Film critics don’t have to be right – just superior

Budding movie critics – and you’re out there by the thousands, blogging your hearts out – could have learned a lot the past two weeks.

The American movie critic’s tricks of the trade were on prolific display in dozens of Oscar stories. It was a veritable Pretension Festival in publications big and small, national and weekly. Here’s a few of the things you could have learned about how to be a critic:

Establish your superiority over the public: Hate everything the public likes. Even beginning critics can easily pull this off, since in movie terms “the public” averages out to be a 13-year-old middle-schooler.

However, when the occasional popular movie turns out to be halfway good, like “Dreamgirls,” resist the urge to praise it. You must pick several terms from this list – “studio-driven,” “Hollywood,” “crowd-pleasing” – and another from this list – “schlock,” “garbage” “dreck” – and put them together as in, ” ‘Dreamgirls’ is Hollywood crowd-pleasing dreck.”

Do this even if you sort of liked it, because this isn’t really about the movie. This is about you.

Specifically, it’s about you trying to sound really, really smart.

Tout movies that other people will never get to see: The New York Times has mastered this technique. Its critics suggested that the Best Picture nominees should have included “L’Enfant,” “Three Times” and “Heading South.”

Yet budding critics in Spokane don’t get to see as many obscure movies, so I would suggest that you simply make up some titles: “The Air of Water,” “Brooding in Closeup,” and “Tout L’Croissant.”

This isn’t about whether you actually liked (or have seen) these movies. It’s about making everybody else envious because they haven’t.

Imply that you are a Hollywood insider: Drop phrases like, “as I was saying to Marty just the other day in Cannes,” and “I think we just cared more about cinematic integrity in the ‘70s” and “during my 30 years in this business they call show.”

Drop these phrases even if you are actually a chartered life underwriter in Pullman.

Imply, at the same time, that you are outside the lame Hollywood “suit” establishment: This is actually much easier to do, seeing as how you’re a chartered life underwriter in Pullman.

Yet for our purposes, this also involves exclusively championing films from the vibrant southern Sri Lankan film scene, films that are out of the mainstream (not to mention out of focus). Yet these films delve deeply into the depths of our universal souls. This goes without saying, but say it anyway if you want to be a film critic.

Establish your superiority over actual Oscar voters: Try to actively hate not just the usual bad movies, but movies that are good enough to win Oscar nominations. This is sometimes difficult for beginners to pull off. But you could try this outstanding technique used by one critic I read last week.

Of the Oscar-nominated movie “The Queen,” he wrote: “Didn’t see it, not interested.”

See how that works? An experienced professional can be so far above an Oscar-nominated movie that he doesn’t even have to see it to hate it.

Affect a jaded, world-weary air: Explain that everything in cinema already has been done better, probably in the ‘70s.

Once again, I quote from the same critic: “Though I didn’t see ‘The Queen,’ you and I both know that Helen Mirren’s best performances were long ago, in ‘O Lucky Man!’ and ‘Savage Messiah.’ “

It takes a professional critic with many years of experience to “know” this kind of thing. You might want to start out slower, “knowing,” for instance, that Robert DeNiro’s best work was in “Meet the Fockers.”

Never, ever let on that you lack the slightest clue what you’re talking about: After thinking deeply about cinema’s evolution; after talking to every single person in your book group; after talking to Marty at Cannes; and from your exalted position as a chartered life underwriter in Pullman, you must exude certainty, absolutely certainty, about your Oscar picks. You must know that Kate Winslet will walk away with Best Actress crown, that the Academy loves Clint Eastwood too much to ever let him lose and that Jack Nicholson once again will win Best Actor despite not being nominated.

You will, of course, be 100 percent wrong.

But film criticism is not about being right. It’s about you sounding really, really, superior to all of the common people.

You know, those people who actually win the office Oscar pool.