An old acquaintance of mine e-mailed me some questions last week, seeking responses to aid him in writing a paper of some kind. Now, I shudder to think what sort of academic exercise can be improved by input from me, but I’m always glad to help out a friend. I thought readers here might be interested in the discussion, so here it is.

1. Why do you think film criticism is important? (Or better yet: it seems as if so many people have disdain for critics. How do you justify your job?)

I think criticism is important in any artistic field. As much as artists would like to work in a vacuum, the fact is they don’t. They work in the real world, where not everyone is going to appreciate their art just because they went to the trouble of making it. Ideally, good film critics help to elevate the art by encouraging good productions and scorning bad ones. Ideally, critics help inform audiences, who in turn reward worthy films with their box offices dollars and punish the bad ones by staying away.

Ideally. Realistically, of course, lots of people go watch terrible movies even when every critic says they shouldn’t. And most of the time, those people come out of the movie saying, “You know, that really wasn’t very good” or “That was only OK.”

I also justify my job with the fact that ain’t nobody forcing anyone to read my reviews, much less heed them. You want to be a film critic, too, and offer a voice contrary to mine? I ain’t stoppin’ you.

2. How do you judge the value of a film? Are all films subjected to the same criteria? Were there any films you wish you ahd given a better/worse rating to?

That’s actually three questions, you know.

My basic philosophy in reviewing films is this: What is the film trying to accomplish? Does it succeed? Why or why not?

Figuring out what a film is trying to do is sometimes tricky, often because the film’s advertising campaign has falsely represented it. The trailers make it look like a comedy and it turns out to be a drama — in which case it’s not fair to criticize it for not being funny, because that’s not what it was TRYING to do.

You have to look at the film on its own merits, not comparing it to the ads, not comparing it to other movies you’ve seen, not comparing it to anything other than itself. What’s it trying to do? Is it succeeding?

All films are subjected to the same criteria: They have to be good. I don’t care if a movie is trying to do something that I’m not particularly interested in seeing done. The only question is, did it do a good job of doing it? If it did, it’s a good movie.

Sometimes I’ll see a movie a second time and decide it’s not as good or as bad as I initially thought, but meh, what can you do? The reviews are honest descriptions of how I felt about the movie after one viewing — which is how many viewings the average movie-goer will give it, too. So that’s probably fair.

3. Have you ever given a positive review to a film that your contemporaries (namely the other Utah critics) despised? Do you ever discuss or compare notes with other critics?

Oh yeah, we disagree often enough. (I’m in Portland now, not SLC anymore, but we Portlanders disagree, too.) Usually it’s by degrees: One person thinks it’s pretty good while another things it’s mediocre. Someone LOVING it while someone else HATES it not very common, at least not among the critics I know personally. I see some online, though, who will give something an F that I gave a B, and I wonder what the DEAL is with those people.

I try not to discuss a movie too thoroughly before I’ve actually written my review. (I definitely don’t read any other reviews before I’m done with mine.) That’s mostly because I don’t want my opinion to be swayed too much with second-guessing and with observations that didn’t come from my own experience.

There’s usually some general conversation on the way out of the theater — a snarky one-liner about it or an expression of surprise at its quality, or something — and maybe a little more talking in the idle moments before the next day’s screening. (”What about that thing last night?” “Yeah, that was bad,” etc.) But it’s not usually very in-depth. Let’s face it, the average movie doesn’t really warrant a lot of in-depth discussion.

4. What was the absolute worst movie you have ever seen?

I have to go back to Tom Green’s “Freddy Got Fingered,” which was bad on so many levels.

5. What is the best movie you have ever seen?

That’s cheating! That’s the same question as, “What’s your favorite movie?,” and everyone knows better than to ask a film critic that. You’ll get 10 answers, and they change daily.

6. Clearly, there are “critics” (a la Larry King and Jeanne Wolf) who shill for virtually every movie but seem to have some credibility to the general public, and then there are Critics, who are trying to give an honest review, whether it is favorable or not. How do you feel about “critics”? Do they weaken or strengthen your credibility with your readership?

We call them quote whores. They’ll claim to like anything, as long as it gets them quoted. We hate them. I don’t think they do have any credibility with audiences. People see “It’s great!” in the commercials and don’t bother to notice who said it. If they did notice, they’d notice the same names popping up again and again and start doubting the opinions of those “critics.”

