The Cohen Case Files: Perfect Strangers (1984)

Executive Produced (uncredited), Written, and Directed by Larry Cohen While watching Perfect Strangers, Larry Cohen’s train wreck of a romantic thriller, I was reminded of a snippet of Roger Ebert’s review of Death to Smoochy, which I quoted in my Movie Defender piece on that misunderstood film: “Only enormously talented people could have made Death […]

The Movie Defender: Snake Eyes (1998)

If Brian De Palma were as good at rewriting as he is at visual style, “Snake Eyes” might have been a heck of a movie. He isn’t, and it isn’t. It’s the worst kind of bad film: the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down, instead of just being lousy […]

From The Parallax Review Vaults / The Movie Defender : Silent Hill (2006)

The following review originally was written for The Parallax Review, a film review site of which I was the co-founder and managing editor. I have decided to collect the writings I did for The Parallax Review and preserve them here. I will be posting a few of these older pieces every week. My review of […]

From The Parallax Review Vaults / The Movie Defender: The Cell (2000)

The following review originally was written for The Parallax Review, a film review site of which I was the co-founder and managing editor. I have decided to collect the writings I did for The Parallax Review and preserve them here. I will be posting a few of these older pieces every week. My review of […]

The Movie Defender: Death to Smoochy (2002)

Only enormously talented people could have made Death to Smoochy. Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience. To make a film this awful, you have to have enormous ambition and confidence, and dream big dreams. –– Roger […]

The Movie Critic Defender

There is a common misperception that film critics enjoy bashing movies–salivating at the chance to collectively jump on the next blockbuster and declare it trash while we judge it from our ivory towers.  The idea that I might enjoy watching, analyzing, and writing about a bad movie strikes me as incredibly asinine.  Even if I […]