What is it with audiences and critics? Why do they agree on so very little and mean even less to each other? Some will argue that the universal soapbox that is the Internet changed the face of forming opinions forever. Like the old joke about a certain human body part, everybody has judgments and most of them stink. So naturally, when you overwhelm the marketplace of ideas with a combination of idiocy and grammatically suspect speculation, the result is more watered down than a dive bar martini. Everything from the exploitation of thumbs to the alphabetizing of validation has also contributed to the decline in the viewer/journalist ideal. After all, when given a couple hundred words and a goofy icon-based rating system to struggle through, worth weakens and then dies.

But there are other factors to consider as well, reasons for great and growing divide between what critics think is good/bad and what the box office - the ultimate barometer of public appreciation - indicates. Case in point - Drive, the recent Ryan Gosling thriller that is sitting at nearly 92% positive on that bane aggregate, Rotten Tomatoes. Of the 158 names on the site’s supposed honor roll (yours truly included), over 145 found it to be somewhere between ‘good’ and ‘great’ in the pantheon of September 2011 releases. Some have even gone so far as to reserve a spot on their end of year Best of list for this interesting deconstructed noir. Yet with over 2880 theater screens to draw from and relatively lax collection of titles around it, the best Drive could muster was a mere $11 million opening.

After an amazing ‘60s which saw him temporarily steal the conversation away from the Italians and redefine the Western with The Wild Bunch, renegade director Sam Peckinpah stumbled into the ‘70s with a creative carte blanche that few filmmakers ever enjoy. He was beloved and berated. With said status secure, he choose to make some of his most interesting and complex movies of his entire career, from more subtle and surreal oaters (The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) to mainstream hits (The Getaway). Even his bristly personality and occasional studio loggerheads couldn’t dull his diffuse muse (alcohol, on the other hand…).

One of the most notorious of his latter efforts, Straw Dogs (new to Blu-ray from MGM), centered around a weak-willed mathematician (Dustin Hoffman) who travels to his English wife Amy’s (Susan George) hometown hoping to escape the troubles in a Vietnam War torn USA. Instead, he faces violence and brutality from a predatory populace eager to make the Yank pay for his perceived self-righteousness and passivity. The subtext, laced with a confrontational conceit toward principles and practice, appeared to champion bloodshed and debasement as the means of making the meek into a man. With the inclusion of a pedophilic character being (unknowingly) protected by the couple, the message came across loud and clear - brawn bests brains every time.

In truth, it’s not the simplest of crimes to commit. One has to first contemplate a target, one willing to inspire panic (but not police) in the potential payer - ransom, that is. Next, one must come up with a complex plan to capture and keep them. It can’t be blatant or conspicuous. Holding back one’s identity from both the hostage and the holder of their fate is key. Then there’s the whole care and comfort element matched with the pragmatics of the monetary demands and swap. Cash - or some other valuable commodity - must change hands in way that keeps things from spiraling out of control. Then, and only then, after all these pieces have fallen perfectly into place, can the concept of escape even be considered, the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of hiding out and avoiding justice just as important as picking the proper mark was in the first place.

No wonder so many of these attempted offenses go so horribly, horribly wrong. Even more obvious is how reliable and resilient the subject is as a movie topic. While long a part of literature, the act has become a notoriously 20th century specialty. From the frenzy over the Lindberg baby to the national news hour pastime of the Patty Hearst case, kidnapping has wormed its way into the public consciousness in a way few felonies have managed. Perhaps only serial murder has more mass multimedia meaning. Of course, today, most abductions revolve around nationalities not knowing their place (or political potency) in another’s unsettled land. Indeed, most of the time, terrorism is the tag given to such cases of false imprisonment. What does this all mean? Most of the time, it means boffo box office, baby.

Is Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills now the most important documentary ever made? After the events of 19 August, 2011, it would sure seem to be. Like Errol Morris’ amazing The Thin Blue Line, it is a movie that managed to actually change the course of supposedly settled events, to draw censure and examination of its subject and, apparently, right a grievous wrong. Many are the directors who dream of turning their subject into a substantive cause celeb, to make a difference and mark the way of history instead of merely following it - and in the case of three teens in Arkansas, it seems like a well made motion picture (or series of same) has done just that.

In 1996, when filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky decided to follow-up their seminal courtroom critique Brother’s Keeper with another shot at a localized law system gone out of whack, they couldn’t have imagined that, 15 years later, they’d be back in a West Memphis courtroom watching defendants Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin walk free. Not exonerated, but free. Yes, there was/is a catch - the once boys, now men, had to plea to charges of murder - but under an unique law in the state, the plea would also allow them to remain ‘innocent.’ As a result, a fact film franchise made about a miscarriage of justice ended on one of those weird legal loopholes that all good fictional genre stories rely on.

It’s happened again. Another one bites the dust. In the footsteps of such famous fizzlers as Guillermo Del Toro’s In the Mountains of Madness, Robert Zemeckis’ motion capture Yellow Submarine, and Ron Howard’s overly ambitious Dark Tower titles,  follows the Johnny Depp starring, Gore Verbinski directed and Jerry Bruckheimer produced reboot of The Lone Ranger. Citing astronomical production costs ($250 million budget…really???) and a weak market for such material (read: the underperforming Cowboys and Aliens), the House of Mouse has bailed on one of its more ballyhooed future projects.

What makes this decision even more shocking is that two thirds of that previously mentioned creative team has just pushed the pathetically mediocre Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides over the $1 billion mark internationally. Even more amazingly, the threesome jump started Disney’s current Summer Movie relevance with the whole Captain Jack Sparrow thing. You’d figure the company would be grateful. After all, without those bawdy buccaneers, Mickey’s men would be stuck with The Haunted Mansion, The Country Bears, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as examples of their source to screen acumen.