by ·Comments Off on Train Dreams (2025, Clint Bentley)

Joel Edgerton (very good in those two Jeff Nichols movies a decade ago) hits new heights here as a capable logger, quiet and gentle, who finds love (Felicity Jones of Taymor’s Tempest) and loses his family to a wildfire. This is an ambitious movie that tries to poetically represent our country, society, and history by following one man with hardly any friends, and somehow it succeeds. Met an old friend of the director’s at the screening, didn’t yell at him but was thinking “your buddy made this movie AND cowrote its theme song with Nick Cave?!” I must read more Denis Johnson. However, people who know the book are very upset about this movie online – some writers I respect think it’s a bad adaptation, and some are defending the changes it makes. Brian Tallerico for Roger Ebert.

by ·Comments Off on Master Gardener (2022, Paul Schrader)

Diminishing returns on the “lonely man with violent past pushed to the edge” series… dialogue scenes are off, stilted, and it’s all dialogue scenes. Voiceover cover-up indicates something has gone wrong between page and screen. Looks really nice though.

Sigourney asks her ex-nazi gardener/lover Joel to take on her troubled grandniece Maya (comic superhero Quintessa Swindell), but he gets more invested than anyone intended, helping her detox and dealing with her violent garden-wrecking ex. Abandoned by Sigourney and by Parole Officer Gabriel, at least they’ve got each other.

Vikram Murthi in The Nation:

Master Gardener‘s final scene … a soon-to-wed Narvel and Maya dancing on the porch of a cabin they’re rebuilding together as Schrader’s camera slowly pulls back, lending them both privacy and dignity. Schrader has explicitly swiped the ending of Bresson’s Pickpocket on at least three occasions … But the ending of Master Gardener almost scrubs the Pickpocket ending of its tragic, unfulfilled dimension: Narvel and Maya’s silent expression of love doesn’t need to bypass any barriers because the two have already torn them down. A director whose career trudges on against all odds, Schrader finally lands somewhere near contentment, reveling in the warmth of a second chance.