Quality signalling in motion picture markets is hardly a new topic. It has been covered by many researchers over the years. However, most of the previous studies focused on quality signals in interactions between moviemakers and moviegoers. This study employs a more holistic approach as the author attempts to evaluate effects of quality signals throughout different stages of movies’ life cycle. The author has identified three audiences that movies are presented to; and, each group of audience generates a quality signal for the next audience. Based on the feedback from test audiences, moviemakers decide on when to show movies to professional critics and when to allow them to publish their reviews. Interpretation of these timelines become quality signals for the professional critics who interpret shorter time slot for review publication as a signal of the low quality of the movie and vice versa. Professional critics write their reviews which when published on review aggregators become quality signals for the moviegoers. Reviews generated by the initial moviegoers are interpreted by the moviegoers who intend to watch movies at a later stage. All three assumptions are operationalised and evaluated in a series of linear regression tests in this research on a sample containing 130 out of 134 widely released movies in the US and Canada domestic market in 2017. All of the abovementioned quality signals found to be significant as they could explain at least 40 % of the variance of respective response variables.

Film criticism has changed since its inception and will continue to change moving forward. The evolution of film criticism has largely been a story of the shift from an elite field of intellectual exploration by a few knowledgeable experts to a democratic phenomenon where expert analysis is aggregated and averaged, and the lines are blurred between true expertise and the random opinions of the masses. This paper will address the transition from the birth of film criticism to its popularization through the 90s, to what it has become today. By exploring the nature of film criticism historically and reviewing the key elements of its growth from Victorian times through its emergence as an established field in the 1930s, 40s and 50s and its heyday in the 60s and 70s, we can understand the context of its evolution. This will provide a perspective to view today’s approach to film criticism with a clearer eye and a thorough analysis of film criticism in the digital age. It will demonstrate that more is not always a good thing, and the democratization of film criticism has not necessarily been all good.