Thumbs Up or Down on Movie Critics?

By DAVID SHAW

March 20, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It was one of the best reviewed movies of 1998. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times loved it. So did the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News. And Time and Newsweek. And television’s Roger Ebert. It even received favorable reviews in venues as disparate as the New Yorker, L.A. Weekly, Daily Variety and the online magazine Salon.

But if you look for “Out of Sight” on a list of 1998’s top 10 box office hits--or even the top 50--you won’t find it. Indeed, its critical success so outstripped its commercial success that on Jan. 5--two days after it was named best movie of the year by the National Society of Film Critics--”Out of Sight” was already available for rental in video stores, a fate to which movies are consigned only after they’ve exhausted their theatrical potential.

Meanwhile, “Armageddon” made more money last year than any other 1998 movie, and “Patch Adams” was one of the biggest hits of the holiday season. Critics trashed both. In Premiere magazine’s survey of how top critics rated the year’s 100 most noteworthy films, “Armageddon” was 96th, “Patch Adams” 99th. The Boston Globe said “Armageddon” was “noisy and stupid and shameless.” The Washington Post said, “There should be a special room in hell where the makers of films like ‘Patch Adams’ are sent.” Ebert called “Armageddon” “the worst of the worst”; Gene Siskel, his late colleague, said the same of “Patch Adams.”

Obviously, film critics have no influence on the moviegoing public. Right?

Wrong.

Or, rather, right and wrong.

The critics certainly couldn’t make “Out of Sight” a big hit--primarily, critics and movie executives agree, because the movie was badly timed and badly marketed, released in early summer instead of the fall, when such movies typically perform better, and positioned as an action film, instead of a sly, smartly written, romantic comedy. A week after “Out of Sight” was released, “Armageddon” hit the nation’s screens and blew “Out of Sight” (and everything else) out of sight, generating $36 million at the box office the first week and going on to top $500 million worldwide.

Some movies are impervious to critics. They are usually either genre movies with a built-in niche audience--horror movies, action movies, teenage movies, science fiction movies--or they have a big star or dazzling special effects or a compelling, easily grasped premise, what’s known in Hollywood as a “high concept.” (“Patch Adams” had a big star, Robin Williams, and a high concept--medical student challenges the impersonal health care system on behalf of patients everywhere. “Armageddon” had all three prerequisites for a critic-proof triumph--Bruce Willis, eye-popping, earsplitting pyrotechnics in outer space and an asteroid threatening to destroy the Earth.)

In recent years, significant changes in the making and marketing of movies, in the media’s coverage of Hollywood and in the general culture have eroded what minimal sway the critics might previously have enjoyed over the potential audience for such big- budget movies. They are now advertised on television for days, sometimes weeks before they’re released, and their stars are featured on national magazine covers and chatted up on the morning network news shows and on “Entertainment Tonight,” “Access Hollywood” and the E! channel. By the time the critic weighs in with his review on opening day, “most people have already made up their minds whether they want to go,” says Terry Press, head of marketing for DreamWorks, which produced “Saving Private Ryan,” one of this year’s Academy Award front-runners.

On television, in particular, even negative reviews are manipulated to help a putative blockbuster.

“I can get all kinds of bad reviews and still cut myself a 30-second television spot that makes it look like I got good reviews. . . . ‘Splendid,’ ‘Magnificent,’ whatever,” Press says. “We are a sound bite culture. . . . You just take the sound bite. If they didn’t say it exactly the way you want, you just take the part of what they said that you do want . . . and if they don’t say what you want, you just make it up yourself anyway.”

Most of the time, studio marketing executives don’t have to manipulate a quote or “make it up.” With increased media coverage of the movies and the development of cable television and the Internet, there are now more movie “critics” than ever, and many have made a cottage industry of giving “blurbs.”

Serious critics deride these people as “quote whores,” quasi-journalists eager to see their names in print and equally eager, perhaps, to show their gratitude to the studios that fly them, free of charge, to New York or Los Angeles two or three dozen times a year, wine and dine them and provide them with access to stars.

