Almost like different people write different stuff for the same website. (Though I missed where in Dowd's Wonder Woman review he mentioned either Suicide Squad or Spider-Man, so maybe you're confusing reviews with previews, or The A.V. Club with another website?)

Bruce/Selina in Batman Returns, though, is one of my favorite superhero relationships ever (and while it gets a lot less screentime, Bruce/Selina in Dark Knight Rises is pretty great too).

But is The Crow really typical of a Hollywood movie from 1994, or was it a nearly-orphaned oddity ditched by its original studio and eventually released to cult acclaim by then-independent Miramax?

And also quality is subjective.

Well, Stone and Garfield are easily the best parts of those movies, no doubt. But in terms of the actual relationship, I'm not convinced. They spend most of the first movie kinda stammering around each other, which is cute but not especially interesting, and they spend most of the second movie dithering (courtesy of…

It's almost as if that's not what Katie's FOC was saying at all!

I think there's a fair amount to Dunst's MJ that defines her beyond what she means to Peter. I think those movies do a nice job in general (especially in, gulp, Spider-Man 3 of all things!) showing how it would be difficult to be in a relationship with a beloved superhero when your own life goals aren't necessarily…

I think I've said this in other threads, but it's hard in those older Superman movies to work around the manipulation factor. It's not nearly as heartless and cutesy as in the old comics, and Reeve/Kidder are great together, but it does come down to Superman deceiving the love of his life — and even when they have…

But are we really going with the theory that says Jaime Alexander is a much better, more interesting performer than Natalie Portman?

I like the Black Widow/Hulk stuff fine, but we join the relationship in progress, and by the end of the movie it has to be broken off. Which, like some of the other superhero relationships, I mentioned above, works fine (for me) in the movie. But there is a kind of practicality about both the relationship in progress…

Not to sound uncharitable but I do not believe when most people select a movie, they're choosing from the best 5% I've seen in a given year.

Oh, as long as they're both good-looking women.

That's part of it, for sure. It can be vexing (especially when the characters aren't especially interesting about it, as in Prometheus), but that really isn't an aspect of Prometheus I thought a lot about. That kind of thing — characters making dumb decisions, or plot holes, etc. — is what I tend to focus on if the…

Eh, if that's the minimum baseline, then probably 95% of the movies I've seen fail to meet it. I love "well-written" when I can get it. I do not often get it.

True, the plot to that movie does not make a goddamn bit of sense. And I'm sure my review for another site reflected that to some degree. I just wouldn't read a review to find that out, even if that's how I found that out, if that makes sense. I'd read a review to find out if it sounds interesting and I'm not all that…

I think Katie's last paragraph gets at something, here, as well as the discussion of the faux-journalistic tradition in criticism: There are a lot of different schools of thought here, and almost no critic can claim perfect 10-of-10 all over. There's certainly a school of thought, I think increasingly in reaction to…

"Does the plot make sense??" is such a foreign idea to me. You really read a review to protect yourself from accidentally seeing a movie where the plot doesn't make sense? (To say nothing of how many movies are described as having an impenetrable or nonsensical plot but are actually pretty clear and easy to follow,…

It's one of many, many game shows he's gone on. I believe he's going for a record in that regard. So it's been a mix of stuff where his trivia knowledge would be a huge help (Jeopardy, Millonaire) and stuff where it's less helpful.

It's OK, it's where I belong.

Eh, I'm not so sure that a Fraser who did Dazed and Confused would be in a drastically different place than he's in today.