Every so often, a person gains renown on the interwebs that doesn’t translate in the real world. These people are called weblebrities and this is where I celebrate them.

You may know Lori Hoffman as a featured critic on Rotten Tomatoes, my favorite source for movie reviews. More accurately, you may know her as the woman that gave a negative review of Iron Man on the site. Outraged fanboys everywhere declared a fatwa on Hoffman, since they don’t deal particularly well with dissent and have a great deal of time on her hands. When I began to delve deeper into her work at the insistance of a good friend, I thought she was fantastic. She certainly wasn’t some hack, obsessed with playing Devil’s Advocate. Hoffman is a legit film critic with a fresh perspective. While I loved Iron Man, her reasoning for the low rating was justified and like all of her work, harbors a distinct love of film ingrained in the text.

So, I wanted to ask Hoffman a few questions about her reviews and her chosen profession. Turns out, she’s even more fantastic than I imagined, as she discussed guilty pleasures and fanboy death threats. (BTW, if you’re going after Lori… you’re gonna have to come through me first!) Enjoy.

How did you get into film criticism?

Like most critics I started out as a movie buff. When I saw On the Waterfront for the first time at 2am in the morning (I was 13), I knew I wanted to write about how movies affected me. I also loved the idea of being paid to go see movies for free. I started writing reviews for my college paper.

When did you end up at the Atlantic City Weekly?

Before it was AC Weekly, it was a small local called The Whoot. The publisher, Lew Steiner, was a friend from college and my home town of Ventnor. I started there in 1974. Later I went to papers in Philadelphia. I was the film critic for the Philadelphia Journal in 1979-80. Eventually that paper went out of business and I came home and started working for The Whoot again in 1983 and stayed.

Are you a big shot on the Boardwalk? Would your name get me out of trouble or into VIP rooms?

Only in my own mind. As for the second part of the question, I could get you in if it was a press night and I was invited.

Back to the topic at hand. What is your favorite review you’ve written?

I was truly inspired when I saw Pulp Fiction. (It’s on the RT site). I came home and wrote my review in long hand. I also loved my review of The Year of Living Dangerously (also on the site). Back then I could write 1500-2000 word reviews. Now I have to stay under 800 words for two reviews.

A lot of your notoriety on Rotten Tomatoes came from your negative review of Iron Man. After some distance and nasty emails, do you still feel the same way? Do film critics even revisit movies?

I think I might have to see it again, but I suspect I’d feel the same way. I really wanted to love that film and I didn’t. Reviewing movies is subjective; your gut feeling is based on your experiences. Most times, I’m embarrassed that I praised a movie I see again later and realize it wasn’t all that good. That’s when I say to myself, ‘Was I on crack when I wrote that review?’ I did see Annie Hall and didn’t like it. But I suspected it was my mood at the time, went to see it again, and it remains one of my all time favorites.

What’s the worst email you received about that review?

A guy wrote to tell me he was going to kill me, and my family. Not cool, even from an Iron Man fanboy.

What an idiot. Any other well-received movies you panned?

I hated Borat, but I think that’s the “Three Stooges” syndrome. Women just don’t find the same things funny as men. Just to show my range, I hated Forrest Gump, too, and Babel.

You don’t look like a stereotypical film critic and I mean that in the best way possible (Personally I always think of a pale, pretentious NYU hipster guy). Has that impacted your career, either positively or negatively?

Well, there aren’t many female film critics out there. I’d say we are less than 10%. Of course some of the best have been female, the top of the list being the late Pauline Kael. I think that being female does give you a different perspective sometimes. That said, I’m a film critic first, a feminist second. I don’t think it has hurt or helped me. My handle is “moviejunkie” for a reason: I like all kinds of movies from dumb action pics to top-of-the-line foreign language films.

What has been the biggest challenge in your career so far?

Challenge and film criticism don’t really go together. I get paid to see movies, not a tough assignment. However, when it comes to writing reviews, really bad movies and really good movies are easy. The words flow. However, those in-between movies are a bitch to write about.

You’ve observed the impact of Rotten Tomatoes on film criticism first-hand. What does its popularity say about the discipline at large? What is the future of film criticism in the internet age?

RT has evened the playing field. While Roger Ebert and some of the big name critics are still at the top, the rest of us are all pretty even, whether our primary format is a newspaper or on the ’net. Eventually, the dinosaurs known as newspapers will be gone and we have to adapt or die. I enjoy the freedom of my blog. (http://blogs.acweekly.com/) If something strikes my fancy and it doesn’t fit in the newspaper format, I can write a blog.

Everyone has a few movies they enjoy that aren’t particularly well regarded and I imagine critics are no different. Share with me your list of guilty pleasure movies.

I love guilty pleasures. Some of mine include Casino Royale (the 1967 version w/Woody Allen), Exit to Eden, 10,000 BC (yes, I liked it; it had a 7% approval rating on RT), Jean-Claude Van Damme movies in general (especially Bloodsport, Kickboxer and Timecop) and Alien vs. Predator. That’s more than enough for blackmail purposes.

Filed under: Interview, Movies, Movies