Critics usually see movies before they’re released so their reviews can appear on or just before opening day, and studio publicists regularly corner or call them after these screenings, seeking quotes for their ads. Critics for the most respected news organizations--who attend the screenings individually or in small groups but either skip the junkets or have their papers, not the studios, pay their way--generally refuse to provide quotes before their reviews are published or broadcast. Most even refuse to tell the publicists what they thought of the movie. But many lesser critics are happy to provide quotes, and the studios sometimes suggest specific blurbs to them, either giving them a choice of several or asking questions like, “Wouldn’t you like to say this movie was ‘WONDERFUL?’ ”

Someone, Somewhere Has a Good Quote

On one day chosen at random last month, the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times was filled with movie ads featuring big, bold rave notices from the likes of Cathy Cogan of MJI’s Big Picture, Ron Brewington of the American Urban Radio Network, Susan Granager of the SSG Syndicate, Patti Spitler of WISH-TV and Bonnie Churchill of the National News Syndicate.

“Even on a poorly reviewed film, you can find a critic somewhere that will absolutely have a quote for you to put in your advertising,” says Mitch Goldman, former president of marketing and distribution for New Line Cinema. “The attribution [the name of the organization where the reviewer works] becomes smaller and smaller as they become less prominent.”

In television commercials, the narrator says only the words of praise (“Brilliant!” “A masterpiece!”); the attribution is in tiny type, it’s not spoken aloud and it flashes by faster than a pickpocket’s hand.

When the rave notices are from big name critics or major news organizations, the attribution is large--”SISKEL & EBERT--’TWO THUMBS UP’;” “NEW YORK TIMES--’BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR’ “--but most quotes are from decidedly lesser sources.

DreamWorks’ Press says the influence of real critics has been “watered down by all those people calling themselves ‘film critics’ who are really your aunt in Minnesota with an Internet site.”

Press says many people may not be able to distinguish between these “critics” and genuine critics--and that, says longtime film director Arthur Penn, is precisely the intent of the studios: to overwhelm and render meaningless the genuinely critical voices. John Powers, film critic for Vogue magazine and for National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air,” goes a step further. Studios use quotes from nobodies as a deliberate marketing tactic “to make regular criticism seem like a joke,” he says.

Some studios will not even let major critics screen movies that they expect them to pan; they hope to lure enough moviegoers on the first weekend to make money before the critics can see the movies on their own and render their judgment a day or two later. Warner’s, in particular, has increasingly taken this approach.

On the other hand, when studios have movies that they think the critics will like--and that urgently need good reviews to succeed--they go to great lengths to get critics to see them in a timely fashion. Late last year, Fox 2000 released “The Thin Red Line” on a Wednesday, instead of the traditional Friday, so it would have the undivided attention of critics (and moviegoers) for two days; more important, studio executives persuaded their widely admired but notoriously perfectionist director, Terrence Malick, to let them show the film to critics before it was finished so that the major critics associations could consider it for their coveted year-end awards.

These tactics in themselves suggest that even as critics bemoan the studios’ machinations and blurb-filled advertisements, they may, in fact, be playing an increasingly greater role in the success or failure of some movies. If there is a consensus among the major critics, they can give a movie their stamp of approval, persuade people they should--indeed do--like it.

Studios poll moviegoers after pre-release screenings and sneak previews and, often, after a movie is released as well to find out how they rate the movie; those two scores are generally very similar, says Robert Friedman, who runs marketing and distribution worldwide for Paramount. But Friedman remembers that when Warner Bros. released “GoodFellas” in 1990, scores at the preview screenings were not good and people said they were reluctant to recommend it to their friends--until “the reviews came out and called it one of the great American movies. . . . Scores in the exit interviews went up 30 points.”

Critics can be particularly effective--they can add what several studio executives call “an extra layer of admissions” to even the biggest, most heavily advertised movies--if they decide, and say forcefully, that the movie goes substantially beyond what was expected of it. This is especially true of movies that at first glance appear to be niche or genre movies but are actually more ambitious attempts to “cross over” or “break out” to a wider, mainstream audience.

