The 10 Best Paul Schrader Movies

"Despite the breadth of work Schrader would cover in over thirty feature films, central to Schrader's output remains a cycle referred to as the "man in a room" movies, including Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, The Walker, and proximally First Reformed which follow one another like repetitions on a theme of alienation and existential crisis in the tradition of the French and Russian existential novel and the Transcendental Style (and especially Robert Bresson's 1959 Pickpocket) he defined as a narrative bound to a narcotizing hyper-naturalism and everydayness that in its final act – on a note of decisive action or divine intervention – erupts into a transcendental moment – a fleeting sense of insight or liberation – made in its contrast to the quietude which came before, a movement, in the lurid world of Paul Schrader, most often associated with the outburst of violence."