Curious if anyone's kept up with the new Paul Schrader "trilogy" of First Reformed, The Card Counter, and Master Gardener.

All three of these are best seen blind so I won't comment on the content too much.

Interesting to see Schrader's late resurgence in a time when he and films like his are very out of fashion. These films are slow, meditative, thoughtful, personal, and "politically incorrect" in the good way -- they are about despicable and unspeakable actions, but they are measured, considered, and (responsibly, in my opinion) sympathetic.

Master Gardener is a slow, measured, quiet drama that is intensely provocative and in some ways surprisingly tender. There's quite a divide between critics between those that found it trashy, exploitative, or unforgivable, and those that found it admirably bold and challenging. What everyone does agree on is that the film contains some truly stellar performances. Joel Edgerton is phenomenal in the lead.

I really, really, really enjoyed this movie, and the other two as well. All three are variations on a theme, but Master Gardener goes somewhere the other two don't.

Curious if anyone else has seen these or has thoughts.

Haven't forgiven Schrader for The Canyons yet (what a waste! A script by Bret Easton Ellis, and all the effort that went into keeping Lindsay Lohan from ODing on set - wasted on some shitty neo-neo-noir)

Everything post-"resurgence" feels like him trying desperately to tap into the edginess of Taxi Driver, except he's a 70-something year old man whose prime life experiences are in another era. Taxi Driver as a concept couldn't happen today (all the adolescent hookers were gentrified out of NYC) and all his new stuff feels like forced grittiness to disguise being out of touch. Master Gardner's on-the-nose attempt to include some stereotypical Gen Z biracial queer person felt nearly comedic.

Hahah I can't even remember any of The Canyons and it still pisses me off to think about it.

It's funny, while I described the films as provocative I didn't think of them as "edgy" per se. I found them to be straightforward dramas about, I guess, edge cases in society. I agree with the Taxi Driver connection though, and I don't think even Schrader pretends that he hasn't just been remaking Pickpocket over and over throughout his career (and/or Winter Light in the case of First Reformed).

To whatever extent they're "old director" movies, I found them timeless enough to transcend the occasional tone-deafness. I wasn't bothered by the archetypal Gen Z character in Gardener...it's a sort of fable after all, and I think that character was developed with the same balance of specificity and archetype as the rest of the key characters. The gardener himself is similarly "stereotypical" in my view.

Yeah I’m probably not being very charitable. That’s how much The Canyons bothers me (also, read this article by NYT about “behind the scenes” on that movie, it’s pure train wreck https://www.nytimes.com/2013/0.....n-in-your-movie.html)

Ha, I have read that article before and will probably read it again now -- way, way more entertaining than the movie.