First Reformed (2018) — PICK

The Rider (2018) — PICK

Of the two, The Rider is the more accessible and easily recommended. Set in the Dakota badlands, it tells a fact-inspired story about a young Lakota Sioux rodeo star named Brady who suffers a nearly fatal riding accident.

Chloé Zhao’s drama explores the lives of characters living with various kinds of brokenness, including Brady’s autistic sister, Lilly, and his best friend, Lane, a paraplegic.

Through all this, Brady’s Christian faith is an understated but essential dimension of his response to the difficulties he faces.

Written and directed by Paul Schrader, First Reformed is a more explicitly theological film, but also a darker, more despairing one.

Ethan Hawke plays a rural pastor whose involvement with a depressed environmental activist and his wife marks a fateful turning point in his life.

While the film holds out little hope of redemption, it is full of “longing for redemption” (Pope St. John Paul II, “Letter to Artists”).