Me and Orson Welles Release What month was this film released in theaters? The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009,
What were critics reviews of this film?
What were critics reviews of Me and Orson Welles?
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's resume and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal.  Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.  It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.  The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future." CANNOTANSWER
Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008.
Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.

The film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.

McKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.

Plot
In New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.

Welles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.

Welles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.

The broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.

Cast

 Zac Efron as Richard Samuels
 Christian McKay as Orson Welles
 Claire Danes as Sonja Jones
 Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris
 James Tupper as Joseph Cotten
 Eddie Marsan as John Houseman
 Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd
 Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler
 Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess
 Travis Oliver as John Hoyt
 Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler
 Al Weaver as Sam Leve
 Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy
 Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop
 Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel
 Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne
 Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels

Production

Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because "It's a completely different project than I've ever done before," while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.

In the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 "Brits Off Broadway" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.

Me and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or "supernatural" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.

Filming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.

Release
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal.

Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.

It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.

The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future."

Reception

Box office
During its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.

Critical response
The film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone." It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.

Film critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles "one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its "terrific acting" and called it "a must for lovers and students of the theater". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance "an extraordinary impersonation" of Welles, though he wrote that "Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought "a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous."

"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show," wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:

Like most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.

Teachout wrote that he "was floored by the verisimilitude of the results", and that "you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut."

In 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as "the best rendition of him I've ever seen." However, he otherwise "hated" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: "It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as "neurotic and afraid to do his scene", while in reality he was someone "you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!".

Accolades
Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.

The film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.

Home media
On August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.

Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).
 "This Year's Kisses", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
 "I'm Shooting High", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
 "Sing, Sing, Sing", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
 "One O'Clock Jump", Count Basie and His Orchestra
 "Ode to Krupa", Michael J McEvoy
 "Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
 "Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Christian McKay
 "Let Yourself Go", Ginger Rogers
 "Solitude", The Mills Brothers
 "Aftershow Jam", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet
 "They Can't Take That Away from Me", Fred Astaire
 "In a Sentimental Mood" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
 "The Music Goes Round and Round", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven
 "I Surrender Dear", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
 "You Made Me Love You", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
 "Have You Met Miss Jones?", James Langton and His Solid Senders
 "Sing, Sing, Sing", James Langton and His Solid Senders

References

External links
 
 
 
 
 Interview with Arthur Anderson

2008 films
2000s comedy-drama films
British films
British comedy-drama films
American comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Richard Linklater
Films about Orson Welles
Films based on American novels
Films set in 1937
Films set in New York City
Films shot in England
Films about actors
Films about theatre
American films
Julius Caesar (play)
Films shot in the Isle of Man
2008 comedy films
2008 drama films
The Yes Men is a 2003 documentary film about the early culture jamming exploits of The Yes Men.

The film revolves around "The Yes Men" — two anti-globalization activists, under the aliases Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno — who impersonate spokespeople for the WTO and affiliated corporations in order to secretly lampoon and satirize these organizations with elaborate ruses and fraudulent announcements of ridiculous corporate decisions, in front of live, unsuspecting audiences (usually comprising businesspeople, university student bodies, and the press). The film details the two activists' involvement in hoaxes targeting SimCopter, the 2000 G. W. Bush presidential campaign, McDonald's, and, most prominently, the WTO. The film also includes brief interviews with Michael Moore and Greg Palast.

The film premiered at the 28th Toronto International Film Festival in 2003. It was also shown as part of a special screening at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The film received generally positive reviews from critics. It is followed by a sequel, The Yes Men Fix the World.

Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 85% based on reviews from 84 critics. On Metacritic the film has a score of 68% based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave it 3 out of 4 and called the film "Subversive and diabolically funny."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3 out of 4, and wrote: "Amazing in what it shows, but underwhelming in what it does with it."

