Top 10 Most Influential Film Critics?

I’ll go ahead and assemble the names we’ve collected into a poll ballot, just for the curiosity element and sheer time-killing fun of it. (which, obviously, were the only real reasons for me raising the question to begin with. My own idle thumb-twiddling curiosity.)

Sasha’s reply to this headline question looks to be the definitive answer, and hers was the hypothesis I was secretly hoping to prove anyway. The verdict and my own addendum are too unwieldy to put in a post, so I’m going to lift Sasha’s earlier comment and transplant it to the top of the discussion thread on page two. We can rebuild the conversation from that foundation at Ground Zero.

Honestly? What sparked this question in my head yesterday was my increasing frustration with everyone brandishing RT numbers like fucking Ninja throwing knives every time a movie comes along that needs “validating” or “dismissing”. If this were a New Yorker cartoon, we’d be comical trial lawyers yelling in front of a jury and the only thing filling our dialogue balloons would be “66!” “87!” “42!” When in fact it’s just a silly weekly ritual we go through. I myself feel ashamed to have encouraged it. So I want to blow the whole ceremony to smithereens. And was hoping to do so with our readers collusion — by having you decide for yourselves that only 10 or 12 critics really make a whit of Oscar difference in the end.

Meanwhile, here’s the pre-slanted poll, after the cut. You can vote for 10 critics. Just choose the 10 writers whose opinions mean the most to you. It’s not as if any of us strung across the four corners of the globe really have an insider line on who’s influential in Hollywood. But at least these poll results will show me which critics you guys think are worth quoting in the future.

PLEASE CHOOSE 10 CRITICS