Popular reviews

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★½

  my big takeaway from Schrader's latest, which I enjoyed very much, is that Joel Edgerton somehow looks *exactly* like Conan O’Brien whenever he lowers his head. also, i don't know if he's ever been better than he is here.

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 5

  Cannot imagine this does much for anyone outside the specific circle of Paul devotees (multiple walkouts at my screening, the man's still got it) but for those on the wavelength I am pleased to report this is very much The Card Counter part two (right down to the anonymous motel purgatory section), completing with First Reformed an informal trilogy of late-style Bressonian portraits of lonely, regretful, violent American men confined to the existential crisis of their austere rooms.

  In typical Paul fashion, the heart of this is the sense of formal control over routine that takes on a spiritual/ritual quality. In this case, the titular gardening, which is depicted with a sense of romantic, meditative spaciness; highlighting its rejuvenating and…

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  Review by David Sims ★★★★ 9

  lmao paul

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  Review by Will Menaker ★★½ 17

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Nazi Gardeners, nazi gardeners, nazi gardeners FUCK OFF!!

  Saw a preview of this one the other week, and sorry to say after two HRs with First Reformed and The Card Counter, this one is a swing and a miss. The righteous anger and despair of those films doesn't quite rise above a simmer in this story of how an ex-Nazi just needs the love of a biracial baddie who's thirty years younger than he is. It's Schrader, so there's some interesting stuff going on, but I can pin point the exact moment when I checked out of this one which came early on when Edgerton's character warns his young gardening apprentices about posting "sexist memes" on the internet.

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  Review by Megan Bitchell ★★★ 10

  Peepaw (Paul) was almost cooking with this but he ran out of ingredients or burned his house down halfway through or something. FBI guy wearing the “we should all be feminists” shirt killed me. One of the most sincere What Could He Mean By This?? movies of all time.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 13

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  87

  You'd think with the premise of Master Gardener, Paul Schrader is eager to play the role of provocateur, and while there is a bit of that here, especially in terms of fetishized imagery and the loaded relationship parallels, his latest film is ultimately a late-style romance of creaky simplicity and gentle beauty. As the trilogy capper for First Reformed and The Card Counter, it's the first of the three films to push back against the depths of the abyss - to cultivate rather than destroy. We must only place our feet against the earth and smell a handful of soil to set us straight. There's a natural sensuality to this movie - flowers are seen as a symbolic cure…

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  Review by Bobby Wagner ★★★½

  Why are you — as a man — not journaling nightly about your deepest moral quandaries?

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  Review by Robert Franco 7

  i want to live in a world where even the most wicked have a chance at redemption. this is easier to say than it is to put in practice. but on paper, that’s the world i want to be a part of.

  a good alternative name for this trilogy would be, in the words of the great broadway danny rose: Acceptance, Forgiveness, and Love

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  Review by Brian Formo ★★★½ 6

  At this point in his career, Paul Schrader is simply working from a template: man in his 40s with a murky past seeks redemption. He has a unique profession. He will define his life by that profession. He will journal about his profession. A younger outsider will disturb his small, hidden life. When times start to get tough he will question why he even journals anymore because it no longer helps him process his (now disturbed) rules and order. And through the outsider, the potential for violence will bubble to the surface, carrying with it a shot at personal redemption.

  In Schrader’s Master Gardener, that man is Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton) and he is a gardener and horticulturalist at a…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★½

  I'm eternally happy that Schrader's continuing project keeps producing erratic results. In this case I don't think he's really in control of the implications of the material, which he treats as intrinsically provocative without really interrogating those provocations beyond their self-evidence. Anyway looking forward to the next one as always.

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  Review by Bilge Ebiri ★★★★ 5

  Let me know when the Discourse starts on this one so I can throw my phone into the Adriatic.

  
  Seen at Sala Darsena, Venice Film Festival.

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  Review by esther ★★★½ 2

  when Quintessa Swindell's character in Master Gardener first appears wearing a rainbow t-shirt that says "NO BAD VIBES" the audience laughed, probably wondering if she'd shown up for the wrong movie. but Master Gardener is actually remarkably sincere and sweet for Schrader, even if it's so stripped down as to make The Card Counter look ostentatious. Schrader's last two films concerned men with the weight of the world on their shoulders, haunted by Big Problems of societal import. Edgerton's character here is no less troubled, but the stakes are comparatively so low it's almost comical. the film was introduced with a quote from Schrader calling the film "a fable....you don't have to believe it, you just have to imagine it." i guess that's fine, but it makes the film pretty insubstantial for me.