'First Reformed' is a heady, haunting and challenging take on faith

Cinephiles known writer-director Paul Schrader for two things -- his occasionally brilliant often inconsistent career and his dogged fascination with matters of faith.

His best films -- Blue Collar, Hardcore, American Gigolo -- mostly came early in his career, after he struck gold with his iconic screenplay for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

In recent years, he's become largely the subject of ridicule, especially after the infamously trouble production of his Lindsay Lohan erotic thriller The Canyons.

Now, he's back with a film that dives headfirst into the themes he has explored before -- the damaged male psyche, loneliness, obsession, religion and despair -- but in a much more coherent and compelling vehicle than he has made in some time. In fact, many critics are hailing it as his signature masterpiece.

The audience I saw it with didn't seem to appreciate it at all. The snickered and chuckled at its earnestness and jarring shifts in tone. It is, by any measure, a challenging movie. It's a pretty quiet, slow-paced meditative movie -- with long static takes that force you to lean in and pay attention to the literate and nuanced dialogue.

After a year totally dominated by superhero and fantasy films, it feels like a total breath of fresh air to watch a film aimed squarely at adults that does not spoonfeed you and raises very provocative political ideas -- about climate change and the corruption of American churches -- without feeling even a little heavy handed, or, yes, preachy.

The movie is aided tremendously by Ethan Hawke's towering lead performance, in what might just be the best work of his career. His voice now a raspy gravel and his once boyish face weathered and looking stricken, he plays the pastor of a poorly attended church being bankrolled by a mega-ministry -- led by a very subtle Cedric the Entertainer.

After being summoned by a pregnant woman, played by Amanda Seyfried, to counsel her troubled husband, Hawke's character finds himself instead shaken by the man's plaintive, compelling question: Will God forgive us for destroying his creation?

The film then plunges into a complex and occasionally surreal journey which shows the Hawke character's spiritual crisis coinciding with his awakening as a would-be radical activist.

This is all handled in the least histrionic way possible, which adds to the movie's haunting power. Schrader has never been a filmmaker hailed for his subtlety, so it's shocking that he has laid out such a stark but sophisticated narrative, and yet this feels like the culmination of everything he's aimed to do before, and since he'd already lost such esteem in the industry, it has the revelatory vibe of someone who knew that had nothing to lose.

As decidedly uncommercial as this movie is -- and its ending will especially confound a lot of viewing seeking tidier resolution -- it really made me think a lot about the current moment where living in, where so many people feel that extremism of one form or another is the only righteous option. It's an unsettling subject, one that I can't get out of my mind several hours after seeing the film.

Who knows if First Reformed will remain in the conversation later in the year when awards talk begins, but it will certainly remain in my mind of the foreseeable future.

'Never Seen It' - Episode 37 - 'Blue Lagoon' leaves us feeling icky

Back in 1980 there was a movie that was a bigger hit than Caddyshack, The Shining, American Gigolo, Raging Bull, Ordinary People and The Blues Brothers -- and yet is largely unknown today. It was The Blue Lagoon, a would-be erotic drama about two young people having their sexual awakening while stranded on an idyllic island.

The movie starred a very young Brooke Shields at what may have been the height of her notoriety, and it is not inaccurate to say that the marketing campaign for the film largely depended on exploiting her sexuality. But is this film a nice little nuanced hidden gem, a dated piece of trash, or maybe something somewhere in the middle?

Listen to the latest episode of my 'Never Seen It' podcast (co-hosted with my wife, Elizabeth Rosado) below to find out more. Also, please subscribe, rate and review our podcast on iTunes.

'Solo' made me smile in spite of its imperfections

It's weird looking at the new Star Wars standalone film Solo as an underdog but I did. It's had to battle bad buzz -- largely inspired by its troubled production, which saw the firing of its original directors (replaced by Ron Howard) and reports of franchise fatigue.

I wanted to like this movie -- and I did -- despite the fact that it is far from a perfect blockbuster.

It is in so many ways a riskier proposition than the last standalone Star Wars movie, Rogue One, since its asking audience to accept (for the first time) new actors playing beloved franchise characters like Han Solo and Lando Calrissian.

But, that familiarity also aids the film tremendously because there's already a warmth and affection we feel for these heroes (including Chewbacca in fighting form) and that brand loyalty will help fans navigate some of the movie's bumpier passages.

It's definitely a movie that has grown on me the more that I think about it.

That being said, it does feel a bit like the work of too many cooks. Ron Howard, for all his competency, has never been director known for putting a distinct stylistic stamp on his films. The original directors -- Phil Lord and Christopher Miller -- who are best known for their comedy chops undoubtedly lent a hand to the film's genuine laughs, which are more plentiful than they were in the more dour Rogue One. But the film feels like a series of vignettes, instead of a single coherent story.

