I and my girlfriend saw THE CARD PLAYER along with 3 other people at New York's Pioneer theatre last Monday (I hope the weekend screenings were a little more populated!) and I enjoyed it, although reviews describing it as CSI:ROMA aren't really inaccurate. I kind of liked Argento doing material more like his first 3 gialli (which aren't heavy on the gore) and I like the lead actress, although her character's behavior wasn't always consistent.

It's another one where I can easily see why some people don't like it, but I found it compelling and would see it again, and will purchase it when Anchor Bay puts it out (I don't need the region 2 -- I don't love it THAT much!)...

SPOILER AHEAD

******

One thing I felt botched was the final card game on the tracks...the way he filmed it, even on the big screen I couldn't actually see the cards drawn and had trouble with all the noise and mayhem figuring out how her hand beat his and what his complaint was -- I thought that was a real letdown...oh well.

Yeah, not so much. Went Sunday night, maybe 7 people there? And one laughed liked a loon throughout. (Note to Maestro Argento: DUBS SUCK)

The Card Player is a flawed film to be sure. It's a bit frustrating because I really enjoyed it but the problems with the film, which bothered me hardly at all, prevent me from being really emphatic in recommending it. I'm going to get the dvd as well, and probably watch it quite a bit.

The best thing about it, imo, is that after two solid(though flawed) films in a row, there's not a doubt in my mind that Argento is still capable of creating another genre classic. Just drop the dubbing, please. It isn't the 70s anymore.

Ahh, dispiriting. We often rail when we feel Euro-cult films are not offered their proper respect from dvd companies, critics, etc., and often with good reason when avoidable error is involved -- but how much money can really be spent on acquiring and refurbishing these films when the majority of people really, really seem to have little to no interest! While "The Card Player" didn't have much advertising for it's week-long Pioneer run, it did rate a mention in the Pioneer's ad in the Village Voice (the main alternative NYC newspaper), and did get reviewed in The Voice, Time Out NY, the New York Post and the New York Times (the paper of record!). The reviews were far from horrible, too -- I think the Voice trashed it, but the Times, Post and Time Out all gave it passing 2 and a half star reviews -- so why no takers? I saw a film produced by Hal Hartley the previous week at the same theatre -- not directed by him, mind you, only produced -- shot on digital video, with the biggest star being the guy who played HENRY FOOL. That got very bad reviews, save the Post, and there were probably 30-40 there for the final day. As a New York shot film, I assume friends and family may have been present, but still...

I don't think the next Argento film will be getting a week long slot, that's for sure! (and did we mention it was only 1-2 screenings a night?).

Oh, well...I'm glad I saw it...I liked it quite a bit, and Argento even when he isn't shooting wide still makes films for the big screen...

I posted my comments on the film itself on the old Mobius (I pray those archives are somehow recovered some day), so I won't go into it again here, but suffice to say, aside from a few really bad lines of dialogue and some dodgy dubbing of some of the secondary players, I'm a big fan of THE CARD PLAYER. I have the beautiful Czech DVD, and was going to make a trip to NYC last week to catch it projected on its final day at the Two Boots (Thursday). I also planned to catch the restored print of HEAVEN'S GATE (one of my favorite films) in the afternoon, but alas, things came up and I wasn't able to make it into the city afterall :(

I really SHOULD have gone to see it projected and wanted to, but it all fell through on Thursday morning and I wasn't able to. It was neat to see a photo from the film in the NY Post in their capsule reviews section, though.

Vincent

Damned with faint praise. A middling review doesn't provoke as much as a harshly negative or excessively positive one. And is thus largely unmemorable.

Incidentally how'd you find the projection quality at the Pioneer? I thought the film looked fantastic, but there were a couple of framing issues. Saw a couple of boom mikes drop dow, and excess head room in general.


Also nice to see Vincent back. Now we just need a post from Don May and it'll feel like the old Mobius!

