Film quality
2014 vs. past years
A total of 16 positively reviewed films hit the cineplex this summer in wide release, led by the highest-scoring film of the year (or, for that matter, any year), Richard Linklater's 12-years-in-the-making chronicle of one family's life, Boyhood. By comparison, 2013 saw a greater number of good films (topped by yet another Linklater drama), but 2014 was otherwise the best year since 2007 in terms of the number of quality films.
In limited release, 86 films this summer met or exceeded the 61 cutoff indicating that critics generally liked the film. We tracked a total of 179 films in limited release this summer with at least 7 reviews from professional critics, and that equates to a success rate of 86/179, or 48%. Add in the 51 films released nationwide, and this summer critics gave positive reviews to 102 of 230 films, or 44%. By contrast, critics hated 15 wide releases (scoring 39 or less), and also panned 29 limited releases, meaning that 19% of all summer releases received negative reviews from critics.
But those percentages were inferior to last year's results, and the median score for all wide releases this summer was just 48, a full 7 points lower than the summer of 2013. Here's how all those figures compare to recent years:
% of summer films with positive and negative reviews, by year
| |
ALL FILMS |
|
WIDE RELEASES ONLY |
| Year |
Total |
% Good |
% Bad |
|
Total |
% Good |
% Bad |
Median |
| 2014 |
230 |
44% |
 |
19% |
 |
|
51 |
31% |
|
29% |
|
48 |
| 2013 |
213 |
46% |
|
18% |
|
51 |
42% |
|
22% |
|
55 |
| 2012 |
191 |
44% |
|
14% |
|
42 |
26% |
|
17% |
|
52.5 |
| 2011 |
175 |
48% |
|
16% |
|
43 |
33% |
|
21% |
|
50 |
| 2010 |
147 |
48% |
|
12% |
|
42 |
26% |
|
21% |
|
51 |
Best-reviewed films this summer
Below are the highest-scoring films (with a minimum of 7 reviews from professional critics) released during 2014's summer months (May-August). Note that a wide release film is one that screened in at least 600 theaters.
Summer box office performance
2014 vs. past years
Here's one thing you probably didn't do much of this summer: go to the movies. Domestic box office receipts were down this summer—so much so that 2014 proved to be the lowest-grossing summer in 17 years (adjusting for inflation). Industry reports put this summer's North American grosses below $3.9 billion, a 15% decline compared to 2013. Though experts had been expecting a drop in revenues, they were caught by surprise at how steep it turned out to be. And the summer's highest-grossing film, Guardians of the Galaxy, failed to surpass $300 million domestically—the first time that's happened since 2001.
That said, despite the presence of many films that are barely pushing the break-even mark or finishing slightly in the red, there weren't all that many out-and-out disasters this summer. Even the Tom Cruise sci-fi action flick Edge of Tomorrow, which had an extremely poor North American showing given its enormous budget, performed well enough around the globe (with an extra $264 million in foreign grosses) to recoup most if not all of its costs.
This summer's best and worst performers
 |
Highest grossing summer movies - 2014
| Movie |
Score |
Domestic Box Office |
| 1 |
Guardians of the Galaxy |
76 |
$280,475,000 |
| 2 |
Transformers: Age of Extinction |
32 |
$244,431,000 |
| 3 |
Maleficent |
56 |
$238,715,000 |
| 4 |
X-Men: Days of Future Past |
74 |
$233,265,000 |
| 5 |
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes |
79 |
$205,520,000 |
| 6 |
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 |
53 |
$202,853,933 |
| 7 |
Godzilla |
62 |
$200,672,193 |
| 8 |
22 Jump Street |
71 |
$190,267,743 |
| 9 |
How to Train Your Dragon 2 |
76 |
$173,470,000 |
| 10 |
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles |
34 |
$166,356,000 |
|
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|
|
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|
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Metascore prediction results
For the fifth year in a row, we asked our users to predict the Metascores for the biggest summer releases prior to the start of the summer movie season. On average, those user guesses were 9.2 points away from the eventual score—not great, of course, but actually a slight improvement over last year's average 10.9-point differential.
Users were expecting a much better summer movie slate than what we actually received. Our users overestimated the score for 19 of the 29 films (a 30th film was pushed back into 2015 and thus not counted), overshooting the mark on those 19 films by an average of 10.4 points. Guesses were highly accurate (within 5 points) for 8 of the films, including a pair of films where user predictions were off by just a single point.
But our users were expecting just 2 of the major summer films to receive overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics. In fact, 9 of these films were panned, and only 11 of the 30 films wound up receiving positive reviews (users had predicted that critics would like 15 films). The most welcome surprise here was Edge of Tomorrow, which scored 13 points higher than user expectations. The biggest disappointment was Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which users had predicted to score a solid 68. Instead, that belated sequel to Sin City received lousy to mediocre reviews, scoring a mere 45.
What do you think?
What were your favorite movies this summer? Give us your list in the comments section below.
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