“ ‘Men in Black’ went from being a hit to a mega-hit when the critics said it was not just a gimmick movie--it was a good movie,” says Bob Levin, president of worldwide marketing for Sony Pictures Entertainment. Critics were also instrumental in persuading prospective filmgoers that “Saving Private Ryan” was not just another war movie, that “Scream” was not just another teenage horror flick and that “The Terminator” was not just another down and dirty exploitation film.

‘Life and Death’ for Some Movies

Critics are most influential on movies that are neither “event” movies nor niche movies, neither vehicles for superstars nor showcases for the latest gimmicks and gadgets--movies like “Shine,” “Gods and Monsters,” “Fargo” and “Shakespeare in Love.”

Unlike the studios’ “break the bank” extravaganzas, these movies are generally made and released by smaller, independent companies, with modest production budgets and even more modest marketing budgets. They include most foreign films shown in the United States and virtually all sophisticated films made for adults.

These movies can be difficult and complex, and by the time most people go to the movies on the weekend, the demands of their bosses, their children and life in general have given them all the “difficult” and “complex” they can handle.

“Ninety percent of the people standing in line at the movies are there to be entertained, not to write a book report the next day,” says James Cameron, director of “Titanic” and “The Terminator.”

Only the critics can persuade these people to see something other than pure entertainment.

Reviews are “life and death to our movies,” says Lindsay Law, president of Fox Searchlight Pictures, which released such movies as “Waking Ned Devine,” “The Full Monty” and “The Ice Storm.”

This has always been true, but the success of “sex, lies and videotape” a decade ago ignited an explosion in independent filmmaking; the number of films submitted in the dramatic competition at the annual Sundance Film Festival, perhaps the single best barometer of the independent film movement, jumped from 150 in 1989 to 840 last year. With more independent movies to choose among--and with the reviews and limited marketing of most of these films drowned out by the media blitz for “event” and niche movies--independent producers and distributors must rely more than ever on strong reviews from prominent critics.

Americans used to routinely speak of “going to the movies” almost every weekend. It was a habit. It almost didn’t matter what was playing. But despite modest increases in attendance of late, movie admissions are still about 65% below what they were right after World War II, even though the population has almost doubled. Today, with ticket prices rising and so many free or inexpensive movies available via cable and the VCR, most people have to be vigorously recruited to leave the house to go to a movie. Although that recruitment generally involves an “event” movie that they just have to see so they can discuss it with their friends--a phenomenon that most affects young people, who tend not to read reviews--it is also increasingly true of serious adult movies that depend on the critics.

“When these people go to a movie now, they want to be sure they’ll see something good, and only the critics can tell them that, so the critics actually have more influence,” says Andrew Sarris, longtime film critic for the Village Voice, now with the New York Observer.

Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax Films, which released two of this year’s major Oscar contenders, “Shakespeare in Love” and “Life Is Beautiful,” says critics have “tremendous clout, tremendous power, especially on upscale, intelligent films. They educate the public and if they really like the movie, they can champion it.”

Companies like Miramax know good reviews can be used in ads to attract moviegoers and to impress members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences--the people who vote on the Oscars. There’s almost nothing better than a mantle full of Oscars to boost a movie’s marketing potential, and good reviews are “absolutely essential for a film that will contend for Academy consideration,” says Gerry Rich, president of worldwide marketing for MGM.

Marcy Granata, executive vice president in charge of marketing and publicity for Miramax Films, says bluntly, “ ‘Shakespeare in Love’ was born of the critics. They explained that it was sexy and funny, not a dry biography of Shakespeare.”

Miramax Poses a Special Case

The Academy Awards used to be a big studio monopoly. But in 1996, four of the five nominees for best picture--including the winner, “The English Patient,” from Miramax--were made by independents. Miramax, the most successful of the independents, has had a nominee in the best picture category seven years in a row, among them “Pulp Fiction,” ’The Crying Game” and “Good Will Hunting.”

Miramax was acquired by Disney in 1993 and now releases so many movies so successfully--and spends so much money promoting its Oscar contenders--that many of its competitors say it should no longer be regarded as an independent or an underdog. Indeed, journalists say that Weinstein and Miramax far surpass the studios in their intense courtship of the media. Critics say that no studio and no other independent calls them as often as Miramax to try to arrange convenient screening times for them. Miramax is also the best, they say, at inducing the media to write and broadcast feature stories that help create a climate of anticipation and excitement before a movie is released--and then providing story ideas that will keep the momentum building once the movie is in theaters.

