Hollywood's most glamorous night-and all the buzz preceding it-is, at last, over. With some predictions on target (Philip Seymur Hoffman got himself a shiny statue) and others disproved (the shocking loss of Brokeback Mountain), how successful film critics are in forecasting or influencing both public and industry opinion is a subject of hot debate.
In some instances, small films that receive critical acclaim are pushed to the forefront of Oscar consideration, when they might have otherwise remained in anonymity like most low-budget or indie flicks. In these cases, says Ed Gonzalez, head critic and editor of Slant Magazine, the film usually owes its success to the critical voice of a more publicly recognized critic, such as Roger Ebert.
"I'm sure he wields considerable power," Gonzalez said, "One has to wonder if actresses like Charlize Theron and Halle Berry, or a film like Crash would have impacted Oscar voters the way they have if it weren't for Ebert's pervasive stressing of their gifts."
Chris Barsanti, film writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer agreed that critics wield a noticeble influence over the success of a film.
"Without all the critical acclaim, there is absolutely no way that a movie like Capote would have gotten anywhere near the Oscars," Barsanti said.
While those who vote for the Oscars usually take cues from critical acclaim, there are occasions when the Academy will stray from this trend, film critic Craig Lindsay of the Raleigh News & Observer said.
"Oscar voters are made up of people in the industry. It's more about what's influential in the industry as opposed to what a critic will say," Lindsay said.
After all, Brokeback Mountain won best picture at the Critic's Choice Award, an event which according to the official site is "the barometer of what the Academy of Motion Pictures would do when it came time to vote for the Oscars." Yet, Brokeback failed to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
Film critics are even less willing to concede to their purported ability to sway public opinion, suggesting that certain audiences may actually shy away from the acclaimed and typically more serious movies. The reverse tendency, according to Lindsay, explains the box office success of movies like Hostel as opposed to critically acclaimed, yet less-moneymaking films such as Capote, or Good Night, and Good Luck.
"When a movie reaches widespread critical acclaim, audiences are a little leery of that. It's not that they don't want to see it, they just don't want to sit there for two hours to see a movie that's all swollen in the chest-all bigheaded," Lindsay said.
The fact is that most people don't know how to discriminate among the throngs of positive and negative reviews now easily accessible through the Internet. To tackle this problem, a new statistical model has been created that takes into account positive, negative, neutral and even the silence of critics. The study was conducted by marketing Professors Peter Boatwright of Carnegie Mellon University, Suman Basuroy of Florida Atlantic University and Duke's own Wagner Kamakura
"Some critics might be always reflecting the consensus. others might be more unpredictable. If you're adding in the unpredictable people with good bellwethers, you're sort of diluting the message. What you'd really like is to get a consensus," Boatwright said. "We have a statistic model that has a way of extracting a consensus among all these reviewers."
One part of the study that is garnering attention is the so-called "silence" factor, wherein a reviewer's lack of commentary bears a relationship to the quality of the film. Gonzalez argued that while senior writers do get first dibs, there is no conscious desire on the critics' part to stay silent about a film. Other times, films simply don't receive press screenings.
However, Kamakura said that the study does not look at the reasons why film reviewers do or do not review certain films, simply that it happens and that this silence can provide telling information.
"For some reason critics will not write a review. When they don't, in general the movie is not very good," Kamakura said, "that's where the critics got upset. It's not to say that they choose to only review good movies. We have absolutely no information about motives."
If this new model is a bit perplexing, there's no need to worry. There are plenty of more user-friendly film rating sites out there that tabulate an average of critical reviews for the curious moviegoer. Take for example Metacritic, which lists numerical ratings on a 100 scale. Or, for the film aficionado that wants to get a visual taste of how a new movie will be, it's a good bet to check out how "fresh" the movie is at Rottentomatoes.com. Even the Academy couldn't deny the use of the Tomatometer readings.
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