The review below takes an approach and tone worthy of the material, demonstrating a critical manner reminiscent of Bazin, particularly in considering the film within the context of Shrader's body of work and artistic nature. Shrader is apparently not slowing down or falling under the weight of age anymore than Bresson did. I could argue that this film coupled with First Reformed, his last directorial/writing effort, represent some of his finest accomplishments as an auteur. As someone that holds Bresson's films, Notes on the Cinematographer, and the Taxi Driver script as sacred precedents of filmmaking, may I say, extraordinary work, sir. I look forward to what comes next.
"For Schrader, French filmmaker Robert Bresson is the inexhaustible fount. He’s one of the three filmmakers treated in his thesis-turned-seminal-film-text Transcendental Style In Film: Dreyer, Ozu, Bresson and the one Schrader cribs from almost obsessively. (I’m not saying that like it’s a bad thing, honest.) Schrader calls “The Card Counter” one of his “a man sitting in a room” or “man at a table” films; that man originated with Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest.” That priest was a diarist, and his writings were reinforced with the words read aloud in voiceover. Schrader made Travis Bickle a diarist, and specified the same kind of voiceover, which “Taxi Driver” director Martin Scorsese buttressed with some visual cues out of Godard, who was well influenced by Bresson himself."
Link: The Card Counter Film Review (2021), 'Roger Ebert.com'
