Cole Smithey is America's edgiest film critic. He's a 15-year veteran film critic with over 3200 reviews under his belt. When big name critics were losing their jobs, Cole was reinventing new media with "Cole Smithey's Movie Week," a self-produced weekly film review HD video series that showed up on USA Today and AOL Television. Cole Smithey is a well-known film critic for Rotten Tomatoes, his website ColeSmithey.com, and alternative weekly newspapers around the country. Smithey began writing reviews for The Independent in Raleigh, North Carolina, The Colorado Springs Independent and the Tacoma Reporter in Washington in 1997. He branched out into other alternative weekly newspapers across the United States and various national and international magazines, including FolioWeekly, the Santa Fe Reporter, Monterey County Weekly, CMQ, Unleashed, London's The Local Mag, The Jewish Magazine, and CT Slant. In 2007 he launched a weekly film review video series "Cole Smithey's Movie Week," which appears at his website ColeSmithey.com. He has appeared opposite Rex Reed in the pages of Vegas Seven. Smithey works as the Staff Film Editor for Kidsville News, a website and national newspaper print supplement with a circulation of 1.4 million.
As Cole tells it:
By the time I picked up the copy of Sight and Sound magazine that would inspire me to become a film critic, I had studied Stanislavski, acted in plays, films, and commercials, designed and built stage sets, and sewn darts in dresses in the San Diego State University costume shop. I had studied film directing and screenwriting at City College of San Francisco, and done a year-long acting scholarship in Salinas at Hartnell College where I lived out of my van. I was on the Dean's List with a 4.0 GPA. I'd even gone to the Cannes Film Festival twice as an actor looking for work and gotten cast in a Gaumont Film School project during my first trip there in 1992. That year I met Quentin Tarantino in a Palais hallway, and had a funny chat about "Reservoir Dogs," which I'd seen the previous night at the film's premiere. I couldn't help gushing about how Tarantino's movie "kicked my ass." A couple of years later, I had the pleasure of being directed by Francis Ford Coppola in the role of Bull Lee in a week-long stage rehearsal of his adaptation of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road."
I was confident about my newly chosen profession as a film critic because of the knowledge I'd absorbed from watching all 100 films from the hugely influential book "John Kobal Presents the Top 100 Movies." Over the previous year I'd made regular trips to the San Francisco Public Library taking out VHS versions–five at a time–of films like De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves," Kurosawa's "Rashomon," and Chaplin's "Modern Times." In about six months I digested the greatest films of World Cinema. Von Stroheim's "Greed," Bergman's "Wild Strawberries," and Wajda's "Ashes and Diamonds" had a profound effect on me. I emerged from the experience with a strong sense of how the films added up organically toward a humanitarian through-line of thought. Carl Dreyer's "La Passion De Jeanne D'Arc" showed me the power of the close-up camera to subjectively reveal its subject. I did a weekend-long screenwriting seminar where we watched and discussed "Casablanca" for all it's worth. I was looking at films for all of the complexity that the seventh art has to offer. It was an exciting time that I wanted to last forever. Then, I took a film criticism class with Bay Guardian film critic Susan Gerhard. Susan was great film writer. She taught me crucial lessons that I carry with me to this day. It was Susan who introduced me to Kathryn Bigelow's "Strange Days" (included in the list). "Trainspotting" was the first film I reviewed. What an amazing film!
When I moved to New York in 1997 with the intention of working as a freelance film writer I had just gotten a gig writing capsule reviews for The Independent in Raleigh/Durham N.C. Friday nights were set aside for the Angelica Cinema, where I'd slip between three movies to write about that week. It wasn't until the following June that I would graduate to writing long reviews. I picked up a few more clients, and I was on top of the world. Still, I realized that I would always be going back to watch older films that would inform and enrich me as a critic. I was off and running.
What other say about Cole Smithey:
"Film critics exist to inform and entertain the public; to separate the wheat from the chaff. Cole Smithey does so with expert brevity and style, imparting to his reader not only a vast knowledge of film, but his infinite passion for the movies."
—Jen Yamato – Former Rottentomatoes Senior Editor / Movieline Senior Editor
"This guy [Cole Smithey] is consistently sharp with his reviews and he clearly loves film. A rarity."
—Joe Carnahan – writer / producer / director (THE GREY)
"When it comes to cogent, engaging and provocative film criticism, Cole Smithey is without peers. Truly, Cole Smithey is my source for intelligent and entertaining film reviews."
—Phil Hall – author of "The Encyclopedia of Underground Movies," and "Independent Film Distribution."
"Cole Smithey tells me what I need to know about a movie: Does it fit into a broader social or political context? Is it fun? Is it worth $12 and several hours of my life? He's the only film critic I find indispensable."
—Ted Rall – editorial cartoonist, political columnist, and author."
[Cole Smithey] might just be the smartest film critic in the world."
—Chris Fuller – filmmaker (LOREN CASS)
