So I've skimmed over the last quarter of questions and answers to look for the posts I'd deem good and diverse examples, be it by personal interest, quality, informativity or just originality. In contrast to just listing some exemplary questions and answers, I tried to group them a bit into some larger trends I observed this quarter. This is still not an exhaustive list, as there have been many good questions and answers. And of course this is entirely my own opinion.
In general I have to say that this quarter was for me largely characterized by many interesting questions and answers about the background of characters, their actions, motivations and depictions, from Mad Max and Nightcrawler, over Avatar, The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, to Marvel's and DC's latest superhero fare. Some examples for this would be:
On another note, we had some very good cases of new answers that snitched acceptance from already existing inferior answers. And this is usually a good thing, since it is always great when a new answer is superior enough to the existing ones to convince the asker to reconsider his acceptance, especially since new answers might often get forgotten and people might be repelled from answering accepted questions, thinking that they are already solved as best as possible. But afterall Having multiple answers can be a great thing! Examples for this would be:
Do I need to watch all James Bond movies starring Daniel Craig before watching Skyfall to understand the plot and characters?
I can hardly resist an interesting James Bond question anyway and this answer is just great and covers many important aspects of the overall question, which the existing ones didn't to that degree.
Why sudden change in war boy's motives?
I was a bit unsatisfied with the first answer to this but also not confident enough to provide my own. So I was very glad when this great and to the point answer came around and even more so when the acceptance was changed to it (disregarding if certain people think it doesn't have enough "citations").
Why did the Joker take the risk of placing a gun in Harvey Dent's hand?
Basically every answer to this question is good and really cuts to the point of the problem, except for the top-voted one. This question was an absolute victim of the Hot Network Questions and one answer was upvoted into heaven albeit entirely missing the point of the question and concetrating on some absolutely irrelevant visual inconsistency. When the asker finally accepted one of the other answers he set a sign that reason can ultimately prevail over people voting carelessly.
We also had some interesting questions that were rather controversial and on the verge of getting closed for various reasons (some of them more valid and some less):
How does Iron Man's costume serve to emphasize the aspects of his character?
Another addition to the great character dirven questions of this quarter. While I agree that the question might be a bit too short and maybe a bit broad and the answers stay largely superficial, it is nevertheless an interesting and valid question to me. Most of the controversy around it sprang from the fact that it is a supposed "homework question". But this doesn't really matter as long as the question is valid. It is not our responsibility to question the asker's motives and if you have a problem with people taking "profit" from your answers, you're on the wrong site.
Why does 'The Wolf of Wall Street' contain so many nude scenes?
Another question where the asker's motives provided reason for controversy. Granted, the question wasn't phrased particularly well and objective at first. But after stripping it from the asker's personal moral judgments, it IMHO became an interesting question about the movie's portrayal of sex and nudity, as also seen in its answers, even if those might not be as exhaustive as they could be.
How do movie makers get people to watch a movie many times?
This is quite a bit of a "list question" and might be a bit too broad to answer conclusively, but I think it might work, as can also seen by previous questions along those lines. It still has to be seen how it pans out, but opening a bit more towards some kinds of supposed list questions might not be that bad an idea.
Does the Film Drive Have a Cameo from the star of Maniac Cop
Not exactly that controversial and near to closing, but identify-this-actor is always a bit of a hot topic, often either giving too few information to know it's a movie at all or on the other hand being just irrelevant trivia easily looked up. Yet this question provided an interesting premise for motivating the question which elevates it beyond the usual identify-this-actor stuff.
Personally, this quarter was for me also characterized by a raised interest into Batman, for whatever reason. Thus I revisited all his modern movie/TV incarnations, from Burton's and Timm/Radomski's, to Schumacher's and Nolan's, finally delved into some seminal works in Batman comic lore (never having read a comic apart from Watchmen), and also read some secondary material. I was thus very enthusiastic in composing some new answers to rather old questions:
As every quarter, this time we also had some interesting general questions about making, producing and selling movie and TV content, from technical questions about the physical medium itself, over interesting film techniques in famous works, to box-office and distribution.
And last but not least, we also had many answers that mostly convinced by finding good and authoritative references to provide a conclusive answer (sometimes even to questions where you might not have expected much of an authoritatively sourced answer). Some examples would be (even if that list is by far not exhaustive):
