Ah, but herein lies the rub. I have written so many articles in which critics who write for publications like the New Yorker seem to have the only definition for a great film being one that they only can see.

Now box office should have nothing to do with what defines a great movie, you and I are in perfect alignment on this. But does the fact because a film is made for mass consumption mean that it is without any artistic value? I have walked this line so many times over the years in my judgments. And the problem I have with so many critics is that they believe a film's box office POTENTIAL negates any artistic values it might have. I can understand why the New Yorker loathed Barbie out of hand - I do hold it is not great art but rather a very well done product placement movie - but their decision to collectively damn Oppenheimer with faint praise seemed based more on the fact that it was directed by Christopher Nolan, whose films make lots of money and are therefore devoid of any artistic value sight unseen. The following week one of their critics (Denby or Anthony Lane, they're interchangable) devoted half their space to a rave review of a 1937 French film noir by an obscure director that was being reshown at the Met.

I have never thought a movie's performance at the box office means its a great movie or even a good one. (I will forever be convinced that the box office performance of the Transformers and Twilght franchises were one of the factors in Roger Ebert's early demise, and I'm not entirely joking.) Film critics do have to highlight actual art, but not at the expense of dismissing ninety to ninety five percent of everything else. This is a very tough line to walk and too many of the film critics in New York basically think it has nothing to do with film at all.

My two cents, unadjusted for inflation