More generalized faint praise for now...and we'll see what follows in a few days. I'm in the middle of the dvd (the nice Czech one) of this film and the good news is this is MUCH better than I feared. The slightly damning praise is it -so far- seems like only an expertly made routine thriller. The discipline is tonic for Argento (or the longtime Argento-watcher to see what a pro and master of his form he is at base). He wins the audition, passes the trial. Now let him make another crazy film while he's still in full control of his powers! ;-)

That's way too simplistic, and there are haunting elements already creeping up on me which hopefully vindicate this and partly compensate for my very bad form in breaking it in the middle and going away for several days before resuming.

Which is all to say, this is premature by half, but Gosh, it's good to have Mobius back! I just had to post.

Another note for the NYC Mobiusers(?) the Halloween marathon at the Pioneer is Italian Horror all the way. Demons, Gates of Hell, The Ghost, Deep Red, Beyond the Door 2, and Burial Ground.

Wish I could be there!

I saw THE CARD PLAYER, too, during its brief Pioneer run (at the end of a Sunday where I had also taken in HEAVEN'S GATE and TARNATION...whew!). I'd never been to the Pioneer and was favorably impressed; it's the little theater that could, and does (even with about five other people in attendance). This was the first time I had ever seen an Argento film on the big screen, and I'm grateful for the experience, even if THE CARD PLAYER was (at best) middling entertainment.

On a side note, I'm pleased to return to Mobius after a five-week hiatus. I was in Italy when the original site vanished and had no idea what was going on till recently. I feel like I've come in after Earth's destruction during an apocalyptic horror film and, like the rest of the survivors, I'm wondering what to do next as the community rebuilds. I guess this is a start.

Incidentally, while in Rome, my fiancee and I had the great good fortune to attend an evening outdoor concert on Capitoline Hill--Ennio Morricone conducting selections of his film scores, with the Royal Sinfonettia, a chorale group, and a soprano. It was amazing--really, tear-inducing beautiful--to hear the anthems from BATTLE OF ALGIERS and BURN!, not to mention the classic Leone film themes, performed live with the composer himself wielding the baton.

The framing was fine for my screening (9 pm on Monday), but when I was buying my tickets (at 7:30, thinking, heh, there might be a crowd!) a guy came out and complained about the framing, that it needed to be moved up a little (was he the first one who complained throughout the weekend?) -- the good news is apparently they don't ignore such requests, as my screening was fine!

I don't think middling reviews hurt the film as much as no star reviews! And that being said, I mostly meant that getting a review in the New York Times on the day of release means a whole lotta people are exposed to the film's release (same holds true for the Voice, etc.) -- while an Argento fan but not completist like my dad MIGHT not make the effort if the film was wholly ridiculed, he WOULD make the effort otherwise (it turns out he was in LA for the week).

It certainly wasn't a wildely exposed release, and Pioneer is in a semi-awkward location (Avenue A) that is not directly off any subway stop. My dad, who sees probably 3-6 films a week, has never actually been there...

And yes, the Pioneer has and is showing a lot of horror this month, and obscure, drive-in stuff in particular. I believe Halloween night is their all-night Italian horror fest -- I would go, but I know I'd fall asleep halfway through the second flick...

Would Vincent please (pretty please?) reconstruct his thoughts on the movie, his strong defence? It can be the 'short version' to start if that's easiest.

I'm into the last act and will be posting my critical comments in a couple days... and would like to get the old conversation going again. His partisanship would lend something needed to play off against. FWIW I quite like CARTAIO/CARDPLAYER so no pro-vs-con punch and judy show is in the works as far as my comments are concerned. Rather, I want to define my position a little better and also leave myself open to persuausion while I teeter among the latest Argento's 'undecided voters' ;-)

Thanks, if you, and any other past opiners, would. A more practical question. Given the difficulty of creating subthreads in this new format (which does have some advantages, I admit) : is it better to post a sub-topic like the one proposed as part of the ongoing CARDPLAYER scroll down flow...or post a new topic? It wouldn't be the first time Mobius has had multiple Dario-threads going simultaneously ;-)

I think TCP is arguably Argento's best film since OPERA. That might not be saying much though. At first, I wasn't happy with the 'look' of the film. Initially, especially in the early scenes, it had a rather made for TV look about it. I guess Argento was going for a more modern or claustrophobic feel to the film. Alot of the film takes place indoors.