If an influential critic is someone who is able to get people to see good movies, then, “The most important critic in the country right now is Harvey Weinstein,” says Vogue’s John Powers.

Despite its media savvy and its critical and commercial success, Miramax is still, however, an independent, not a studio, in spirit; its movies generally have literate scripts on sophisticated themes, rather than big stars and special effects. When good reviews lead to box office profits and Academy Awards--whether for Miramax or anyone else--other independents are encouraged to take risks and make and distribute serious movies, and that makes the critics doubly valuable--and, more important, ultimately benefits the moviegoing public, especially in today’s increasingly risk-averse movie-making climate.

Many critics--and more than a few movie-makers--speak longingly of the “golden days” of adventurous movie-making that are generally thought to have begun with “Bonnie and Clyde” in 1967 and lasted through the late 1970s.

“Everyone was so confused in the American [film] industry then that they’d try anything . . . ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘Chinatown’ and the first ‘Godfather’ movie, the early [Martin] Scorsese movies,” says Richard Schickel, who has reviewed movies for Time magazine since 1972. “It was stirring. . . . You felt that you were really writing on a topic that interested a lot of people. . . . I don’t think that’s true at the moment.”

That period was also when many Americans discovered the great foreign filmmakers--Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard from France, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni from Italy, Ingmar Bergman from Sweden, Rainer Werner Fassbinder from Germany, Akira Kurosawa from Japan, Luis Bunuel from Spain. . . .

Their movies in particular appealed to an upscale, well-educated audience, precisely the kinds of people who tended to read--and heed--reviews.

Although there are certainly some critically acclaimed foreign movies being made now--”Life Is Beautiful,” “Central Station” and “the Celebration” in the last year alone--most critics say that foreign films are “not at the level of exciting artistry they used to reach,” as Pauline Kael, the former New Yorker film critic, puts it. There are also fewer of them coming to this country, in part because U.S. films now so thoroughly dominate screens worldwide--70% of the European box office gross comes from U.S. pictures--that foreign filmmakers sometimes have trouble getting either financing or theater playing time for their work.

Movies with subtitles have always been a tough sell in this country, and the younger generation of American moviegoers--which reads less than its predecessors and is accustomed to getting its entertainment in quick, easy MTV bites--is even more resistant to subtitles than its forebears.

But to many people, the “good old days” always look better than today, in any field. One reason that foreign films have faded somewhat is that independent films made in this country today have improved in quality as well as quantity and now offer many of the same allures once available only in foreign films--frank sexuality, moral complexity, genuine wit and story lines more demanding than those found in, say, “Godzilla.”

“People have been complaining about the movies since 1914,” says Andrew Sarris, the longtime film critic. “In the 1950s, they thought movies had been much better in the ‘30s. In the ‘60s, they talked about the ‘40s. Now we talk about the ‘70s. People say most movies are bad now. But most movies have always been bad. Most of everything is always bad. Most plays are bad. Most paintings are bad. But I find there are always enough movies every year--20 or 30 or 40 of them--that I can mention fondly at the end of the year.”

Nevertheless, even many studio executives acknowledge that there are more bad movies being made today than 25 years ago, if only because there are more movies being made now--an average of 433 a year for the past dozen years, double the number made annually from 1967 to 1981.

Brian Grazer, co-chairman of Imagine Films Entertainment, which produced “Apollo 13,” “Liar Liar” and the about-to-be-released “EDtv,” says he does not think there are fewer good movies being made now, but there are more “junky movies,” and they are often both more noticeable and more successful at the box office than such movies used to be because “they’re propelled by the same kind of advertising dollars as the great ones. There are movies that are unwatchable that do $150 million” at the box office.

‘Golden Age’ of 1960s, ‘70s

In the late 1960s and the ‘70s, there was clearly a more adventurous spirit in the American culture. The civil rights and antiwar movements and the feminist and sexual revolutions all combined to animate and transform society, and movie-making was part of that new consciousness. Not only were individual movies more daring but movies in general were, for the first time, taken seriously as art.

