It is more difficult to measure the median and the middling than it is to explain the excellent or the execrable. There is versatility in the language for the superlatives and the extremes; it is more difficult to engage with the entertainment that does not provoke.

I know you’re worried about Fantastic Four: First Steps. You remember the aggressively mediocre first two Fantastic Four movies featuring Jessica Alba and Chris Evans. You’ve tried to forget the atrocious reboot featuring Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan.

I’m having difficulty reviewing this film after only one sitting. It’s engaging but not entertaining, urgent, evocative of other dark contemporary Westerns like No Country for Old Men or Sicario but somehow even grimmer and less fun

It’s a summer popcorn film, silly and unserious, a better than middling superhero flick that is made for fans of Silver Age Superman.

Inspired by the recent lists going around from the New York Times and Rolling Stone, I present a Ruthless take on the best movies of the first quarter of the 21st century