The quote whores make it hard for real critics to get taken seriously, for sure. Look at it this way. Movie reviews have one of two purposes: They’re either to offer interpretive claims about a film’s merits from a strictly academic standpoint, thus elevating the art form; or they help movie-goers decide what to do on a Friday night. (Most newspaper reviews are of the second variety; publications like The New Yorker get into the other kind a little bit more.) Well, quote whores make a mockery of both goals. They add nothing insightful to the world of film commentary, and they offer no reliable guidance in choosing what movie to watch this weekend, either. Their ONLY purpose is to help studios promote their movies. They don’t help you, the film-goer, at all.

“United 93″ is a brilliant film (you can read my review when it opens this Friday), but the way it was handled by its publicists was the opposite of brilliant. “Stupid” I think is the word I’m looking for.

Not having heard yet when the press screening would be, I e-mailed my contact at the public relations agency that handles such things a couple weeks ago and asked. I received this reply:

As is to be expected, Universal is being very protective of this film. As such, they have only allowed us a small screening with a very select invite list. Unfortunately, I am not able to accommodate you into this screening.

I hope you understand, and will take the time to see it when it opens on April 28th. I have heard it really is an amazing film.

Now, we’re familiar with the trend of not screening lousy movies for critics. But if the movie is GOOD, why show it to only a handful of reviewers? Wouldn’t you want ALL of them to see it, to flood the marketplace with positive reviews come opening day?

Nonetheless, it happens now and then, usually with “prestige” films. There will be a press-only screening some weeks before it opens, to which only a few members of the press are invited, usually the critics for that market’s daily papers, and no one else. (Yep, the studio spends hundreds of dollars renting the theater, then only lets two or three people attend the screening.) Everyone else has to see it at a nighttime “promo” screening a few days before it opens, packed in with excitable members of the public who got free passes in radio station giveaways — not really the best environment to watch “Brokeback Mountain” or “Pride & Prejudice,” to name two recent films that went this route.

The “United 93″ tactic was even more bizarre, though. After the exclusive press-only screening to which only a few people were invited, there wouldn’t BE a nighttime promo screening. All the legitimate newspaper and online critics in Portland who are normally on the invite list would be out of luck for “United 93,” and their outlets wouldn’t be able to run reviews on opening day — unless they were part of the magic, lucky group who got invited, that is.

So who did get invited? Someone from The Oregonian, of course, and someone from Willamette Week. A few TV station people. No radio people. No online writers, of course. The Portland Mercury, a foul-mouthed, snotty weekly paper (but a very entertaining one) that takes nothing seriously, had someone on the invite list. But the Portland Tribune, a respectable twice-weekly paper? Not invited. Weird, huh?

Now, back to that e-mail I got from the publicist. First of all, I want to give her points for honesty. Usually in this situation the publicists say there ISN’T a press screening, just a public promo — they lie, in other words, rather than admit there is a screening and you’re just not invited.

But still, let’s look at the e-mail:

As is to be expected, Universal is being very protective of this film.

What does THAT mean? Protective, as in, they want to shelter it from negative reviews? From reviews in general? From people who won’t take it seriously? Yet you invite the Portland Mercury, which for Easter had a cover drawing of a giant Easter Bunny crapping eggs from which little Jesuses emerged. Those people you trust to treat your 9/11 movie with respect. Gotcha.

As such, they have only allowed us a small screening with a very select invite list.

Again, I question the selectivity of it….

Unfortunately, I am not able to accommodate you into this screening.

Notice she doesn’t indicate what the criteria were. No online people, of course. We’re used to being shut out. But it’s usually because the studio is afraid we’ll go right home and post a review that day, a week before the movie opens, or that we’ll include a lot of “spoilers.” (Thank you Harry Knowles and Ain’t It Cool News for giving legitimate online film critics a bad name.) Spoilers aren’t a worry here — everyone dies at the end; there’s your spoiler — so it must be that they don’t want Internet critics posting reviews early. Of course, the reviews are likely to be really POSITIVE, so I’m not sure what harm it would do, but whatever.

So no Internet critics. Why TV but no radio? Why one newspaper but not another? Did they only invite specific critics whose track record for Universal films suggested they were most likely to write positive reviews?

I hope you understand, and will take the time to see it when it opens on April 28th. I have heard it really is an amazing film.

Ha! “The movie is amazing; we just don’t trust you to write a review that would reflect that fact.”

