By Alex Gehrlein

This movie was seemingly tailor made for me. One of my favorite screenwriters, working with one of the most brilliant modern actors, remaking and remixing two of my favorite films of all time, and wrestling with themes and questions that have always rung close to my heart. This is the best movie I’ve reviewed for the Eye. This is the best movie of 2018. I am kicking myself for not seeing it in the theater.

First Reformed follow Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke), a protestant minister of the titular church, who struggles with his faith amidst a sudden wave of doubt onset by tragic events in his parish and leading up to the celebration of the church’s 250th anniversary. It’s such a complex layered film that to put it in the shortest possible way, I’d say “It’s like Taxi Driver with a priest… but at the same time not that at all.” It tackles the most pressing issues of our times in an intelligent, provocative way. I hesitate to simply say “provocative,” but have to concede that it provokes much more than just thoughts. This movie wields the power to make you howl with anger and wallow with grief, hold back tears and watch in wide eyed horror. Paul Schrader is a master provocateur, and uses any element of his films to its maximum emotional punch.

Schrader is probably best known for Taxi Driver, one of my favorite films of all time. His strict Calvinist upbringing and roots in American counterculture have given him and his scripts a voice shared by no other contemporary filmmakers. In this film, he draws from so many other movies it’s dizzying. To put it concisely, he seems to be lifting mostly from the films of Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky and his own past work. Specific plot elements are directly lifted from Bergman’s masterpiece Winter Light, others (maybe even unconsciously) from Taxi Driver, but it never feels like a rehashing or retread, rather a reexamination. I’m reminded of Jean-Luc Godard’s immortal quote on using elements from other films: “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.” One of the highest compliments I can give is that the film puts up a good fight against its inspiration, even besting some of it.

Schrader has a unique understanding of America’s relationship with religion. Though controversial, I’d argue his collaboration with Martin Scorsese, The Last Temptation of Christ, is one of the best films ever made on the subject (beating out First Reformed by the slightest margin possible). An informed reading of this film would require at least a base knowledge of everything from ecoterrorism and Laudato Si to American and Swedish films of the sixties and seventies. Obviously, not everyone knows everything about all of this, and I can’t claim to understand half of the more challenging material that Schrader has put into this film. Repeated viewings might hold some fruit, but some of the decisions made here are so abstract I’d only think Paul Schrader could understand them.

This film has been criminally held back from nominations in Best Actor, Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography at the Oscars. Schrader has finally been nominated for Best Original Screenplay, and deserves it not just based on his long due recognition from the Academy, but on the strength of this script. Not one moment is wasted. Not one shot is out of place. This is a masterpiece. Plain and simple.

10/10

By Alex Gehrlein

I know that no matter what I say, this review will probably not attract very many people to go out and see this movie. That’s fine. A bit disappointing, but still fine. There is not much of a market in the US for a slow burn, medium budget, foreign language, family drama with no big name stars, and no real press momentum. Yes, it won the Palme d’Or. Yes, it’s been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. People just don’t go out of their way to see this kind of movie, and that’s each individual’s choice.

Set in the worldwide economic depression of 2008, Shoplifters follows a “makeshift” family in the most literal sense of the term. None of these characters are related in the traditional mother-father daughter-son dynamic, but are instead bound by a common affection for each other. This affection leads them to take in a young girl, Juri, alone and cold on the back porch of a house filled with the sounds of her fighting parents.

“It looks like we kidnapped her,” Aki says. The father, Shota, reasons that it’s not kidnapping if they aren’t making any demands.

The film carries on from here with a slow, deliberate pace. Each member of the family has their own little quirks, and we see them going about their day to day jobs of factory work, webcam “performance,” and as the title would suggest, shoplifting. Hirokazu Kore-eda approaches all of this with a light touch, finding heartwarming comedy in the minute details of their struggles to get by. Things inevitably go wrong, and the family structure is challenged. I won’t say any more, but suffice it to say that the film sneaks up on you to pull at your heartstrings in the last act.

