Review Culture in Film

It had been 35 years since Ridley Scott's  Blade Runner.  Upon its release, it underwhelmed at the box-office and divided critics but in the three decades that have passed, it has become a staple of the sci-fi genre and heralded as one of the best films of all time. French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, responsible for hits such as  Sicario  and  Arrival , was chosen to the expanding fictional universe with  Blade Runner 2049  and faced the pressure of delivering not just a piece of entertainment, but a cinematic experience that could match the impact of it predecessor. The critical reception was overwhelmingly positive and nearing upon universal acclaim. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gave the film a maximum 5/5 stars, summarising his review of the film with "a gigantic spectacle of pure hallucinatory craziness". Meanwhile, the UK's leading film magazine Empire also awarded it 5 stars, "As bold as the original Blade Runner and even more beautiful (espe

CRITICS AND AUDIENCES The relationship between critics and audiences is an important one, but it can often be one that curates conflict. Critics can hate what audiences positively respond to, whilst in other instances, audiences can despise and show disinterest in what critics are adoring. Critics from various companies, publications, websites etc are invited to screenings of films days, weeks, and sometimes months in advance of when the general movie going audience get to see it. Once the studio responsible for distribution lifts the film's embargo, critics are allowed to freely compose their opinion in a review, acting as a guide for the commercial audience as to whether a film is worth their time and hard earned money. However, sometimes this supposedly harmonious exchange doesn't always coalesce. A recent example of this comes in the form of Bright, a 2017 Netflix film directed by David Ayer and starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton which was

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. For approximately two weeks, Greta Gerwig's directorial debut Lady Bird (which she also wrote), a coming-of-age story starring Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalfe, held the record for the best-reviewed film ever on the site Rotten Tomatoes after 200 reviews were given and recorded. It usurped the animated film  Toy Story 2  and delighted film fans who shared the appreciation and enthusiasm for Gerwig's film and delighted in the fact that this record celebrated a female centric narrative which was helmed by a woman. However, a recent development has seen Lady Bird lose its perfect "100% Fresh" score on the website and dropped down to a (still mightily excellent) score of "99%". The reason for this? One critic gave the film a "rotten" rating. That critic was Cole Smithey (who declares himself the "Smartest Film Critic in the World"), a man who also gave a negative review of t