There's no American director who gives his movies a tonier buildup than Paul Schrader does. His interviews about his new "Cat People" … might make the picture seem mouth-watering to those who hadn't seen his "Blue Collar," "Hardcore," and "American Gigolo." But if you did see that last one you know his trouble: his movies are becoming almost as tony as the interviews…. Schrader is perfecting an apocalyptic swank. When his self-puffery about magic and myth and eroticism and about effecting a marriage between the feeling of [Jean] Cocteau's "Orpheus" and the style of Bertolucci's "The Conformist" is actually transferred to the screen in "Cat People," each shot looks like an album cover for records you don't ever want to play.

While trying to prove himself a heavyweight moralist, Schrader has somehow never mastered the rudiments of directing. He doesn't shape his sequences. In "American Gigolo," the design was...