Marvel's The Avengers. Yes, you read that correctly. My no.1 surprised me as well, but the more I thought about it and the more I watched it (which was about six times in total), the more this fit. Is The Avengers a majestic and life-affirming piece of cinema like Life of Pi ? No. Does it encourage its viewers to debate the themes and overall message of the movie, a la The Master & Zero Dark Thirty ? Of course not. Does writer/director Joss Whedon bring gritty realism to the comic book universe of Marvel, like Christopher Nola did with his Dark Knight trilogy? No way in hell. So why does a superhero movie tower over the most critically acclaimed movies that I have seen this year? Simple: Marvel's The Avengers represents blockbuster movies at their best, and sadly, what the genre itself has lost. To understand where i'm going with this, let me take you back to 1998. I've already talked about how Michael Bay has had a poisonous influence on the blockbus