References

External links
 The Yes Men website
 

2003 comedy films
2004 documentary films
2004 films
2003 films
American films
Anti-modernist films
Documentary films about business
English-language films
The Yes Men
United Artists films
Films about activists
Films directed by Chris Smith
Anti-corporate activism

fr:The Yes Men Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: journalistic criticism which appears regularly in newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outlets; and academic criticism by film scholars who are informed by film theory and are published in academic journals. Academic film criticism rarely takes the form of a review; instead it is more likely to analyse the film and its place within the history of its genre, or the whole of film history.

History 
Film was introduced in the late 19th century. The earliest artistic criticism of film emerged in the early 1900s. The first paper to serve as a critique of film came out of The Optical Lantern and Cinematograph Journal, followed by the Bioscope in 1908.

Film is a relatively new form of art, in comparison to music, literature and painting which have existed since ancient times. Early writing on film sought to argue that films could also be considered a form of art. In 1911, Ricciotto Canudo wrote a manifesto proclaiming cinema to be the "Sixth Art" (later "Seventh Art"). For many decades after, film was still being treated with less prestige than longer-established art forms. In Sweden, serious film criticism was spearheaded by Bengt Idestam-Almquist, to the point of the Swedish Film Institute calling him the father of Swedish film criticism.

By the 1920s, critics were analyzing film for its merit and value as more than just entertainment. The growing popularity of the medium caused major newspapers to start hiring film critics. In the 1930s, the film industry saw audiences grow increasingly silent as films were now accompanied by sound. However, in the late 1930s audiences became influenced by print news sources reporting on movies and criticism became largely centered around audience reactions within the theaters.

It was in the 1940s that new forms of criticism emerged. Essays analyzing films with a distinctive charm and style sought to persuade the reader of the critic's argument. It was the emergence of these styles that brought film criticism to the mainstream, gaining the attention of many popular magazines; this made film reviews and critiques an eventual staple among most print media. As the decades passed, the fame for critics grew and gave rise to household names among the craft like James Agee, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael and in modern times Roger Ebert and Peter Travers.

Journalistic criticism 
Film critics working for newspapers, magazines, broadcast media, and online publications, mainly review new releases, although also review older films. An important task for these reviews is to inform readers on whether or not they would want to see the film. A film review will typically explain the premise of the film before discussing its merits or flaws. The verdict is often summarized with a form of rating. Numerous rating systems exist, such as 5- or 4-star scales, academic-style grades and pictograms (such as in the San Francisco Chronicle).

Some well-known journalistic critics have included: James Agee (Time, The Nation); Vincent Canby (The New York Times); Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times); Mark Kermode (BBC, The Observer); James Berardinelli; Philip French (The Observer); Pauline Kael (The New Yorker); Manny Farber (The New Republic, Time, The Nation); Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian); Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune); Andrew Sarris (The Village Voice); Joel Siegel (Good Morning America); Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader); and Christy Lemire (What The Flick?!).

Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel popularised the concept of reviewing films in a television format in the show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies which became syndicated in the 1980s. Both critics had established their careers in print media, and continued to write written reviews for their newspapers alongside their television show.

Online film criticism

Aggregators
Websites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic seek to improve the usefulness of film reviews by compiling them and assigning a score to each in order to gauge the general reception a film receives. Other less well known aggregators such as the Movie Review Query Engine (MRQE) are also available.

Online film critics
Blogging also introduced opportunities for a new wave of amateur film critics to have their opinions heard. These review blogs may focus on one genre, director or actor, or encompass a much wider variety of films. Friends, friends of friends, or strangers are able to visit these blogsites, and can often leave their own comments about the movie and/or the author's review. Although much less frequented than their professional counterparts, these sites can gather a following of like-minded people who look to specific bloggers for reviews, as they have found that the critic consistently exhibits an outlook very similar to their own. YouTube has also served as a platform for amateur film critics.