Movies in this country had previously been perceived as a populist entertainment. “One eats popcorn at the movies and would not think of doing so at the ballet, opera or symphony,” writes Richard Schickel in his forthcoming book “Matinee Idylls.” “The crunch of popcorn and the slurp of soda are the Whitmanian sounds of cultural democracy.”

But all that changed, if only for about 15 years, beginning in the late 1960s. As Susan Sontag later wrote, “It was at this specific moment in the 100-year history of the cinema that going to the movies, thinking about movies, talking about movies became a passion among university students and other young people. . . . Film was no less than a secular religion.”

Film critics were the high priests--or at least the esteemed apostles--of this new religion. Kael and Sarris became the leaders of two contending schools of film criticism, arguing over movies, directors and theories, in print and in person.

James Agee and, to a lesser extent, Manny Farber and Otis Ferguson, had been distinctive stylists writing about film for popular magazines in the 1940s, but Kael was a fierce polemicist, writing with a passion and an intellectuality uniquely suited to her time.

“When most serious film criticism read like term papers in sociology and most popular reviews read like wire copy, Kael’s writing was the battle cry of a vital and dangerous new era, the equivalent of Little Richard’s primal ‘A wop bop a loo bop, a wop bam boom!’ that announced the birth of rock ‘n’ roll,” wrote Richard Corliss, film critic for Time magazine, in a 1990 issue of the journal Film Comment. She was so influential that many young critics tried to emulate her style--and became known as “Paulettes.” Favored directors--Robert Altman, Warren Beatty, Sam Peckinpah--courted her . . . and tried to use her.

Altman showed her a rough cut of his 1975 film “Nashville,” for example, knowing that Paramount wanted to cut several scenes. She wrote her review months before the film’s release and made a point of “referring to specific scenes in her review so they couldn’t be cut,” says David Denby, who has Kael’s old job as film critic for the New Yorker.

Ultimately, Paramount reprinted her entire laudatory review in newspaper and magazine ads and on posters, placards and billboards across the country. Her review of “Last Tango in Paris” was similarly trumpeted after she wrote that the date of the movie’s premiere in 1972 “should become a landmark” comparable to the night Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” was first performed, and she also contributed significantly to the success of movies ranging from “MASH” and “Mean Streets” to “Bonnie and Clyde” and “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.”

Kael’s reviews were collected between hard covers and reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. No film critic writing today approaches Kael’s stature. She retired eight years ago, but in virtually any discussion of film criticism, her name is invoked more than that of any current critic--by movie-makers and critics alike.

“In terms of being a taste-maker, there’s never been a film critic with her influence,” says Roger Ebert.

That may say more about today’s culture and movie business than it does about today’s critics.

“We’re sort of in the golf years now--a very staid cultural environment,” says Janet Maslin, longtime film critic for the New York Times.

It is an environment in which the business of movies has far superseded the aesthetic of movies.

Twenty-five years ago, the vast majority of the revenue from a movie came from its domestic box office gross; today, studios want movies that can exploit the growing international market--which has more than doubled its percentage of total movie revenue in the past decade--and capitalize on merchandising tie-ins as well. That usually means movies that emphasize action and special effects--which translate well in any language and lend themselves to merchandising--rather than movies that emphasize character, dialogue and humor, which capitalize on neither revenue stream.

Even more important, most movies were released gradually 25 years ago, in a few theaters in a few cities at a time. Opening in 100 theaters was considered huge, and prestige films often opened in just one or two theaters each, in New York and Los Angeles. The studios hoped that good reviews in those cities would draw people into the first theaters, where limited availability would lead to long lines, thus creating an instant buzz; if all went well, good word of mouth would build steadily as the movies opened in more and more theaters, accompanied by more and more reviews.

Then came “Jaws.”

Movie Business Changed Forever

In 1975, “Jaws” opened in 409 theaters nationwide. “The Godfather” had previously screened in a then-unprecedented 316 theaters in its second week, and a Charles Bronson movie, “Breakout,” had used national television advertising, but “Jaws” was the first major movie to combine wide release and a big, national TV advertising campaign. It also became the first movie to earn more than $100 million.

