First Reformed is a bleak, punishing movie and the furthest thing imaginable from an easy crowdpleaser. But Hawke juices it with an austere sense of grace.

| Original Score: B | Dec 26, 2018

The film is a cry of rage against the polluters and corrupters who, Schrader contends, are destroying the planet, as well as against the commercialisation of the churches and the growth of terrorism.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 9, 2018

They are weird moments of almost hypnotic transcendence, but at the center of it is that tortured God's lonely man character perfectly embodied by Ethan Hawke.

| Aug 28, 2018

A work that most 30 year old's would welcome, and one that a 71 year old might have thought would never come around again.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 27, 2018

You won't see a more textured film this summer.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 23, 2018

Schrader is the divine mortal who wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. He's as passionate as ever; what he has lost is his discipline.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 19, 2018

This is a film that wrestles with its themes through rigorously crafted dialogue; Schrader sees no benefit in underlining those words with showy camerawork or score, the film-making equivalent of going through the script with a neon highlighter pen.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2018

But it is, at least, powerfully puzzling and grippingly puzzling. You may not understand it (completely), but you will come away with the feeling that something was being said, whatever that something may have been.

| Jul 12, 2018

Yet ultimately it's so good, and the attention to truthfulness so intense, that Schrader writes himself into a narrative dead end and to a conclusion that bounces, within a few short minutes, from shocking to preposterous to silly to schmaltzy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 12, 2018

Shaker furniture in movie form - stark, plain, conceived in austere and intelligent good taste; beautifully made, in fact, but maybe more designed for looking at than actually sitting on.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 12, 2018

The film is a zinger, with Hawke giving Toller the hungry, doomed conviction of a Graham Greene hero.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 11, 2018

First Reformed is a tough, masterful movie.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 11, 2018

Schrader's best in yonks, a powerful meditation on faith's place in the modern world. Hawke, as a kind of Travis Bickle in a dog collar, gives one of the performances of the year.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 11, 2018

Is it too early to call this Schrader's masterpiece?

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 10, 2018

The latest film from pugnacious director/writer Paul Schrader is as austere and revelatory as a church confessional...It's a bleak portrait of a man in the midst of a spiritual breakdown that is only slightly undone by its rather unsatisfying conclusion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 7, 2018

First Reformed can hardly imagine a hopeful future for the world, [yet] the film is full of longing for redemption... Toller hopes that his journal is a kind of prayer. Perhaps Schrader hopes the same for his film.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 1, 2018

An unforgettable powerhouse.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 1, 2018

Ultimately its sheer archness reveals Paul Schrader as a gifted and deeply persuasive evangelist of the transcendental style - if not quite a canon saint.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 1, 2018

"First Reformed" takes some wild, unexpected and uncomfortable turns in its final act that will surely shock some, anger others and disturb just about everyone. For Schrader, it shows that he's still got it. Welcome back.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 1, 2018

First Reformed deserves all praise.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 31, 2018