That gets a big “screw you” from me. If it had turned out that I hadn’t been able to see it at the special-magic-lucky-exclusive screening, I wouldn’t have paid to see it. I’d have bought a ticket to something else and sneaked in to see “United 93.” And I wouldn’t have written a review.

As luck would have it, one of my freelance gigs, the Willamette Week, assigned me to review “United 93,” so I got to go. But it still wasn’t easy. The invitations were not for outlets, but for specific critics. It wasn’t “Willamette Week” on the list; it was “David Walker.” We had to e-mail the publicists and ask for permission to transfer the invitation over to me. AND THEY ALMOST DIDN’T GRANT IT. For real.

So if the movie does well, I have to assume it’s in spite of the way it was handled in the press, not because of it.

Here’s another edition of Eric’s Sack of Mail, where we respond to e-mails of general interest that are not angry or stupid. You can always reach me through the e-mail link at the top of this page.

First, a reader named Casey writes in with a correction:

The review for “Ultraviolet” reads: “I guess it makes sense, being known as ‘Hemophages,’ but I didn’t remember what ‘-phage’ meant, only ‘hemo-.’ My Latin isn’t what it should be.”

And yet “hemo-” and “-phage” are both from Greek. The equivalent Latin word is “sanguivore” (from “sanguis,” “blood,” and “voro,” “I eat”), which, a quick search reveals, is a real word people use.

Doh! Casey is right, of course. My secret shame is that I often confuse Greek and Latin things, not just with word origins but all their crazy gods, too. (OK, the gods were weren’t “Latin,” per se, but Roman. But you know what I mean.) I must work harder on this in the future.

Next, Zoe wrote in with some comments on the movie “The Cookout.”

You’re probably WAY OVER this topic, but I had the “pleasure” of watching the cookout for the first time today (thank God, for free!). And I too came upon your site by accident. Why? Because half way through the movie I couldn’t take anymore and I frantically looked up the film to find out who directed it. That’s how I found your review. I read it. All of it.

Now I don’t know how you feel about Black people, but I am a Black woman, and I hate this movie. Hate might be a strong word, but yes, I think I hate this movie. You were rather diplomatic in your review. Bless your heart. This was a piece of crap. And I don’t usually call films crap being that I am a filmmaker myself. But it just baffles me to no end how in the new millennium there can still be a market for this horrible stereotyping of ANYBODY. And it got funding! Wow. And why is Mr. Danny Glover in here? Sorry, I could go on, but I won’t torture you. Thanks for your review. I fully agree. Just sad.

I like black people just fine, Zoe, but thank you for asking.

To tell you the truth, I had honestly forgotten this movie existed until Zoe brought it up, and even then I had to re-read my review to bring any details to mind. Sometimes I use the word “forgettable” to describe a bad movie, and apparently that was literally true in this case.

Our next letter comes from Tim, who has noticed a recent trend in my reviews. He writes:

What’s with your recent obsession with age differences in movie reviews? You’ve mentioned the (surprisingly large) age differences of the actors in the movies “The Benchwarmers,” “The Shaggy Dog,” “Slither,” and another one that you gave a bad review to that I can’t think of off the top of my head.

Just wondered if this was some new thing that you’ve decided to make particular note of when reviewing bad movies, or “Slither.”

I think it’s a coincidence, actually. I’ve mentioned it for different reasons.

In “Slither,” the age difference between one character and his wife is actually acknowledged in the movie itself and figures into the plot. (She married him for financial security.) So my mentioning it wasn’t a criticism but merely part of the plot summary. In “The Benchwarmers,” I mentioned it to point out a logical flaw, in that David Spade and Jon Heder are supposed to have gone to school together, yet in real life they are 15 years apart. And in “The Shaggy Dog,” I mentioned it for the reason you’d think: Tim Allen is old and busted while his wife is young and hot. (Hollywood has a history of giving leading men love interest who are much younger.)

That said, if it’s a bad movie, an unrealistic age difference between characters can be worth mentioning, if only to pile on one more thing that’s wrong with the movie.

Oh, and I don’t know what the other review would have been. I thought it might be “Firewall,” where Harrison Ford is 63 and Virginia Madsen is 44, but a quick glance at my review shows I didn’t mention it. I remember noticing it, though, and even writing about it at one point before changing my mind. Did you read my rough draft?

Finally, a reader named Ben has this question:

Hey, why is “Brick” rated R? I read another review of it that said there is literally no swearing in it, and no sex/nudity. Is the violence really enough to warrant an “R”?

