Release date: May 18
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 97%
"First Reformed" is from writer/director Paul Scrader, the writer behind classic Martin Scorsese films "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull." With "First Reformed," he delivers a story packed with questions on the relationship between faith and morality, and Ethan Hawke gives one of his best performances as a priest struggling with those ideas.
Description: "Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) is a solitary, middle-aged parish pastor at a small Dutch Reform church in upstate New York on the cusp of celebrating its 250th anniversary. Once a stop on the Underground Railroad, the church is now a tourist attraction catering to a dwindling congregation, eclipsed by its nearby parent church, Abundant Life, with its state-of-the-art facilities and 5,000-strong flock. When a pregnant parishioner (Amanda Seyfried) asks Reverend Toller to counsel her husband, a radical environmentalist, the clergyman finds himself plunged into his own tormented past, and equally despairing future, until he finds redemption in an act of grandiose violence."