Very interesting post, but I must add that the disconnect between "official critics" and the audience is nothing new. Actually, this is the phenomenon that existed from the very beginnings of film industry. When films actually started to be made and shown in 1890s, they were greeted by nothing short of utter disdain by prominent writers, actors, critics and other members of cultural establishment, being discarded as "cheap worthless gimmick" or "succumbing to lowest common denominator" i.e. stupid plebeian masses who couldn't understand True Art. Such attitudes began to change only in 1920s when Russian Bolsheviks showed how to successfully use new medium for propaganda purposes and, later, with an arrival of sound film technology which allowed films to resemble traditional stage plays.
The disconnect continued in later years. For example, Hitchcock is nowadays celebrated as one of the greatest film maker who ever lived, but until 1960s he was seen merely as a craftsman who delivers solid genre entertainment. And Hitchcock himself believed so. It was only after being hailed by Truffaut and other French New Wave critics in 1960s that he was recognised as a real artist. Sadly, Hitchock himself was talked into believing in his own artistic infallibility, which reflected in his later films being visibly inferiort to his classic work.
I think it's worse now though. Never before have I seen an audience and critic score so far apart from each other