I thoght the acting was excellent from the two leads but overall the film was rather subdued. It lacked the usual style and flourishes that I kind of expect from Argento.

But lets face it, he hasn't been working in top form for a while now. Rarely do any directors produce their best work in the twilight of their careers.

Can't share your assertion about directors rarely doing their best work in their twilight years, but it's a good set up...especially since I'm now convinced that CARD PLAYER is among Argento's best work, or at least shows him in top directorial form.

What changed my response from tepid to enthusiastic? The second half of the film was all it took. And it's not a half-a-good-film-better-than-none reaction, final flush (or was it a Royal straight?) of excitement and final credits still rolling.

Not at all. Argento took the rules of the all too familiar modern TV/movie policier and played by them expertly but pointlessly (it seemed) till midpoint, lulling me into oh-not-this-again mild disappointment...only then to start screwing with them in very old familar ways that came as a pleasant, shocking surprise.

As with genre exercises of his past, all is not as it seems, and engagement with "genre" on his part really signals a disengagement as far as the conventional 'human' content is concerned (for instance, the he and she of it here, the stalwart Brit-cop with a drinking and anger problem, the edgy female cop whose biological clock is ticking, a sub-PRIME SUSPECT scenario). He sets up the surfaces all the better to disrupt them with the paroxysms and pyrotechnics that really engage him.

From the moment our heroine glimpsed a mystery in a crystal ball, (Simonetti wind chimes tinkling behind) and she jutted her elbows intently forward to plunge into it all like an anime-warrior...I was hooked and reassured I was in familiar territory and a good home stretch.

In fact, as soon as Remo enters the story (a very likable character, cocksure and impulsive enough a 'winner' to drive things free and recklessly slam into the unknown), things are definitively headed in the right direction. There's a whole slew of great scenes from here on in. I'd single out Remo's big tease following "victory" at HQ. This is bravura storytelling, a dance of veils, a big Scheherezade. What is happening? He follows entranced, and so did I.

Admittedly, I'm a little prejudiced towards the end. The Gianicolo which figures there is my old haunts, and it's wonderful to see it used so well. That's only confirmation of Argento's confidence and success throughout, I'd say. It's very well made and 'put together', and the 'anachronisms' don't bother me a bit. In fact, I think they're all accounted for. This IS an Argento film, after all, and it must take place in a dubbed parallel universe Rome that's sometimes inexplicably America in its cultural details and with one foot in the seventies. That explains the video poker -so old school- sitting side by side with SMS messages. It's a style-signature, a mannerism, and it works far as I'm concerned. As does the fine score which references the very best of old, old video game tunes and eerie-haunting-atmospheric Italo horror. Very smart film.

AND a bizarre life imitating art imitating life coda. A few months after shooting must have wrapped, a young woman -a RAI employee- was found dead in the bushes in a spot 'John' drives right by halfway down the Gianicolo hill as he's seeking the killer. The ramble there has always been a crime-pages 'scenic deserted place' favorite where injections and murders and sex acts often figure in the popular imagination (the Tiber embankment also here is another classic). In this case, the real crime is part of an ongoing giallo with a thousand possible explanations re-reported as freshly as this morning. I thought it was as simple as her boyfriend stowing her body when she had an o.d. or a heart attack (as first supposed), but apparently the romance of a Giallo alla Argento outweighs simple things like likely explanations, and these stories hardly ever close definitively...the better to be imagined.

