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"Who's that, then?"

"I dunno know. Must be a king."

"Why?"

"He hasn't got shit all over him."

Welcome to the first Chapter Two of 2010: The Year We Make Contact (I just had to make that pun quickly and get it out of the way. From here on in, it's all seriousness. Promise. And no, I'm not doing that particular sequel this week. The decade just started. What's the rush? )

Any day now, I will become a father for the first time and I find my thoughts centered on one important question above all others. Well, to be honest, there are two questions. The first is: will I reach the point where I can change a diaper blindfolded at 3 in the morning on no sleep in under a minute? (Wait, why am I blindfolded in this scenario?) The second is: will this child grow up to be as much of a film geek as I am?

Admittedly, both questions are kind of self-serving. I am indulging my tendency towards self-deprecation on the former, while on the latter I am engaging in just the sort of behavior that I hope to avoid as a father - namely, fervently wishing that my son or daughter will take after me in the areas that matter (e.g. have the same great taste and critical acumen for the arts that I pride myself on having.) All I want - at my most noble and least self-serving - is for him or her to be as happy as humanly possible without that happiness coming at the expense of hurting others. It seems straightforward but I know at heart all I can do is share what I have learned and be a good role model for Finn (or Opal or Iris) and life and time, as they say, determines all the rest.

So to complete my train of thought as it makes all its stops, my mortality has been on my mind more than the usual amount what with this big change coming and a new decade arriving and year-end lists of all sorts being tallied and resolutions being resolved. It was all the thinking about the best films of the year and the best films of the decade that got my synapses firing and wondering what the best year for films in my lifetime has been. I can say, kind of by default, that it was not the past year.

2009 was probably the year in which I logged in fewer viewing hours of total releases (past and present) than at any other point in the last 20 years. I didn't feel up to doing a top 10 or 20 or even five because I wasn't able to get the full breadth of the circuit with enough foreign, independent and avant-garde fare to balance all the mainstream stuff, and a lot of that I saw second-run as it was. Five films that I can say I adored would include: Drag Me To Hell, Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Adventureland, and I Love You, Man. I had more luck assembling a best of 2000-2009 and although I didn't rank the 25 I selected, I would place A.I. Artificial Intelligence and 25th Hour a centimeter or two above the rest. My thoughts and feelings on the pair would involve a whole side essay but both move me to paroxysms of emotion and I remain curious to track their critical status, as I, and they, grow older.

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