Some of these sequences work incredibly well -- especially in the back half of the film when the story starts to hit more of a consistent rhythm and the performances also start to feel more assured. Both Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover graduate from impersonation to solid new interpretations of their iconic characters, and many of the supporting players are great, although a few are dispatched with way too early for my liking.

The movie also does an admirable job of advancing the new Star Wars ethos of diversity and gender parity. Although I wish Emilia Clarke's character had more dimension, she is undeniably badass. The same goes for perhaps the most original creation of the movie -- a saucy droid named L3 -- who serves as Lando's co-pilot and possibly paramour.

Still, the movie feels hamstrung by its desire to fan service. It's color palette can be oppressively grim. And while I appreciate the movie's attempt to recreate the more lived-in world of the original trilogy, I did miss the gorgeous world building that was very present in The Last Jedi.

I am sure a lot of other fans will have more quibbles -- but I am not going to begrudge a Star Wars film for narrative inconsistencies and occasionally hokeyness. This is a fun, frivolous heist movie that doesn't really shed knew light on the character of Han Solo (he is already the sarcastic, cocky ace pilot we know and love from the beginning. It hits its themes with a pretty heavy hand but it's consistently funny and fast paced enough to keep me from dwelling on its imperfections.

I have no idea if it will satisfy the increasingly fickle faithful, but I'm definitely going to be rooting for it.

'Predator 2' and the promise of even more 'Predators'

Last night, for the first time, I watched the much-derided, but also somewhat widely-defended sequel to the 1987 action movie classic Predator, 1990's Predator 2.

I actually really enjoyed the movie despite it's frequently laughable eccentricities and occasional narrative incoherence. The action is deliriously over-the-top, Danny Glover makes for a very amusing, unconventional action hero lead, and the finale takes great pains to establish something akin to a Predator 'universe' which is something the Arnold Schwarzenegger original never bothered to do.

And that 'universe' is coming soon to a theater near year in Shane Black's upcoming reboot The Predator.

I must say, I am surprised that these movies have enough story and momentum to sustain several iterations, even though commerce dictates it must be so.

Even the more cerebral Alien films feel as though they've painted themselves into a narrative corner with nothing new to say. These movies have long ago abandoned any kind of high-brow intentions to become high-concept horror films, where the slasher is a monster instead of a pervert with a knife.

The trailer for the new film looks entertaining enough, but it also appears to be adding literally nothing the series' mythology. The predator will show up, hunt, kick some ass. skin some people and will likely eventually be brought down by our hero or heroes.

The formula worked the first time in 1987 because the effects and execution were relatively fresh and gritty.

And say what you will about the sequel, it did try to do something new, transferring the alien from the jungle to a stylized, crime-ridden version of '1997' Los Angeles.

That film seems to be trying to echo Robocop's brand of muscular cynicism but is at times too silly to fully land its punches, although its violence is so relentless and amped up that I spent too much time being shocked by the film to be ashamed of it.

I purposefully skipped the mash-up 'vs.' films. They seemed little more than exercises in mind-numbing butchery, with uninteresting human characters there simply to be fodder for slaughter. I remember 2010's Predators being just ok -- a great trailer for a mediocre movie -- that was truly more of the same: band of grunts getting picked off one by one until a showdown between man and beast.

Still, I have faith in Shane Black. He not only acted in the original film, he made his name scripting some of the best '80s-era blockbusters like the first Lethal Weapon. And, with Iron Man 3, he proved capable of shaking up 'franchises' that have started to become hopelessly stale.

I am waiting on the reviews before I commit to seeing his Predator, but my hope is that the film uses modern special effects and hopefully a refreshing storytelling approach to make it more than just another hunter vs. hunted movie.

'Handmaid's Tale' film a prime example of how hard adaptations are

Like a lot of fans of the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood's best-seller The Handmaid's Tale (although it's weird to describe yourself as a 'fan' of something so relentlessly bleak and upsetting) I was surprised to learn that there had previously been a 1990 big screen version of the dystopian book about a society where women are systematically sexually abused and brainwashed.

Then I saw it -- and now I understand why it didn't have a lot of staying power.

It boasts two major actors -- Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall -- which should be intriguing. I actually think Duvall is fine in the movie as "The Commander," he is a closer approximation of what I pictured in Atwood's book than Joseph Fiennes. Dunaway is another story, this is around the point in her career where she always seemed campy, which is a shame since she was such a dynamite actress in her prime.

But there are many other, huge problems with this version -- which I tried to watch as objectively as I could -- while knowing that Elizabeth Moss's Emmy winning TV series has cast as a large and iconic shadow over this material.

First off, if makes the colossal error of jettisoning the main character's inner monologue which helped ground the book and later the TV version. Instead, the movie is weirdly detached and matter-of-fact, portraying its horrors with no context or emotion.

Speaking of no emotion, the lead performance of the late Natasha Richardson sadly misses the mark. She doesn't have the most expressive face and her line readings are stuck in neutral. Apparently, the role was originally going to be Sigourney Weaver's -- which would have been interesting since her career has largely been defined by playing strong women -- so it would be subversive to show her being stripped of her independence.