All along, the film questions the nature of our family dynamics, and asks us if it is really better to choose our own family? This group of outcasts and small time criminals love their newly kidnapped daughter more than her original parents ever did. Juri’s family doesn’t even bother to report her disappearance. They bring her in to their home, feed her, clothe her, and give her the affection we tend to associate with a happy home.

Kore-eda’s film finds a happy midpoint of emotions somewhere between joy, sadness and melancholy. Can society’s outcasts be better influences than the more fortunate members? Can we forgive a criminal who acts out of need? Is the family a more malleable structure than we are lead to believe? Kore-eda doesn’t give us the answers, but prompts us to think for ourselves. That might be what I like most about the film: it leaves room for you to answer its biggest questions.

9/10

By Alex Gehrlein ’19

Yorgos Lanthimos has been on a great run with his past three films. The Lobster introduced US audiences to a brand new voice in film with a darkly comedic, but emotionally detached look at an absurdist concept that is more than worth checking out. The Killing Of A Sacred Deer was a jaw-droppingly dark romp through the same sort of material, just with the overall menacing overtone pumped up to eleven, and the humor remaining at around the same level of strange brilliance. His characters don’t talk like normal people do; they read everything in an infectiously monotone voice that somehow manages to make the absurd things being said even funnier, or even more terrifying depending on what the scene calls for. Colin Farrell starred in both of these films, giving two great performances with such a limited emotional range, alongside other actors like Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Nicole Kidman, and Barry Keoghan, all working in the same realm.

The Favourite follows two women, Abigail Masham and Sarah Churchill, as they vie for Queen Anne’s favor during a war with the French. While it is not my favorite of Lanthimos’s three English language films, it’s almost hard to decide where to place The Favourite among them when they are so similar, but also so completely unlike each other at the same time. For starters, this is a period piece set in 18th century England. I could go on at length about the costume and set design, but whether or not they’re particularly accurate is less important than the effect they have on screen. The wide corridors and stately halls of the palace somehow feel claustrophobic. A darker, muted color palette keeps the film away from the gaudy excessiveness of the period (portrayed brilliantly in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette), while keeping the viewer aware of the ridiculous nature of the people living in it. All I can say without giving away too much is that there are some particularly hilarious duck jokes that make me chuckle just to think of them.

Speaking of jokes, the script is chock full of them, but mostly on a deeper level. There are some laugh out loud moments, but most of the film’s humor comes from the strange places of desperation that the characters are willing to go to to attain the Queen’s attention. Biting back and forth dialogue, overflowing with insults, put downs, and sheer hatred gives us one of the best scripts of the year.

The performances are equally fantastic. Colman really shines as Queen Anne, delivering her lines in an almost childlike fashion, complete with pouting, whining, and the occasional emotional outburst. You are not likely to find another film portray royalty in the same way, and it’s genuinely pleasing to see a different take on the class in film. Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz each go back and forth one upping each other’s performances in the same way their characters try to do the same. I could not tell you which one I thought did a better job. They both have moments of hilarity and villainy burned into my memory that come back to give me a slight chuckle when I think about the film. All I will say is that if the Golden Globes are any indication (by the way, congrats to Elsie Fisher for Eighth Grade), all three of these women will be nominated for Oscars, and I would bet on Colman taking the Lead Actress prize.

Lastly, I just want to pour out a little more love for Yorgos Lanthimos, who seems to be doing everything he can to make his films unique, and I really appreciate that. 2018 has been a good, but not great, year for films, especially when compared to 2017. I know that awards season is just starting up, and films I’m greatly anticipating like Cold War, and Destroyer have yet to come out, but I just don’t see them putting this year up to the same level. I predicted going into this year that The Favourite would be my favorite film of 2018, and while I’m so glad to say that it was even better than I could have hoped for, it’s just a little disappointing that there were only one or two more films to really give it a good run for its money. What we need are more filmmakers like Lanthimos, ones who are willing to take us out of our comfort zones and present something that could only have come from them.

10/10