Nihilism pairs naturally with playing cards semi-professionally. Those hitting the poker circuit know this. The most improbable river (the fifth card in a game of Texas Hold ‘em) can render the best hand and best player a loser in the wings, drawing dead. They just don’t know it yet. It seems that odds are meaningless against the tides of fate. Cold, calculating, and reductive, the best poker players are those who remove the emotional element entirely, stoic ice statues playing odds, preying on the faintest whiff of weakness. The Card Counter, the newest film from auteur Paul Schrader (First Reformed) is a nihilistic meditation on the impossibility of redemption, as a broken military man turned gifted gambler wrestles with his demons around a card table. Read More