Some websites specialize in narrow aspects of film reviewing. For instance, there are sites that focus on specific content advisories for parents to judge a film's suitability for children. Others focus on a religious perspective (e.g. CAP Alert). Still others highlight more esoteric subjects such as the depiction of science in fiction films. One such example is Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics by Intuitor. Some online niche websites provide comprehensive coverage of the independent sector; usually adopting a style closer to print journalism. They tend to prohibit advertisement and offer uncompromising opinions free of any commercial interest. Their film critics normally have an academic film background.

The Online Film Critics Society, an international professional association of Internet-based cinema reviewers, consists of writers from all over the world, while New York Film Critics Online members handle reviews in the New York tri-state area.

User-submitted reviews
Community-driven review sites, that allow internet users to submit personal movie reviews, have allowed the common movie goer to express their opinion on films. Many of these sites allow users to rate films on a 0 to 10 scale, while some rely on the star rating system of 1–5, 0–5 or 0–4 stars. The votes are then converted into an overall rating and ranking for any particular film. Some of these community driven review sites include Letterboxd, Reviewer, Movie Attractions, Flixster, FilmCrave, Flickchart and Everyone's a Critic. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic aggregate both scores from accredited critics and those submitted by users.

On these online review sites, users generally only have to register with the site in order to submit reviews. This means that they are a form of open access poll, and have the same advantages and disadvantages; notably, there is no guarantee that they will be a representative sample of the film's audience. In some cases, online review sites have produced wildly differing results to scientific polling of audiences. Likewise, reviews and ratings for many movies can greatly differ between the different review sites, even though there are certain movies that are well-rated (or poorly-rated) across the board.

Academic film criticism 
More often known as film theory or film studies, academic critique explores cinema beyond journalistic film reviews. These film critics try to examine why film works, how it works aesthetically or politically, what it means, and what effects it has on people. Rather than write for mass-market publications their articles are usually published in scholarly journals and texts which tend to be affiliated with university presses; or sometimes in up-market magazines.

Most academic criticism of film often follows a similar format. They usually include summaries of the plot of the film to either refresh the plot to the reader or reinforce an idea of repetition in the film's genre. After this, there tends to be discussions about the cultural context, major themes and repetitions, and details about the legacy of the film.

Academic film criticism, or film studies can also be taught in academia, and is featured in many California colleges in the United States due to its established home of film: Hollywood. Some of these colleges include University of California, Davis, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford University, as well as many other colleges across the world.

Academic criticism is typically divided and taught in the form of many different disciplines that tackle critique in different manors. These can include:

 Formalism, that analyzes the way that things are done and the appearance of their form or shape.
 Structuralism, that examines the way that movies are sequenced, have a dedicated style, and the way that language and art itself can create meaning.
 Historical, a form of criticism that doesn't look at the direct things being said, but the culture and surrounding environments of a given film. The historical critic will create meaning from something that is not explicitly stated or shown in the film.
 Psychoanalysis, that breaks down the unconscious that one can experience while observing a given film.
 Political and economic, which not only looks into how economics and politics are depicted directly inside the film, but also how it effects the films creation, marketing, screening, and sale.

Academic film criticism tackles many aspects of film making and production as well as distribution. These disciplines include camera work, digitalization, lighting, and sound. Narratives, dialogues, themes, and genres are among maty other things that academic film critics take into consideration and evaluate when engaging in critique.

Some notable academic film critics include André Bazin, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut (all writers for Cahiers du Cinéma); Kristin Thompson, David Bordwell, and Sergei Eisenstein. Godard, Truffaut and Eisenstein were also film directors.

Issues and controversies

Influence
In the 2000s, the effect that reviews have on a film's box office performance and DVD rentals/sales have become a matter for debate. Some analysts argue that modern movie marketing, using pop culture convention appearances (e.g., Comicon) and social media along with traditional means of advertising, has led, in part, to a decline in the readership of many reviewers for newspapers and other print publications. There are fewer critics on television and radio in the last thirty years.

