Right after seeing No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood (both of which I liked, kind of), I got the feeling that critics would love them and the public would wonder what the critics were smoking. The lackadaisical pacing, the meandering plots, the lack of distinct musical cues, emotionally remote protagonists, and the oddball endings all seemed like something that people wouldn't like nearly as much as critics. I was right about the critics, but I'm not so sure about the second part.
One hint that this is the case can be found on metacritic which aggregates critical reception of a film and compares it to the opinions of users. The 18 point difference between critical praise and user praise of Blood and 17 points for No Country are larger than those of any other film out now, maybe bigger than any film on the site ever (need to do more research there). Granted, the sample of users is so small (329 & 401) and is interested enough in critical reaction to come to a site dedicated to aggregating it, and therefore it probably isn't very representative of general public opinion. IMDB users (larger samples at 30,000 and 60,000) rated both films very highly, so highly that they're both in the top 40 films of all time according to users.
For a moment, let's assume that the public didn't (or wouldn't) like either of these films as much as the critics. As I've always been interested in the relationship between critical praise and popular success, having rejected the reductionist platitude that critics like one type of film and the public another, I thought I'd take another look at why the discrepancy might exist.
One explanation would have it that there are certain static characteristics, both thematic and stylistic, that critics are drawn to more than the general public. Grandiose themes like the criticism of American capitalist arrogance, might be a thematic thread that is common to so many critically acclaimed films, while long-duration shots and any of the attributes listed above seem to fare better with critics than audiences.
In some cases, I think critical praise, of a film or the themes and stylistic traits of a film, precede the popular embrace of those things. Does the praise cause the public to like those things; that is, does the public or has the public ever looked to critics to tell them what's good and what isn't? Are the critics merely good at predicting what the public will eventually like? Are they just as likely to guess which movies will be popular if they were to pull a film's name out of a hat (the times they anticipate popularity are roughly equal to the odds that they would do so by chance)?
It would be fascinating to do an analysis of films that were loved by critics and hated by the public. Within that category there would be to sub-categories: the films (or attributes of films) that the public came to love (or at least accept) and films/attributes that the public still dislikes. The former would show us instances critical anticipating of popularity (critics doing their job well) while the other would show us what the critics like that the public will never like (critics acting like cultural elites, trying in vain to force the public to like what they like).
Limited access might skew there numbers. Even if all critically praised films become available to everyone via online or in-person rental, some will be better promoted than others, and so their popularity would reflect their promotion budget more than any intrinsic characteristic of the film. But still, the internet allows people to see some prima facie indication of what films critics liked that the public wouldn't like if they were made to watch the film instead of selecting it b/c they sought it out or b/c it was heavily marketed. Critics are made to watch every film, so for it to be a sensible comparison, the public would have to be made to watch every film too.
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