Paul Schrader made his mark on American cinema revealing the scarred psyches of American men trying to reconcile the contradictions of masculine fantasy and social reality, from his screenplays for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull to his own movies, beginning with Blue Collar. Affliction (1998), adapted from the novel by Russell Banks, is his most […]
Taxi Driver (1976), Martin Scorsese’s incendiary masterpiece of alienation and anger and urban anxiety may be the most maverick vision of seventies American cinema. It is certainly one of the most visceral portraits of the American urban underbelly ever put on film, a movie bathed in blood as much as in light, and almost forty years […]
Anyone who has followed the career of Paul Schrader could fall into the trap of simply cataloguing the ways in which First Reformed (2018) is a summation of his themes and inspirations. Imagine the promotional possibilities: “From the author of “Transcendental Cinema” and “Notes on Film Noir” and the screenwriter of Taxi Driver and The Last […]
The Yakuza (1974) (Warner Archive, Blu-ray) – Film critic turned screenwriter Paul Schrader put his passion for Japanese cinema and his insight into American genre movies into an original screenplay that he wrote with his brother, Leonard, and sold to Warner Bros. for a record payday that made the trade papers and gave Schrader a […]
Dog Eat Dog (2016) – Paul Schrader brings his intelligence to a squalid pulp crime drama of small-time thugs who impulses and instincts manage to screw up what should be a simple job. Nicolas Cage is Troy, the ostensible ringleader of the trio, recently paroled and celebrating his release at a strip club with fellow […]
Paul Schrader spent decades of exploring the scarred psyches of American men who succumb to violence when pain overcomes reason, but nowhere as poignantly and powerfully as in Affliction (1997), his adaptation of Russell Banks’ novel. Affliction stars Nick Nolte as Wade Whitehouse, an unambitious, jocular small town sheriff and odd job man to a […]
