"Obsessed. Religious. Horny. Ladies and gentlemen, Paul Schrader."
"While Schrader is not done working, First Reformed can't help but seem like the culmination of his career as a writer. His protagonists, regardless of the milieu of their given film, are frequently fixated, and struggling with faith and sexuality, though few as purely and explicitly as Reverend Ernst Toller. (It is, with respect, the role of Ethan Hawke's career.) Toller's bewitchment by both environmental catastrophe and a young widow, against the backdrop of his devotion to his church, propels the character out of the bounds of sanity and physical reality and into an avalanche of despairing madness.
"It all has a touch of the personal; Schrader famously escaped into the cinema from a Calvinist upbringing indistinguishable to an outsider (or, indeed, many insiders) from systematic abuse, and while so many of his most famous protagonists spend seasons in various urban hells, First Reformed sees him return to small-town America, and struggle with his demons in the gray, wintry light of day. Home, where you can't blame being lost on being in a foreign land. Daytime, without darkness in which to hide. God shows His face when he feels like it, not when you want Him to. This is the meat of First Reformed, the finest work of cinema's great screenwriters." ~ Danny Bowes
This year's “nominees:”
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel and Ethan Coen)
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin)
The Favourite (Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara)
First Reformed (Paul Schrader)
If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley)
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