But instead we feel nothing for Richardson or her plight. The film does hew fairly closely to the book's narrative -- at least until the last act. But while it hits the same story beats, it strangely seems to be selling itself as eroticism instead of the terror that it is supposed to evoke. The tonally wrong nature of the project is self-evident in the 1990 poster, which makes it seem like soft core porn.

Of course, Atwood's book, which is both complex and wide-ranging would be difficult to adapt into a feature length film at any time. It's premise is so bold that it can be over-the-top if not handled very creatively and intelligently. The makers of the Hulu series have managed to do just that -- with an end result that is harrowing but which feels very vital to the current political and cultural climate.

Apart from trying to take advantage of the popularity of a best-seller, it's not entirely clear what the intentions were of the filmmakers behind the 1990 film version. It looks fairly cheap (my wife presumed it was a television movie when she saw me watching it) and it's Cliff Notes-style handling of more nuanced ideas in the book are infuriating.

But I absorbed it all as both a cautionary tale and a shining example of how great written work can go wrong when it is transferred to the cinematic medium.

Lando spin-off! Obi-Wan prequel! 'Star Wars' news to die for

Solo hasn't even hit theaters and yet the momentum behind Donald Glover and his purportedly scene-stealing turn as a younger Lando Calrissian has already inspired its very own spin-off. As a longtime fanboy of the Calrissian character, this is thrilling news -- as as a champion of seeing more diversity in leading roles in blockbusters -- this is also very welcome news.

It comes on the heels of Glover's breakout hit, politically-charged song "This Is America." Needless to say, he's having a moment right now.

Of course, this resurgence of interest in Calrissian has me really hopeful that Billy Dee Williams will finally get his due and appear in the final installment of the Rey-Finn-Poe trilogy, which should be concluding sometime next year.

Williams, who is 81 now, has long made his eagerness to play the character again known, and his lack of inclusion in both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were terrible omissions. Both movies had roles that could have gone to Williams (parts eventually filled by Lupita Nyong'o and Benicio Del Toro) and the claim of director Rian Johnson that he 'wanted' to include Lando only has added insult to injury.

Lando was always a character that was ripe for more exploration, and while I'm excited to see how Glover develops the character (which one of the Solo writers has now deemed pansexual) -- I also think it'd be interesting to see what Williams does with him now.

If nothing else, I fully expect this spin-off to provide a cinematic realization of the Battle of Taanab!

Meanwhile, there was even more exciting news! A long rumored 'Adventures of Obi-Wan'-type prequel appears to be definitely happening.

That film -- which hopefully/ideally will star Ewan McGregor again as the aging jedi -- will serve as a bridge between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. There are a number of reasons why this is very intriguing.

All of the elements that gave a nod to A New Hope were the strongest elements of Revenge of the Sith. While I am a not a fan of the prequel trilogy at all -- I do think McGregor consistently did some of the best acting in them, even if the material frequently let him down. He's obviously a very good actor and seems willing and ready to reprise the role, if for no other reason, it'll give him an opportunity to play the part liberated from George Lucas' control.

McGregor famously chafed at Lucas' dispassionate style of filmmaking and since this new film is supposedly being helmed by Stephen Daldry (which is a weird choice), so it should have a very different feel and tone than the three films he'd appeared in previously.

Also, at 47, McGregor can play an older wiser Obi-Wan, who Alec Guinness captured so hauntingly in A New Hope. There are still so many fascinating questions about that character's backstory:  How did he come to be known as Ben Kenobi? Why did he earn a reputation as being a weird old hermit. Clearly, he has a reputation because Luke Skywalker has heard of him before even met -- that's intriguing.

Both of these projects have the potential to be incredible wish fulfillment for the fans but also an opportunity to do something totally new in terms of the series' form -- for instance, Donald Glover has already suggested that his Lando film could be a kind of space-based Catch Me If You Can, which could be brilliant. And the Obi-Wan film could be something more akin to a western.

I'm not among the detractors of The Last Jedi -- I actually enjoy it more every time I think about it -- but for those who are anxious about where Disney is steering the Star Wars ship, these two spin-offs should be a welcome surprise.

'Never Seen It' - Episode 36 - 'Valerian' is a very extra movie

Director Luc Besson's big budget sci-fi film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets may have flopped when it hit theaters last year, but it still made a handful of critics' top 10 lists, which made me and my wife Elizabeth Rosado curious.

We're both fans of Besson's The Fifth Element, and the this film seems to borrow many of that quirky cult film's aesthetic. But does this movie work on its own terms?

We explore this question and more in the latest episode of our work-in-progress movie podcast Never Seen It (you can find all our previous episodes here).

Check out this episode on iTunes or by clicking on the YouTube link below to hear what she and I think about this one.