Flicks, Blake Howard
Writer/director Paul Schrader’s First Reformed is an utterly mesmerising, elegant work of faith and rage.
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First Reformed
Ethan Hawke is a former military chaplain wracked by grief over the death of his son in this intense drama from Paul Schrader (writer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull). Nominated for the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival 2017.
Green Drop Award winner (Paul Schrader), Venice Film Festival 2017
2017Rating: M, Mature themes108 minsUSA
DramaThrillerFestival & Independent
First Reformed / Reviews
Variety
Schrader courts respectability and leaves it in the dust, getting stoned on excess. But make no mistake: He's still one hell of a filmmaker.
Full reviewThe Telegraph
Schrader and his cast commit to the project with sharpened and unblinking seriousness, even when the going gets mesmerically weird, with violence, visions, levitations and Neil Young protest songs chanted sombrely by toxic swamps.
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The Guardian
A deeply felt, deeply thought picture; impressive in its seriousness and often gripping in the way it frames itself as a debate and a sermon.
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Screen Daily
Thoughtful, moving, overreaching and uncompromising, "First Reformed" is a tremendously tormented work. Ethan Hawke delivers a performance full of grace and sorrow in this powerful portrait of existential and spiritual despair.
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Little White Lies
What keeps us alert as viewers is not the slow disintegration of this man's faith, but the deep ambiguity about where the film's sympathies actually lie.
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Hollywood Reporter
There's not quite enough oomph or style in the filmmaking to make you forget about the schematic nature of the dramatic construct.
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