“ ‘Jaws’ changed the business forever,” Peter Biskin wrote in “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” his 1998 book on Hollywood. “The studios discovered the value of wide breaks . . . and massive TV advertising, both of which increased the costs of marketing and distribution, diminishing the importance of print reviews, making it virtually impossible for a film to build slowly, finding its audience by the dint of mere quality.”

Last year, the average cost of marketing a new movie made by one of the seven major studios was $25.3 million--and the average cost of making a movie was $52.7 million. Both figures are about six times greater than in 1980. The average studio movie today must earn $78 million to break even--and many movies now cost more than $100 million just to make. “Titanic” cost more than $200 million--about 20 times what “Jaws” cost.

“There’s more money at stake now so studios are more risk-averse,” says Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times. “Many of them are owned by big conglomerates, which are especially risk-averse.”

To minimize risk and maximize the likelihood of quickly recouping these huge investments, studios began “opening wide” most of their movies. With the birth of the multiplex, the number of movie screens available in this country has more than doubled in the last 20 years; many movies now open on 2,000 or 3,000 screens--or, in the case of “Godzilla,” more than 7,000 screens.

This has placed a premium on the opening weekend’s box office gross, previously a statistic used only in the Hollywood trade papers but for the past several years, a staple of the Sunday night news shows and the Monday morning papers, much like the scores of sports events.

“It’s all about getting the first wave into the theaters,” Turan says. “After that, it’s all about the movie, about what people tell their friends about the movie.”

A movie that does not score big at the box office in the first weekend or, at the latest, the second weekend, is often yanked out of the theaters.

“Being No. 1 for the weekend is more important than anything--it’s sort of taken the place of reviews,” says Brian Grazer of Imagine. “If you’re No. 1, it reverberates through the media, throughout the entire world. . . . . People don’t even pay attention to reviews. It has the same dynamic as going to a disco. No one cares about the best disco, they care about the one that has the longest line. . . . It’s the herd mentality.”

Young people are especially susceptible to the “everyone’s going” approach, and they constitute a disproportionately large share of the movie audience; although the 12-24 age group is less than 18% of the total population, it accounts for 37% of movie admissions. Because young people often act on impulse and are the most eager to see movies right away--they just have to be the first in their crowd to see the hot new movie--they also contribute disproportionately to the opening weekend box office gross. The success of such movies as “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Waterboy” and “Varsity Blues” means that more and more movies are aimed at them. Because they are also the most likely to be influenced by their friends and by TV commercials, rather than by reviews, this has further diminished the influence of critics.

Joe Roth, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, and Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of “Armageddon” and “The Rock,” say that top critics--most of whom are more than 45 years old--are losing their power because they are out of touch with the audience for many of today’s movies. These critics are often appalled by quick “slam cuts” and loud, jarring sound that seem normal and exciting to younger moviegoers raised on MTV and video games. What’s needed, says John Powers of Vogue, is “a brilliant young person who has figured out how to write about ‘Die Hard’ and ‘Godzilla.’ ”

The commercials for many movies today are even more narrowly targeted than are the movies, “using images and appealing to a young audience that is image-oriented,” Grazer says. “The marketing overpowers the critics.”

Critics see themselves as “the only independent voice that stands between the studio machinery and the audience,” Powers says, and many of them worry that they have been co-opted--both incorporated into and supplanted by--the studio marketers.

Owen Gleiberman, film critic for Entertainment Weekly, says that although there are now more good critics than ever before, “Too many puff critics, quote whores . . . and bland, lily-livered critics are drowning out the serious critics.”

Kael wrote lengthy reviews--essays really--as did some of her colleagues and competitors. Today, essays and “think pieces” on the movies are infrequent, even in the best newspapers and magazines, and reviews in many publications are much shorter; Time and Newsweek sometimes give a new movie only a paragraph or two, and most New Yorker reviews are now less than half the length of Kael’s.

Dumbing Down Movie Criticism

On television and in most publications, movie gossip, articles on the business of movie-making and feature stories on stars and movie locations now dominate the coverage of movies.

