Paul Schrader’s First Reformed brought in a nice-sized audience this week. As you may know, Schrader wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese in 1976. In First Reformed, the protagonist, Reverend Toller (portrayed remarkably by Ethan Hawk), reprises the roll of Travis Bickle.

In the words of Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, writing for the A.V. Club, “The subject matter is an outrageous update of the alienation of Schrader’s classic Taxi Driver script for a world of LiveLeak videos and climate change; Travis Bickle’s eerily fizzing Alka-Seltzer becomes pink Pepto-Bismol sludging in [Toller’s] whiskey glass like a toxic spill.”

This week’s short garnered a round of applause! The Chemical Brothers – We’ve got to try, directed by Ninian Doff, featuring “Girl the Dog”. Thanks for sending the link, Igor 🙂

It was one of those nights when people wanted to hang out, so we watched a few amusing shorts, and devoured a loaf of homemade banana bread, still warm from the oven. Nice.