Alexander Payne stretches himself with 'Downsizing,' but the execution proves puny

Toronto Diary: Ethan Hawke plays a man of the cloth in the haunting'First Reformed' Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang on the double-Rachel feature (Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz) "Disobedience" and how TIFF 2017 has been a showcase of acting talent for the actress leads. Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang on the double-Rachel feature (Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz) "Disobedience" and how TIFF 2017 has been a showcase of acting talent for the actress leads. 'First Reformed,' 'Downsizing' bring climate change to the fore "Will God forgive us for destroying his creation?" The man asking the question is the Rev. Toller (Ethan Hawke), an ex-military chaplain-turned-rural minister who finds himself undergoing a profound crisis of faith. He has already lost a son and a wife, and his insides are rotting from cancer, all of which might well drive even a devout believer to feel that God has abandoned him. But what genuinely haunts Toller, and inspires him to consider an act of extreme, violent desperation, is his eye-opening encounter with Michael (Philip Ettinger), a militant eco-activist who is terrified by the prospect of humanity's mass extinction. "First Reformed," Paul Schrader's somber, beautifully composed and entirely mesmerizing new drama, is not a work of particular subtlety. Its moral argument is as clear and crystalline as its images, shot by cinematographer Alexander Dynan in the nearly square academy-aspect ratio. The severity of Toller's convictions, as well as his disgust at the knowledge that his church has taken money from one of the town's biggest polluters, gives rise to an angry, confrontational question: Why have so many Christians rejected the science of climate change, effectively abdicated their God-given responsibility to look after the Earth?