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Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

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Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#31

Post by fullshark »

Kranar wrote: post #8

One of the interview questions I ask all UX Researchers is to open up rottentomatoes, sort recent films by rating and then look at the movies that have the lowest critic scores. Almost always you can see the audience score for those movies is much higher than the critic scores. I then ask why this is the case. The overwhelming majority of answers involve critics being out of touch with the audience, critics being per…

Gotcha type interview questions with a single "trick" that you either get/have seen before or don't provide terrible signal imo.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#32

Post by ascagnel_ »

bio_end_io_t wrote: post #4
thenightcrawler wrote: post #3

I don't think critics should necessarily follow general audiences , anymore than you would want a food critic to rate mcdonalds.

On the other side of the coin, you can have situations like in 1989 when Jethro Tull beat Metallica for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance at the Grammy's.

The Grammys have notoriously been considered out-of-touch for some time, even when you compare them to the other big awards shows (Tonys, Emmys, Oscars).

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#33

Post by klodolph »

bmelton wrote: post #15

There's an interesting concept with user reviews, in that they're inherently OF the people, whereas critical reviews are FOR the people. In a way, critical reviews are like celebrity chef cookbooks in that they should be considered aspirational. What we HOPE to be watching to please our senses of austerity, versus the pulp trash we might actually prefer to be watching. Similarly, sure, we might WISH we were making /…

The highest rated reviews favor desserts & baked goods, for what it’s worth.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#34

Post by trophycase »

General population has terrible taste, movie studios are now buying fake audience reviews to pump the ratings, they also buy critics but I assume they've always done that. Pretty hard to argue that critics are out of touch when the general population votes Avengers: Infinity War a top 10 movie of all time when it's released.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#35

Post by mikequinlan »

Kranar wrote: post #8

One of the interview questions I ask all UX Researchers is to open up rottentomatoes, sort recent films by rating and then look at the movies that have the lowest critic scores. Almost always you can see the audience score for those movies is much higher than the critic scores. I then ask why this is the case. The overwhelming majority of answers involve critics being out of touch with the audience, critics being per…

The article claims that the difference between audiences and critics has been increasing over the last two decades. If the difference was only because audiences self-selected while critics had to review everything, why would it be increasing over time?

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#36

Post by _v7gu »

tomrod wrote: post #22
yhoneycomb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I hire people who think exactly like I do”

When you have the right mental model, this is an appropriate approach. Not every mental model is correct, either locally to a domain or globally in all cases. 1 < 2, in almost all cases except for small Z_{0,1} or similar type cases where mod functions modify the space to something exotic or comparator functions are defined far out of the typical. If you think there is a case for 2 < 1, and you aren't appealing to so…

Any mental model that assigns zero weight to the probability of being wrong is a wrong mental model.

That said, biases arising from endogeneity might have negative effects too. You can't conclude a parameter should have a different/zero sign just because of endogeneity, you have to go fix your model, and re-estimate the parameters.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#37

Post by jrm4 »

logicalmonster wrote: post #17

I don't know if this tells the entire story, but I think these are 2 of the bigger issues at play. 1) The corporatization of social media is a big factor. There's big money involved in controlling reviews. Critics and influencers devoted to certain fandoms inevitably get influenced, pressured, infiltrated by studios who expect favorable treatment towards their product or that entity loses access, gets attacked, etc.…

Only "1" is correct here.

As for "2,", come on, it's ALWAYS been political. It's mostly always been this way except for changes in which particular groups you've named.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#38

Post by deeg »

logicalmonster wrote: post #17

I don't know if this tells the entire story, but I think these are 2 of the bigger issues at play. 1) The corporatization of social media is a big factor. There's big money involved in controlling reviews. Critics and influencers devoted to certain fandoms inevitably get influenced, pressured, infiltrated by studios who expect favorable treatment towards their product or that entity loses access, gets attacked, etc.…

You bring up a good point and there's possibly an additional, simpler, effect: producers of big-budget films pay for good reviews, both by critics and by IMDb users.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#39

Post by ascagnel_ »

AMerrit wrote: post #18

Interesting that the gap is with lower budget movies. It goes along with my gut feeling that mid budget movies are disappearing (I have no data to back that up), and it's as if the studios have optimized movie making into two types: #1 The big budget crowd pleasing blockbusters. A few flop, but generally audiences like them and they don't do anything critics can complain about too much. #2 Highly targeted low budget…

What killed the mid-budget movie was the rise of "peak TV" -- the B-list actors that defined mid-budget movies can land a meaty TV role that pays them well on a consistent basis. We're also seeing more and more A-list talent move to anthology or event series, where you can make a deep dive over 8/10/13 episodes instead of a 120-minute film.
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