“The studios have neutralized us for the most part by swamping us with promotional material that looks a lot like journalism,” says the New Yorker’s Denby. “They’ve convinced editors at papers . . . that readers want features, not real stories or criticism.”

At the same time, Denby and several of his colleagues say, many critics tend to be softer in their judgments and less sophisticated in their arguments than were Kael and her contemporaries. They provide little more than “a consumer service that is no brains and all thumbs,” in the words of Time’s Richard Corliss. “Entertainment Weekly” gives movies a letter grade (A through F), Siskel and Ebert used thumbs up and thumbs down, USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald and Chicago Tribune, among many others, use a four-star rating system.

Ebert acknowledges that “any rating system is in some way or another silly,” but he says: “Let’s face it--when your friend asks you if he should see a particular movie, he wants you to tell him yes or no--thumbs up or thumbs down--and that’s what we try to do.”

But Ebert says many newspapers are now looking for critics who reflect rather than influence public opinion--part of what several leading critics call “the dumbing down of movie criticism.” Indeed, in the past two years, at least two big city critics--Dave Kehr at the New York Daily News and Howie Movshovitz at the Denver Post--lost their jobs because their editors thought they were too highbrow for their readers.

Television has taken even more dramatic steps.

“There was a period when practically every TV station in the country had a movie critic,” Ebert says. “Then the consultants decided the public didn’t want critics anymore. . . . Now TV is totally dominated by celebrity profiles and puff pieces--’Are they on drugs? What are they wearing? Have they had plastic surgery.’ But not ‘Is the movie any good?’ ”

Most TV shows specializing in entertainment don’t even have film critics; sooner or later, any critic will do a negative review, and the offended studio might retaliate by withholding the film clips that are an integral part of the programming on these shows. Similar anxieties seem to keep many magazines from having film critics; negative reviews could jeopardize their access to the stars they need for the cover photos and interviews that determine success or failure on the newsstand.

“Magazines now think like studios,” says David Anson, Newsweek’s film critic. “They want a hit, we want a hit. We have to put something on the cover that will be a hit, even if it’s not a good movie. Magazines are in bed with the movies. They want to sell tickets; we want to sell magazines.”

It’s difficult to know how Siskel’s death last month will affect the impact of the show that he and Ebert hosted for more than 20 years--Ebert plans to continue, initially with a series of guest co-hosts--but for most moviegoers, the two were long the most influential critics in the country (far more for their television show than for their reviews in the Chicago newspapers, although Ebert’s column is syndicated to more than 300 other papers). On television, they had a large national audience. They clearly, passionately, loved movies. They showed film clips that let audiences see and judge the movies for themselves. They used a rating system that was both simple and visual. And they had a casual, conversational format that neither intimidated nor patronized their viewers.

“Eight years ago, when I was at Disney, we did a nationwide survey of 1,000 people trying to determine the power of the critic,” says Bob Levin, now president of worldwide marketing for Sony Pictures Entertainment. “Siskel and Ebert were heads and shoulders above everyone else.”

Although they were populist critics, Siskel and Ebert often championed--and gave early legitimacy to--such sophisticated films as “Sling Blade,” “Fargo,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Hoop Dreams.”

There are a handful of other critics who the movie marketers say an have an impact on the fate of a movie--among them Schickel and Corliss of Time, Anson of Newsweek, Gene Shalit of NBC’s “Today” show and Joel Siegel of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” all of whom have been around many years and all of whom have large national audiences (although the newsmagazine critics are more respected in Hollywood than their TV counterparts). David Denby of the New Yorker, writing for a much smaller audience, is regarded as one of the most thoughtful current critics, while among newspaper critics, the two most important by far, say movie marketers, are those for the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Studios, independents and critics alike say Janet Maslin of the New York Times is the most influential critic in print today, largely because of the stature and national reach of her paper and because New York moviegoers tend to be especially sophisticated and review-sensitive.

Lindsay Law, president of Fox Searchlight Pictures, says that for movies distributed by independents, the New York Times “tends to have a greater impact on the audience in New York than the Los Angeles Times has on the audience in Los Angeles. . . . A movie that’s well-reviewed in both cities, opening in both cities on the same day, almost always, New York will out-gross Los Angeles” at the box office. Similarly, Law says, “A bad review in the New York Times just about kills you; a bad review in the Los Angeles Times you can overcome.”

