Meaning of the phrase "opining from the rafters, a movie’s overall rating"

Can anyone kindly explain the meaning of phrase "opining from the rafters, a movie’s overall rating" in the following sentence:

Very few veteran critics tend to be enamored of the recent decade in cinema. Nonetheless, based on movie reviews many could easily come to the conclusion that the last ten years were indeed banner ones. Once the province of lettered intellectuals, a few even household names (Pauline Kael comes to mind), the role of the movie critic has been amply filled by those lacking any notable credentials. With this flood of veritable tyros opining from the rafters, a movie’s overall rating — as compiled and tabulated by popular Internet sites–often times confers a(n) patina of respectability on a film, an assessment that posterity will most likely deem specious.

From the above, what I understand is, someone's suggestion about the movie is extremely good and the movie's overall rating goes up by the virtue of such suggestions.

Solution 1:

The paragraph you've quoted is using very 'flowery' and non-standard language, so it's perfectly understandable that it's confusing - it's almost uncomfortable to read even as a natural speaker. I'd assume that the author of the sentence is one of the so-called 'veteran critics' he/she is defending, or at least someone who considers themselves a 'true fan' of cinema.

Anyway, the actual sentence - you really need that entire sentence, and arguably the whole paragraph, to understand what it's saying, rather than just the part you've highlighted.

Some key things to define, as they aren't commonly used even by native speakers:

• tyro - a beginner/novice.

• opine/opining - to share an opinion.

• from the rafters - see this post, but the general idea is that there's a large crowd of people.

• patina - literally it refers to something like rust on top of a piece of metal. In this context it's being used abstractly to refer to an undesired layer on top of something.

• specious - appears correct, but is actually wrong

So let's break the paragraph down.

Very few veteran critics tend to be enamored of the recent decade in cinema.

Most veteran film critics do not think movies of the past decade have been very good (on average/as a whole - it's not saying that all movies are bad)

Nonetheless, based on movie reviews many could easily come to the conclusion that the last ten years were indeed banner ones.

Despite this, many movies in the past decade have very good reviews/ratings, which might make you think that movies have actually been very good over the past decade

Once the province of lettered intellectuals, a few even household names (Pauline Kael comes to mind), the role of the movie critic has been amply filled by those lacking any notable credentials.

Previously movie reviews were all written by people who knew a lot about movies and were well known/trusted, but now there are lots of reviewers who have little/no qualifications to review movies.

And then finally, perhaps the most confusing sentence:

With this flood of veritable tyros opining from the rafters, a movie's overall rating — as compiled and tabulated by popular Internet sites–often times confers a(n) patina of respectability on a film, an assessment that posterity will most likely deem specious.

With this large crowd of unqualified beginner reviewers sharing their opinions, and those opinions being collected and averaged by internet websites that people use to find out how good movies are, movies that are actually bad are ending up with good reviews. In the future, people will realise that these movies were actually bad all along.

The general message of the paragraph is that the author feels that reviews for movies do not accurately reflect how good the movies are, due to the large number of unqualified people who are allowed to review them and the fact that all those reviews are considered to be generally equal in value.