Its watchable but unremarkable. If Dario Argento didn't direct it there would be less to remember. I didn't find the mystery to be that mysterious. It came of as a more inspired by writings John Douglas or current American crime shows. THE CARD PLAYER dosen't seem abstract enough to clash or compare with contempary compitition. Furthermore, the visuals have a "realistic" feel but the mannerisims are unnatural even for a dubbed film. The romance between the two cops was just awful. The chemistry was none. Yet the movie IS a step up from most of Argento's output from the past ten years. There is also an optimistic vibe here that was so needed in movies like TRAUMA and SLEEPLESS. I also appreciate the attempt for a more natural flair. The Canal Murder can only be described as plain but was somehow a gripper.

In short I can only recommend the movie for "fans of the genra". Still I hope this a sign for better things to come from an older and experinced Dario Argento.

I actually think it's easier to recommend this one to more people than most Argento films; it's not the dizzying personal masterpiece that many of his films are, but people (like my girlfriend, who came with me) who like thrillers, Hitchcock, etc., but get truly disturbed by excessive violence can and apparently will like this (she cringed at some of the dead bodies, but liked the film quite a bit) -- I showed her OPERA,the better film I feel, On dvd, and she really found it disturbing and not something she wanted to spend time with. After CARD PLAYER, I'll show her BIRD, as that's pretty "tame" as well. She's certainly entitled to not get off on violent setpieces as much as I do!

So while Dave Kehr was not entirely wrong in his "CSI ROMA" quip, I think it may actually show how this (In my view) above-average thriller can reach a wider audience than some of his more over-the-top works.

John:

Give me a chance to watch my DVD again, and then I'll offer some more in-depth thoughts re: the film and what I like about it. I'm really digging your posts on it, and agree re: the Remo set-piece in the back alleys of Rome- a superb set-piece indeed! Of course, Anna being attacked in her apartment, and the long, nearly dialogue-free sequence where Brennan finally figures it all out was great, too...

Also, re: this:

"I actually think it's easier to recommend this one to more people than most Argento films..."

I thught the exact same thing after I watched it, so I made a VHS dub which I gave to my dad, who has watched a few of my Argentos but never was able to get into them. Well, he LOVED "THE CARD PLAYER". I realize that some detractors of the film could use that against it ("See? It's a film directed by Argento that's aimed at the mainstream and ignores his fanbase" or something like that), but for this life-long Argento fan (well, since age 11 when I watched DEEP RED on pan-and-scan VHS), it was a rush to have my dad praising one of the man's works and really getting into it.

Vincent

THE CARD PLAYER is an odd film when you look at it as part of Argento's canon. For some reason, I have always unconciously made a habit of viewing his work as part of a different type of cinema, separate from that of his contemporaries. As such, I tend to rate his films not in comparison with those of other directors, but instead with the rest of his own work. THE CARD PLAYER is the only one of his films that I really think about in terms of cinema as a whole. Therefore, I would say it is his most atypical film to date because, to me, it in no way attempts to do anything truly unique. While I wouldn't say that Argento was necessarily courting the mainstream with this film (he might have been, but I think part of it was the result of it being assembled quickly for very little money), I think he did end up creating something that has little to do with his type of cinema as a whole.

In my own review (http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=12373), I said that devoted Argento fans would probably have three main bones of contention: (1) the lack of on-screen gore, (2) the lack of stylistic flamboyance when compared to his Golden Age, and (3) a perceived attempt to court the mainstream. While I argued that neither were completely 100% true, these criticisms are valid. THE CARD PLAYER is his most easily accessible film to date, and while that is not necessarily a bad thing, it does mean that it brings very little to the table that is new. Actors and dialogue have never been Argento's strong suit, and it is those very aspects that he relies on to carry this film forward. Sometimes he's successful, other times not. THE CARD PLAYER is reasonably competent, but I definitely wouldn't call it his best since OPERA. I agree that OPERA was his last truly superb film, but I think that too many are forgetting (or are undervaluing) the minor gem that is THE STENDHAL SYNDROME -- which, in my opinion, is infinitely superior to THE CARD PLAYER.

I would be interested to know what everyone thought about the 'motivation' for the killer. I've heard people describe it as 'logical' and other people describe it as 'uninspired'. I would probably choose the term 'obvious'.