Movie-makers and marketers pay attention to Kenneth Turan’s reviews in the Los Angeles Times, though, in part because he is widely (though by no means universally) respected and, more important, because The Times is read by the people who vote for the Oscars.

“If you have a special movie, with Academy potential, it’s important that the L.A. critics, especially the L.A. Times, embraces it,” says Paramount’s Robert Friedman.

Despite working for Hollywood’s “hometown” paper, Turan is not seen as being “soft” on movies. Quite the opposite. He was severely and repeatedly critical of “Titanic,” last year, while Maslin was comparing it to “Gone With the Wind.” When Brill’s Content magazine recently analyzed reviews by 14 critics over a three-month period, it found Turan the third-toughest. He was favorably disposed toward only 52% of the movies he reviewed (compared with, say, 84% for Shalit).

A few other newspaper critics--John Hartl of the Seattle Times and Jay Carr of the Boston Globe in particular--generally have a substantial impact on viewers in their individual markets, but most in the movie business say that outside of big cities, print critics are largely irrelevant. Even in big cities, the decline in circulation and respect for the print press in general--and for authority figures everywhere--has undermined the influence of most newspaper and magazine film critics.

Audiences Becoming More Sophisticated

Although critics often influence one another, and a strong critical consensus--”Over 60 Critics Agree: ‘Best Picture of the Year’ “--can help a movie considerably, Terry Press, head of marketing for DreamWorks, says, “Oprah Winfrey can turn to the audience and say, ‘I saw this [movie] and you will love it,’ and she will matter more than the film critics.”

Still, there are several encouraging signs on the motion picture horizon, for critics and, more significantly, for people who enjoy movies that do not rely almost exclusively on gimmicks and gadgets.

There is, of course, the continued growth in the independent film movement. In addition, some experienced movie marketers say, the success of mindless teenage films like “Waterboy” notwithstanding, today’s young audience is actually beginning to make movie choices that are “much more sophisticated than they used to be,” as Robert Friedman puts it. Equally important, the fastest growing age group of moviegoers is the over 40s--the grown-ups who read newspapers and magazines and go, generally, to grown-up movies. The percentage of ticket-buyers over 60, also a prime audience for reviews and serious movies, has tripled since 1986.

Moreover, most studio marketers say that women have long been both more review-sensitive and more interested in serious films than are men, and some suggest that the success of movies as diverse as “Titanic” and “Stepmom” will encourage Hollywood to make more movies that primarily appeal to women. Neither of those movies was especially sophisticated, of course, and making “women’s movies” may lead to a glut of tear-jerkers and shallow love stories. But those two movies did rely heavily on women for their box office success, and they did show, “You can make a movie just for women,” says Amy Pascal, president of Columbia Pictures. If that’s true, there is hope in Hollywood that at least some of these movies will be about real relationships rather than one-dimensional melodramas--and about character rather than explosions, about adults rather than teenagers.

“Changes in Hollywood have already begun,” Anson wrote in Newsweek, trying to assess the legacy of “Titanic,” “and it has nothing to do with runaway budgets, epic stories and dumbed-down scripts.”

No one expects a return to the days of “Raging Bull” and “Chinatown”--and of Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris. But the review-inspired success of independent movies like “Shakespeare in Love” and “Life Is Beautiful”--now the biggest grossing foreign film ever in the United States--strongly suggests that critics will continue to play an important role, even as high-tech, high-energy trailers for “Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace” are flashing across movie screens everywhere.

Jacci Cenacveira and Peg Eby-Jager of The Times editorial library assisted with the research for this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Pundits vs. The Public

The critics and the public seldom agree on which movie to see. Only two of 1998’s top 10 domestic box office successes were among the 10 “best” films in Premiere magazine’s poll of 15 leading critics.

CRITICS’ FAVORITES

1. Shakespeare in Love

2. Saving Private Ryan

3. Out of Sight

4. Happiness

5. Gods and Monsters

6. The Truman Show

7. Affliction

8. The General

(tie) A Simple Plan

10. A Bug’s Life

****