"READ MOVIES": January 2011

2010 is done. First year of a new decade over, winding it's way back into the woods only to be scarcely seen by rememberers, of those who want to remember, through the heavy boughs and think foliage. If you would want to look through and bother with the trouble at all to think back.

Most will tell you this hasn't been a good year for the movies. Out of the thousand or so films, studio, indie, amateur or otherwise, only the very best, the elite 10, are on this list, and on others, too. One thing you will notice that, for me, just about every year most to all films I pick as those very, very best are ones from the major studios, from the best directors, and usually are American produced (I don't get around to Foreign much, or even documentary, and I know I should). It isn't that I'm too in love with the studio stuff (of which I am), but almost all of the best directors, American mostly, dish out their oeuvres' for the execs at Disney, or Paramount, Warner Bros., Sony, 20th Century, and Universal, or sometimes from the highest indie backers like The Weinsteins, or Summit, or Focus Features, two of whom who've had a contender enter my list here. And these directors, who most are in their prime right now, get the big money, the most regarded actors, with the most distinguished crew to surround them (and writers, if those visionaries don't pen the projects themselves), and these directors are the best working in American cinema currently. They never cease, or conclude, to diminish their craft, imagination, and brilliance. Most are old, but not lacking, not near enough, and I don't see younger audiences screaming for them to step aside, telling them to move on, to ride the train out. Some have entered my Top Ten before (or many times before, or all the time), and some for the first time, and I expect will again.

Again, those many others will say 2010 was not a good year for film. Just like the last few years. I say that could be true. We didn't get that hoard of mass-appealing movies, those dozens upon dozens, where it seemed something great hit theaters every week, or something timeless every other week, and where now those Academy voters may be giving flicks like "Little Fockers," or "How Do You Know," or "The Last Airbender" a Best Picture nod just to fill the new ten-slot.

But I also say this: the ones that are here are that good, that great, that timeless, that they encompass what little other decently good films we had and sucked it all right out. So we only had mabye a few master ones, but who needs only those merely great ones for the close-on masterpieces we have this year.

2010 was a good year for the movies. Suck it, Armond!