There is indeed literally no swearing in it, nor sex, nor nudity. The R comes from one scene where someone gets shot, and it’s shown fairly realistically. The only violence besides that is a lot of fistfighting. Unless someone is particularly bothered by violence, they should ignore the R rating in this case and pretend it’s a PG-13.

That does it for this round of Eric’s Sack of Mail. Thanks for reading, and thanks for writing letters that aren’t stupid or angry!

An old acquaintance (my high school girlfriend, actually, if you can believe that) forwarded me this amusing picture. Don’t tell the kids!

(The first story.)

(The first round of updates.)

- The Kansas City Star’s story, which ran Tuesday, has been rewritten by the Associated Press and is thus available for pretty much any paper in the country to run. We know a few papers have done so, particularly in Missouri and Kansas.

- The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story about it. Having already been mentioned at journalism sites and movie-review sites, the story appearing on a university-news site completes the trifecta of institutions that would be interested in the scandal.

- One of the writers at the Hollywood Reporter, Anne Thompson, mentions the story in her official HR blog.

- The Kansas City Aurora, which functions as an underground, non-sanctioned student paper for UMKC, has written a news story and an editorial on the subject. The editorial notes that this is the second time in a year that UMKC has been hit with a plagiarism scandal, as the dean of the College of Fine Arts and Sciences was caught plagiarizing parts of his commencement address last spring. So apparently this is a “thing” over there at UMKC. One more incident and it becomes a full-fledged trend!

- Continued investigation into Samir Patel’s work reveals that it wasn’t just his movie reviews that were stolen. Some of his features and columns were plagiarized, too, including one where he borrowed several paragraphs from — whoops! — the New York Times. The Times’ legal department has been informed of the theft. That sound you hear is UMKC administrators peeing their pants.

- A few people have asked how we spotted the plagiarism in the first place, so I will explain it.

There’s a site called Copyscape that helps writers look for plagiarism of their work. You give it a specific Web page, and it trolls the Internet looking for pages with identical or very similar text.

One of our HollywoodB****slap/EFilmCritic writers was doing that for some of his reviews and found a Patel rip-off. He told us about it, so another writer Copyscaped a few of his own reviews, and found MORE Patel plagiarisms.

That’s when I stepped in, figuring if the guy plagiarized a few times, he probably plagiarized a million times.

I didn’t use Copyscape, however. I used good old-fashioned Google, my preferred method of catching plagiarists. It’s very simple. First I pulled up all of Patel’s reviews from his newspaper’s online archives. Then I skimmed each one, looking for interesting or distinctive phrases — six or seven words or so — that seemed unusual enough that they wouldn’t appear anywhere else on the Web.

For example, where I saw, “The movie is not afraid to get down and dirty with plenty of toilet humor” (in his review of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”), I Googled “down and dirty with plenty of toilet humor” — with the quotation marks, so Google would look for that exact phrase — and found it in an HBS/EFC review. A simple glance at the context of the phrase on both sites, Patel’s and HBS/EFC, showed that it wasn’t just that phrase that recurred (which could have been a coincidence); it was an entire paragraph.

Having found one plagiarism source and noted which parts Patel had copied, I’d continue scouring his review to see if other parts came from other sources. In many cases, it turned out he’d stolen from as many as four other reviews in the course of compiling one of his.

- Finally, a reader named Mike e-mailed me in reference to Monday’s “Snide Remarks” column, which pretended to be the further confessions of Samir Patel. He says: “I’m sure you know how the law applies to your profession, but I’m ignorant in that regard. Is it possible that you could get into trouble for writing that?”

The short answer is no. You get a lot of leeway with satire. No reasonable person would believe that the column was really written by Patel, nor that the outrageous things said in it were true, nor that I even intended anyone to think they were. Publishing such a column on the front page of a newspaper might be actionable, because people don’t expect parody there (unless they’re reading the Daily Herald) and thus might think it was real. But under the heading “Snide Remarks,” where material is understood to be satirical and humorous, no.

(For background, see April 6 entry, in which I announced having been plagiarized, along with 18 of my colleagues, by a writer at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s student paper.)

- This week’s “Snide Remarks” column addresses the plagiarist and his wanton ways. It can be viewed by everyone, not just “Snide Remarks” subscribers (though by all means, you should still subscribe).

