Master Gardener
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: May 19, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
63
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 45 Critic Reviews
Positive:
29
Mixed:
15
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyMay 26, 2023
At 76, more than 20 films into his storied career, Paul Schrader can still deliver a sucker punch. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyMay 19, 2023
Despite its general tenor of quietude (which breaks in a confrontation scene that reminds you why yes, Schrader is also the writer of the film “Rolling Thunder”), Master Gardener is, among other things, a terrifically emotional film. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisMay 19, 2023
Part of the kick of “Master Gardener” is that the writer-director Paul Schrader manages to pull off this improbable movie. It shouldn’t work and, even after seeing it twice, I don’t think that it entirely does, which only makes it more fascinating and strengthens its power. Read full review
83
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMay 18, 2023
In Schrader’s strong, meditative hands, everything gels together to create an entrancing work that is serious and, very nearly, profound. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRafaela Sales RossSep 17, 2022
This is the director at his tenderest. Read full review
80
EmpireLou ThomasMay 24, 2023
Paul Schrader delivers another compelling investigation of conflicted men in modern America. Master Gardener has a stately pace but a knockout punch; enriching cinema for the discerning punter. Read full review
80
Film ThreatSumner ForbesMay 19, 2023
I’m not sure where Schrader’s career will take him after Master Gardener, but here’s hoping the next decade is as impressive as the current one. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 19, 2023
There’s a fantasy element to Master Gardener that bolsters the movie’s convictions rather than weakening them. Read full review
80
Screen DailyJonathan RomneySep 17, 2022
For all the film’s provocations, both serious and mischievous, it’s a remarkably elegant, subtle piece. Read full review
80
Total FilmJane CrowtherSep 6, 2022
Though it’s not Schrader’s finest work and requires political leaps of faith that can be compared to American History X and could be called simplistic, Master Gardener is still an auteur operating at the top of the league. Read full review
79
TheWrapTomris LafflyMay 8, 2023
In the end, Master Gardener is ripe with seeds of ideas on the verge of blossoming into something beguiling, maybe even generously healing. What a way for Schrader to close the loop on his long line of tortured men. Read full review
75
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottMay 22, 2023
It’s a lot of things, but Master Gardener is first and foremost a Paul Schrader film, and a Paul Schrader film can usually be counted on to deliver one thing above all else: a moody story about a tough man, adrift, who is thrust into a tough situation. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMay 19, 2023
Even when it falters, Master Gardener speaks from a place the filmmaker has always worked, with one foot in the character-building of “slow cinema,” and the other in spasms of violence. It may be hard to buy where this movie lands. But even an unstuck landing isn’t enough to un-recommend it. Read full review
75
ABC NewsPeter TraversMay 19, 2023
With its pokey pace broken by bursts of violence and racial tension, the end of Paul Schrader’s man-in-a-room trilogy falls short of the master’s peak. But this mesmerizer is the work of a true film artist continually striving to connect his tortured soul to ours. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreMay 18, 2023
This isn’t just his road to redemption story. Master Gardener is about planting seeds, culling dead or dying branches and making room for new growth. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 17, 2023
The pace of Master Gardener is measured, but there’s nothing relaxing about it. Read full review
75
ObserverOliver JonesMay 16, 2023
Master Gardener fits as snuggly in writer-director Paul Schrader’s legacy of films about obsessive and isolated men as do pruning shears in the calloused hand of the film’s title character. Read full review
75
IndieWireLeila LatifSep 17, 2022
While the central character’s arc will likely launch a dreaded “discourse,” there is a tenderness to Master Gardener that may prove its biggest surprise. Read full review
75
The Film StageRory O'ConnorSep 17, 2022
Master Gardener is another of the old Calvanist’s prayers of absolution—honest and personal to a fault, and a satisfying close to one of the great contemporary trilogies. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithMay 19, 2023
Though the metaphor becomes somewhat strained as the film goes on, the religious implications of Narvel’s pursuit give the story considerable heft as Mr. Schrader beautifully balances outer tranquility with inner tumult. Read full review
70
Paste MagazineLuke HicksOct 11, 2022
It’s not all brilliant or profound, and it’s certainly not all well-worded, but it’s always thoughtful. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 17, 2022
Much of Master Gardener is disarmingly placid. It’s a warmer, more optimistic film than one might expect, even if it does at times creak with the antiquated perspective of a stalwart septuagenarian filmmaker unwilling to shake off some of the past’s bad habits. Read full review
70
SlashfilmMarshall ShafferSep 17, 2022
Even if Master Gardener can feel like a bit of a potboiler moral drama, the heat generated is proof that Schrader can still bring the fire. The filmmaker grapples thornily and thoughtfully with difficult issues and destructive people, finding new ways to approach the questions that still haunt him. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiMay 17, 2023
