Before he wrote Taxi Driver or Raging Bull , Paul Schrader was a film critic. “I went to the dark side in the ‘70s and started screenwriting,” Schrader, who can currently be seen reflecting on his decades-long collaboration with Martin Scorsese in the new Apple TV+ docuseries Mr. Scorsese, recently told Vanity Fair . “But you cannot write criticism and make films at the same time. The danger of offending someone is too great.”

But as he approaches 80, Schrader has begun to embrace that danger. Schrader is chronically, confidently online: he has called Saltburn a “ bad film ,” Joker: Folie à Deux a “ really bad musical ,” and declared that modern moviegoing audiences are “dumber” than they used to be. His later-career films, from The Canyons to Oh, Canada, hav

See Full Page