- The student newspaper in question comes out on Mondays, and sure enough, today’s issue contains the apology we asked for, along with a list of which reviews were stolen and from whom. The reviews were removed from the paper’s online archives over the weekend. The plagiarist, Samir Patel, resigned Thursday from his positions at the paper, but as far as we know still teaches a writing class in the English Department.

- The just-linked apology notice, written by the paper’s editor-in-chief, says that Patel wrote this in his resignation e-mail: “While I do feel there may have been somewhat of a misunderstanding, I apologize to the readers and am resigning due to my actions.”

Dear Samir: What part of this is a “misunderstanding,” exactly? Are there huge chunks of my writing that you only SEEMED to copy and paste into your reviews? Have I misunderstood some key factor which, if you were to explain it to me, would make me say, “Oh, OK! I understand now! It’s not plagiarism after all!”?

- The story has been linked at Movie City News, Jim Romenesko’s column (left sidebar) at journalism site Poynter Online, TotalFark.com (requires subscription), and at the blogs of film critic friends of mine (Sean Means, Shawn Levy and Dawn Taylor). The Kansas City Star is allegedly doing a news story about it (a reporter talked to me on Friday); I’ll of course link to it here when/if it happens. (UPDATE: Here it is, from Tuesday’s paper. I’m not quoted, but I am the “West Coast editor” referred to.)

We who consider film criticism a worthwhile and legitimate endeavor are plagued by what we call “quote whores,” the critics who will provide positive blurbs for ANY movie, no matter how bad, just because they love being quoted in the ads.

Just a week ago, one of my colleagues was saying it would be fun to start a Web site in which he (under a fake persona) wrote ridiculously glowing reviews, just to see if anyone would quote him. But it seems someone has beaten him to it.

I give you The Weekly Blurb, a very funny site devoted to the hyperbolic, highly quotable praising of all movies, designed as a parody of sloppy, overly enthusiastic movie reviewers, complete with factual errors and misspellings.

The site itself is mum on who the actual writers are, but there are hints elsewhere on the Net that it’s the work of some of the “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ crew.

The reviews are full of hilarious overstatement — “Get ready to play ball — balled up on the floor with laughter, that is! ‘Benchwarmers’ is stepping up to the plate to become the comedy hit of the season!” — and subversive backhanded compliments. (”Whether you’re a twelve-year-old boy or just act like one, you’ll stand up and cheer for ‘Benchwarmers’!”)

On “Basic Instinct 2″: If you thought Basic Instinct 1 was sexy, and you can’t wait for Basic Instinct 3, you sure won’t want to miss Basic Instinct 2!

On “Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector”: I haven’t actually seen the film yet, but the clips I’ve seen will have you tearing out your mullet with laughter!

On “V for Vendetta”: V meets Evey (Natalie Portman), and falls in love with the “v” in her name, even though it is small while his is capital. To prove his love he kidnaps and terrorizes Evey, but with the good manners of a gentlemen and a smile on his face, mostly because he always wears a mask.

And so on. Give it a look. So far they’re adding a new one every week. Other post-MST3K comedy projects have moved in fits and starts, but I’m hoping this one lasts. (Note: Contains some PG-rated language.)

Are you Mormon? Do you also use a Macintosh computer? And do you frequently find yourself wondering what products and software are available specifically for people like you? So did this guy who e-mailed me, who has set up a site called Latter Day Mac, a one-stop shop for all your Mormon-slash-Mac-user needs and information.

Tragically, the site contains a silly article encouraging people to send e-mails to HBO urging them to cancel “Big Love” — on the basis that it “parodies” LDS beliefs, and by “parodies,” I guess they mean “mentions” — even if you haven’t seen the show, and even though HBO doesn’t care (nor should they) what non-subscribers think. But ignore that, and maybe use the site for its LDS/Macintosh stuff.

The last several days of my life have been occupied with researching the material summarized in this article.

Basically, a writer for the student paper at University of Missouri-Kansas City, a fellow by the name of Samir Patel, has been rampantly and brazenly plagiarizing movie reviews for the past 13 months or so. I’m one of 19 critics (that we know of) from whom he has stolen regularly. He found me at EFilmCritic.com and HollywoodB****slap.com, two sister sites where my reviews are published. I assume it’s there that he found me, as opposed to here at EricDSnider.com, because he stole from 14 other EFC/HBS critics, too.

Read the above-linked article for details on what action we’ve taken. I’m afraid Mr. Patel’s life is about to become very unpleasant.