Master Gardener

critic Reviews

, 70% Fresh Tomatometer Score
  • Master Gardener suggests Paul Schrader might need to find a new patch of creative soil to till, but some strong performances make it difficult to dismiss.
  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Murtada ElfadlAV Club
    Master Gardener supposedly has a contemporary setting. Yet it feels out of time, or belonging to a long gone era. Part of that is the profession of its lead character, and part is Mrs. Haverhill. Both seem like relics from another time and place.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Tara BradyIrish Times
    The scale of ideas is big. American social and racial frictions are entertainingly engaged as we work our way towards a shoot-em-up denouement. At 76, more than 20 films into his storied career, Paul Schrader can still deliver a sucker punch.
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  • , Rotten Tomatometer Score
    Tim CogshellFilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)
    Paul Schrader wants me to forgive [this character]. No, I don't forgive him. And this is just sloppy filmmaking.
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  • , Rotten Tomatometer Score
    Linda MarricThe Jewish Chronicle
    I wish Master Gardener had the wit and courage of Schrader ’s earlier works, instead of relying on some half-baked ideas about masculinity, race and age-gap romance
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  • , Rotten Tomatometer Score
    Wendy IdeObserver (UK)
    The weakest of Schrader’s stories foregrounding strong, silent, troubled men.
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  • , Rotten Tomatometer Score
    Larushka Ivan-ZadehDaily Mail (UK)
    The atmosphere is initially alluring yet, as the violence begins, this becomes not the film you'd naturally expect or desire — a stiff, stilted drama.
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  • , Rotten Tomatometer Score
    Damon WiseDeadline Hollywood Daily
    We’re left with an unsatisfyingly weird love story that catches the eye but somehow doesn’t quite make emotional sense, much like Mrs Haverhill’s fantastic but distracting jellyfish wallpaper.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Nadine WhitneyThe Curb
    Like many of Schrader’s works it will divide audiences – for those who have enjoyed the late era of the director’s filmography Master Gardener delivers what has come to be expected. Nihilism, optimism, romance – a strange and heady combination.
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  • , Rotten Tomatometer Score
    Ilan PreskovskyChannel24 (South Africa)
    As a character piece, Schrader has already done this much better before: despite Edgerton's perfectly calibrated performance, Narvel Roth is no Travis Bickle.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Jim RossTAKE ONE Magazine
    Thematically, what MASTER GARDENER espouses – if anything – about redemption is an open question. […] If anything, the film is more interested in probing the tension between those cultivation metaphors and the hate-filled imagery on Narvel’s body.”
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