I thought if they had worked a little harder on the script (like for example, Rocca's father and his gambling problems which are hinted at but not fully developed) it would have been more satisfying.

What do other people thnk?

I'd say, regarding motivation of the killer, it's 'Who cares?' He/She/It's just a plot device and -SPOILERS AHEAD-
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almost arbitrary once we realize he-she-it is "in house" since we don't really know anything much worth knowing or caring about that cast of characters up to the point of revelation....which is quite a bit ahead of the moment he formally introduces himself on the way to the 'crime scene' (well it's not actually, but it's the scene of a new crime, so why quibble over semantics?). Best we start focusing on him at this point, I think, because there's been barely any character study of him in a story with motivational shading which is, from a back or ongoing story perspective, careless or "Who cares?" at best. The heroine as the daughter of a card whiz who met an untimely end being one case in point...since she's not exactly struggling with or even articulating that relationship in relation to present circumstances except at the level of bizarre coincidence, and, maybe, by letting others play her cards for her, and it mainly serves as a semi-clue for the viewer that the killer knows something about her (from inside?).

Look at it this way, at least it's not the delivery boy! Imagine him pouting over his captive, "I always remembered to hold the buffala mozzarella and all you ever did was scowl at me!" And who else is left standing with even a halfway recognizable personality to hang a crime on? The commissioner in league with his daughter? Now that would be kinkily interesting but would take bigger swiss cheese holes in the plotting to account for than even Argento has at his regular disposal.

No, the guy who did it is the most photogenic office-nasty, and he does ninety percent of his acting only after the disclosure.

Which is in the nature of Argento, oh Argento-philes. This is a performance piece, and a good, assured one, it's not really a rational, ratiocinating brain mystery at all. The irrationality is what makes for the mystery and suspense it does have and evinces, I think, a nice disregard for anything except the storytelling as something unfolding-- deducible plotbased structure getting in the way of dreamlike appreciation of one thing after another compellingly -if wobbily- presented. To lay on with a trowel his pov on the genre he's engaging, Argento pretty much gives it all away in the first 90 seconds of the movie in a bravura credits sequence which is so discordant from the prevailing TV Net-Geeks-Bonding-Over-Murder scenario as to tip his hand that this is to new millenial giallo as Italo Calvino is to Agatha Christie in IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT, A TRAVELLER. He's doing an exercise in style imposed on a hoary, dead, cliched routine.

That's my perverse appreciation, though it took me long enough to come to it after being puzzled by his bad plotting for decades!

I like this a lot, I think it holds up well as a pocket version of what he's always been up to, disguised as slick entertainment for those who want that and don't know from Argento, but holding a lot more in store for those who've learned to parse and conjugate him. I feel that way, but apparently a lot of his biggest fans aren't as 'structuralist' as I am, I guess! ;-)

Just to correct you James, Liam Cunningham's character is Irish, not British. In fairness to Cunningham his character is an Irish-stereotype (unshaven, rogue, angry, has a drink problem and sings 'Danny Boy' when drunk!) yet I thought the actor gave a decent performance and held his own. I liked Stefania Rocca too and I think they are central to why the film, with its flaws, worked for me.

I enjoyed THE CARD PLAYER, I saw it in Dublin two weeks ago at the Horrorthon festival at the Irish Film Centre. Unfortunately, a group of morons laughed all the way through, being loud as possible making sure everyone heard. Quite a few people attended and few of them were amused by this behavior...SPOILER during the scene when Rocca is in her apartment with the killer and the lights go off, one shot was 95% darkness (the only source of light was a window). Even during this there was laughter! Yet they were laughing literally at nothing! END SPOILER Go home with your mates and watch the video, PLEASE!

I had exactly the same problems when I saw it in Glasgow back in April. It was okay at first, but there was a small group of people seated directly in front of me that laughed more and more as the film went on, and by the climax were laughing at everything, including stuff that quite blatantly wasn't funny. I had a strong desire to cause some sort of injury to them, but was able to resist.