What (a kinder and gentler?) Schrader has crafted with Master Gardener is a fable of redemption. And there lies the deviation. For all its looming menace and potential violence, not to mention what the biracial Maya will make of Narvel’s past - a past literally written on his body - Master Gardener is sweet, and, horror of horrors, hopeful. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubMurtada ElfadlMay 17, 2023
While it doesn’t fare well in comparison, Master Gardener still has enough unique characteristics and performances to stand out as a fine film. It’s just the least successful in this particular trilogy. Read full review
67
ConsequenceJesse HassengerOct 2, 2022
Edgerton isn’t as electric as Hawke or Isaac, and the passion-play dramaturgy strains. But as he allows himself to drift from self-torture, Schrader finds some new, compellingly strange ways to tend this well-worn soil. Read full review
67
ColliderBrian FormoSep 17, 2022
Schrader is able to prune back some of his more established impulses to service this particular story. Read full review
63
The Associated PressLindsey BahrMay 17, 2023
Like a haphazardly planted garden, it’s lot of ideas that don’t seem to create anything terribly coherent but it has its individual pleasures nonetheless. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineChuck BowenSep 30, 2022
For Paul Schrader, even a film called Master Gardener ultimately pivots on a man having to take out the macho trash. Read full review
60
Little White LiesHannah StrongMay 26, 2023
The beauty in Schrader’s work has always been in the relationship between penance and absolution, which feels noticeably absent here. It’s a shame because the trio of Edgerton, Swindell, and Weaver deliver strong performances, and Devonte Hynes’ romantic score with a slight edge of sombreness is nicely atmospheric, but the film’s third act feels too neat and unconvincing, particularly given the sharpness of the conclusion in Schrader’s last two films. Read full review
60
Time OutStephen A. RussellMay 17, 2023
As the film shifts away from the mansion and into a pretty pat subplot about far-right goons and drug addiction, it grows less like a prize-winning flower and more like a clump of unsightly weeds, further sunk by underwhelming work from Schrader’s regular cinematographer Alexander Dynan. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 17, 2022
Schrader can do this stuff in his sleep, and in Master Gardener you sometimes wonder if he might be. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 17, 2022
Ultimately, Narvel is the fascist as liberal fantasy. Someone with access to skilled violence, who can unleash it at whim. It’s such a pity that a screenwriter who used to excel at delineating the intricacies of male insecurity and poison now comes out with such a one-dimensional character. Read full review
58
Original-CinLiz BraunMay 16, 2023
The writer-director behind The Card Counter and First Reformed makes a misstep here, courtesy unlikely characters and sometimes mystifying plot changes. Luckily, stars Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver are in top form, which is enough to keep a viewer happily occupied for the first hour. Read full review
50
The New YorkerRichard BrodyMay 23, 2023
Master Gardener is a movie divided against itself. Here, Schrader tells a different kind of story, with a different kind of dramatic contour and focus, and the result is a jolting, ironic disjunction of style and substance. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMay 22, 2023
It’s almost as if the movie were following the blueprint of a moral scheme, like the layout of a herbaceous border, and plausibility be damned. Read full review
50
Screen RantGraeme GuttmannMay 21, 2023
While Schrader's directing and the casts' performances are more than up to standard, Master Gardener somehow ends up being less than the sum of its parts. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreMay 19, 2023
Master Gardener plays less like a thematic finale and more like the director is trying to exorcise himself of his perpetual idée fixe. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 18, 2023
The possibility of redemption hangs over this movie, as it does in much of Schrader’s work. But for the first time in this trilogy, that possibility is resolved in a manner that feels neither fully examined nor earned. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanMay 16, 2023
I wanted to buy this story. I really did. But its protagonist floats through the action — filled with jealousy, lust and violence — as though he were anesthetized. Read full review
50
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenMay 15, 2023
A charitable reading of Master Gardener would be to say that it feels unfinished and unformed—that there might be something here with another pass at the script or a different cast. Read full review
40
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 17, 2022
Master Gardener is all fingers and thumbs for much of its running time, kept sporadically in order only by the stern, trusty presence of Edgerton himself. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 17, 2022
Perhaps Schrader will indeed defiantly return to his accustomed theme for his next film – and this brilliant, restless director might well make it work. Sadly, this one doesn’t. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 17, 2022
Joel Edgerton’s haunted central performance as former white supremacist Narvel Roth fits the essential Schrader mold of a troubled soul hiding from his demons. But little else rings true in a drama curiously lacking in texture, which misses the mark in lifeless scene after scene. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonMay 18, 2023
Master Gardener is the third film in writer-director Paul Schrader’s redemption trilogy. The series includes 2017′s “First Reformed,” which is good, and 2021′s “The Card Counter,” which is not. Unfortunately, the trilogy ends with its worst entry, an excruciatingly slow white-savior narrative that aims to provoke yet does nothing but bore. Read full review
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