the US did at Abu Ghraib, read this New Yorker article. These “enhanced interrogation techniques” (but what later reports would call “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses”) were insisted by the US Government “that the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the military as a whole” despite reports concluding “to an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the highest levels.”
One of which is the inclusion of Safari Riot’s cover of “Where is My Mind” by The Pixies that’s included throughout the movie and, weirdly, it makes complete sense.
Conan wrote this particularly touching response to Norm’s death: