Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” does not itself fully stare into the abyss of human callousness, but it’s enough that it shows us what happens when someone does that, how it consumes the soul with horror and isolation. This is the same trick Schrader pulled off when he wrote the script for “Taxi Driver” more than four decades ago.
His ability to successfully revisit this cinematic territory is both easy and difficult to believe, as I discovered when I saw “First Reformed” in the theater last month. On the one hand, the character of Rev. Ernst Toller, played by Ethan Hawke, is a logical contemporary update to Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle, where the struggle against the decay of modern society is replaced with an attempt to reckon with environmental disaster. On the other hand it’s hard to believe that this movie was made by a seventy-one year old, so vital and alive and surprising is Schrader’s filmmaking here. If he’d made this four years after “Taxi Driver,” that would not have been difficult to believe, but forty-two years? This film is a miracle.
In addition to “First Reformed,” I also saw fifteen other films last month, listed below. One of them was Christopher Nolan’s “unrestored” print of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” in 70mm projection. I knew this movie was beautiful and transcendent, but I had no idea of the depth of its beauty or the extent of its transcendence, having never seen it on the big screen before. If you get a chance to experience it, you owe it to yourself to go.
- “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” As an exercise in storytelling, almost nothing in this movie works.
- “Obsession” Tasty bit of English malice.
- “A Futile and Stupid Gesture” Pretty messy but I liked it.
- “Badlands” Stunning and undimmed by time.
- “Lost in Paris” Quirky ode to Jacques Tati
- “Logan Lucky” I’m a sucker for Soderbergh, but this didn’t hold up on second viewing.
- “Incredibles 2” Brad Bird understands more about superheroes than everyone working on the Marvel Cinematic Universe combined.
- “The Front Page” Looks quaint and uninspired next to Howard Hawks’s remake just a few years later.
- “The Commuter” Every late-period Neeson thriller can be watched once and no more than once.
- “Night at the Museum” Dumb.
- “Pacific Rim” I haven’t seen all of Guillermo Del Toro’s movies, but I have yet to see one that’s genuinely good.
- “Lassie Come Home” I honestly liked it a lot.
- “The Villainess” Come for the fight choreography, stay for the genuinely bonkers and somewhat ill-advised romantic drama.
- “His Girl Friday” Perfect in every way.
- “2001: A Space Odyssey” I was moved.
- “First Reformed”
If you’re interested, here’s what I watched in May, April, March, February and January. You can also see my complete list of everything I watched in 2017 and follow along with my film diary over at letterboxd.com.
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