"The film critics see it as their job to launch new ponies and influence the Oscar race that way," said Oscars expert Tom O'Neil, a columnist for the TheEnvelope.com Web site.

But in the past 10 years, only one best film named by the New York Critics went on to win an Oscar and in the same period not one choice by the L.A. critics did so.

Warner Bros. has a similar decision to make about "Letters from Iwo Jima," Eastwood's second film about the devastating battle in a year. First he released "Flags of Our Fathers," a powerful anti-war film from the American perspective that tanked at the box office, taking its Oscar chances with it.

But now the critics are raving about "Letters," a much smaller film made in Japanese with an all-Japanese cast.

"I think this is an amazing film," said Time Magazine critic Richard Schickel, a biographer of Eastwood's.

"It shows a nation just totally lost in its own excesses. The Japanese had no exit strategy or rather their exit strategy was for everyone to die in place," he added.

Some in Hollywood are wondering if Eastwood and Warner Bros. are following the same strategy with "Letters" as they did with 2004's boxing drama "Million Dollar Baby." It, too, opened late in December, won raves from critics and audiences and went on to win the best picture Oscar.