First Reformed
ANDY’S RATING: ★★★★ In cinemas on Friday
PAUL Schrader, the screenwriter who gave us Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and American Gigolo, returns to form with his mesmerising drama about a Protestant clergyman.
Ethan Hawke plays Ernst Toller – the troubled pastor of the historic First Reformed church of Snowbridge, New York.
As most of the congregation now attend the nearby megachurch, his job is more about ferrying tourists around the gift shop than saving souls.
But his spirit is stirred when a pregnant woman called Mary (Amanda Seyfried) asks him to counsel her husband Michael.
He is a fervent environmentalist who believes the world is beyond repair and as a life of misery awaits his unborn child, he wants Mary to have an abortion.
The pastor argues for hope but he can’t argue with the scientific evidence.
When he combines Michael’s statistics with the Book of Revelations, this gentle man of the cloth begins to resemble Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle in a dog collar.
The ending will prove divisive but the dialogue sparkles, the atmosphere is brooding and Hawke chips in with the best performance of his career.
IT’S 14 years since we last saw the Parrs, but the superpowered family don’t seem to have aged a day.
We begin exactly where the original film left off, with the Incredibles battling the deadly Underminer (voiced by John Ratzenburger), who is tearing through the city of Metroville inside a gigantic underground drill.
The hi-jinks that follow are a neat way to re-introduce us to the otherwise-normal family – Mr Incredible/Bob (Craig T. Nelson), Elastigirl/Helen (Holly Hunter) and their three kids: Violet (Sarah Vowell), Dash (Huck Milner) and baby Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile).
But like the storyline in Captain America: Civil War (aka Avengers 13), their heroics aren’t appreciated by the powers-that-be.
After totting up the damage made to municipal property during their foiling of the Underminer, all superheroes are outlawed.
Help arrives in the form of telecoms company mogul Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) and his tech-whizz sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) who convince the Parrs that a little PR spin will change the politicians’ minds.
A clever touch is that they only want Elastigirl for their new publicity campaign.
They kit her up with a new bendy superbike, and a moody grey and black suit then pack her off to take on the villainous Screenslaver (Bill Wise). In-suit cameras will beam the action to the watching public.
So while the film follows her highoctane adventures, it also cuts to