First Reformed (2017)

	Directed by: Paul Schrader	COUNTRY USA GENRE Drama NORWEGIAN TITLE First Reformed RUNNING TIME 113 minutes
	Produced by: Jack Binder Greg Clark Victoria Hill Gary Hamilton Deepak Sikka Christine Vachon David Hinojosa Frank Murray
	Written by: Paul Schrader

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Pastor Ernst Toller	Ethan Hawke	½
Mary Mensana	Amanda Seyfried
Pastor Joel Jeffers	Cedric Kyles
Esther	Victoria Hill
Michael Mensana	Philip Ettinger
Edward Balq	Michael Gaston
John Elder	Bill Hoag

Review

A powerful, soul-searching discussion on morality and morals, set in and around a church in Snowbridge, New York, where Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) struggles to help his congregation and himself in a tough time for the church and the community. Paul Schrader's film is visceral and unforgiving, but also soaked with sympathy and understanding. It's an intelligent story. Hawke and Amanda Seyfried play brilliantly off each other in the two leads. Schrader also wrote the screenplay, and it is undoubtedly his best on this side of the millennium, perhaps since the 1980s. It garnered him his first Academy Award nomination, which obviously was long overdue.