However, in recent years, there has been a growing belief in the film industry that critic aggregators (especially Rotten Tomatoes) are increasing the collective influence of film critics. The underperformance of several films in 2017 was blamed on their low scores on Rotten Tomatoes. This has led to studies such as one commissioned by 20th Century Fox claiming that younger viewers give the website more credibility than the major studio marketing, which undercuts its effectiveness.

Today, fan-run film analysis websites like Box Office Prophets, CineBee and Box Office Guru routinely factor more into the opinions of the general public on films produced.

The "undulating curve of shifting expectations" 
The "undulating curve of shifting expectations" (UCoSE) refers to both the title of a recurring entertainment industry feature in New York magazine by cultural critic Adam Sternbergh and also to a concept of media analysis co-developed by writer Emily Nussbaum.

UCoSE refers to the dynamic tension between pre-release promotional efforts and subsequent audience reactions to entertainment media.

The UCoSE provides a way of analyzing the trajectory of entertainment products as they metamorphize their way through his theorized seven-stage growth chart: Pre-Buzz, Buzz, Rave Reviews, Saturation Point, Overhyped, Backlash, and finally, Backlash To The Backlash.

Female representation 
There have been many complaints against the film-criticism industry for its underrepresentation of women. A study of the top critics on Rotten Tomatoes shows that 91 per cent of writers for movie or entertainment magazines and websites are men, as are 90 per cent of those for trade publications, 80 per cent of critics for general interest magazines like Time, and 70 per cent of reviewers for radio formats such as NPR.

Writing for The Atlantic, Kate Kilkenny argued that women were better represented in film criticism before the rise of the Internet. In the past, when film was considered less prestigious than visual art and literature, it was easier for women to break into film criticism. Judith Crist and Pauline Kael were two of the most influential film critics of the 1960s and 1970s. The Internet led to a decline in jobs at small newspapers where women were more likely to review films, whereas the more male-dominated jobs at major newspapers survived better. The Internet also encouraged a growth in niche review websites that were even more male-dominated than older media. Kilkenny also suggested that the shortage of female critics was related to the shortage of female opinion columnists.

Clem Bastow, culture writer at The Guardian Australia, discussed the possible effects of this on the critical response to the 2015 film The Intern, which received mixed reviews from critics:The critical response to The Intern was fascinating. There's a subset of male critics that clearly see Nancy Meyers as code for chick flick and react with according bile. What's very interesting, though, is that I think female critics, working in an industry that is coded as very male, if not macho, often feel the need to go hard on certain films for women, presumably because they worry that they'll be dismissed, critically speaking, if they praise a film like The Intern as though they're only reviewing it favorably because they're women.

Matt Reynolds of Wired pointed out that "men tend to look much more favorably on films with more masculine themes, or male leading actors." On online review sites such as IMDb, this leads to skewed, imbalanced review results as 70 per cent of reviewers on the site are men.

A study using Johanson analysis was used evaluate the representation of women in 270 films. Johanson complied statistics for the year 2015 on how having a female protagonist affected a movie, with the following results:

 22% of 2015's movies had female protagonists.
 Critics are slightly more likely to rate a film highly if it represents women well.
 Mainstream moviegoers are not turned off by films with female protagonists.
 Movies that represent women well are just as likely to be profitable as movies that don't, and are less risky as business propositions.

Salary 
As of 2021 movie critics earned a yearly average salary of $63,474.

As of 2013, American film critics earn about US$82,000 a year. Newspaper and magazine critics would make $27,364-$49,574. Online movie critics would make $2-$200 per review. TV critics would make up to $40,000-$60,000 per month.

See also 

 Prestige picture
 List of film critics
 List of film journals and magazines
 List of films considered the best
 List of films considered the worst
 For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, a 2009 documentary film

References

Further reading 

 Peter Bradshaw gives advice to young, aspiring, would-be film critics (The Guardian, 8 July 2008)
 Haberski, Raymond J. Jr. It's Only a Movie!: Film and Critics in American Culture, University Press of Kentucky, 2001. 
 Rosenbaum, Jonathan. Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See, A Cappella Books, 2000. 

Film criticism