Sphinx?

Never mind the countdown night before last, now we're down to the last few hours of an 11-day break from the demands of gainful employment and gainless diet, and so I pour my last bourbon for a while and contemplate cinema 2010. Yes, there are as always things I've thus far been deprived of, by geography and M4-deferring poverty, that I expect would contend for the "Best of" list if anyone were paying me to see everything by year's end, but nobody is, and so this year I propose to judge only films of whatever age that I saw for the first time in 2010 about which I expect someday to say, as codgerdom eats ever more of my brain, "They don't make 'em like that anymore!"

Of course, codgerdom already has a foothold--or a canehold, if not yet a walker-leg-hold--I'm 57 now, as old as my father was when I became a father (I was the youngest, so he was already a grandfather several times over; but I collected my 2nd grandchild this year). As I've whined before, I was cinematically deprived as a small-town child, so I don't really have the treasured-films-of-childhood collection of the cinephile who grew up in a city with first-run theaters. I guess the film I saw most often as a (Catholic; duh) child was The Sound of Music, released the year I turned 12. (Coincidentally, the eldest von Trapp girl, named not Leisl but Agathe, died Tuesday, 16 going on 98.) So count backward from now to 1965, and then an equal number of years backward from then, and you see that when I was a kid, 28-year-old Mary Pickford starring as Pollyanna was equally ancient history as 30-year-old Julie Andrews starring as Maria von Trapp is now. Except, of course, that the algorithm of ancientness has become so accelerated, even more so (I hope, I pray) than my own ancientness, that you might as well say Pollyanna and S of M are now equally ancient, which means I'm eating my own ancient tail, or something.

So what's my point? Have you not been paying attention? Have you forgotten that you're dealing with a bourbon-consuming senescent? It's your job, not mine, to determine my point. It's my job to tell you what I've dug (it's a generational term; you might find it in Urban Dictionary) in the past 1/57th of my life. What can I remember without going back over the year's blogging? Inception, for sure--but was it sound and fury signifying a miscast role for Juno? True Grit, but I just saw it a few days ago, and I just saw the 1969 version a few days before that, so how much credit is due? Toy Story 3, but I'm a grandfather and a sentimentalist, so there may have to be a Boehner discount for those tears. Cairo Time, but . . . well, you know.

So, let's sift through the year . . .

January, first (of, what, 2?) Manhattan trip produced 2 amazers, Sweetgrass and Fish Tank, the former a perfect example of why people who don't live near Manhattan and who don't take my recommendations (or the recommendations of someone similarly warped) just don't get as much out of the movies as the movies have to give; the latter a sad-bastard flick for the ages.

February, the leftover White Ribbon, quite simply one of the most excruciatingly wonderful awful films I've ever suffered. I'll pretty much see anything Michael Haneke wants to show me, even knowing that I'll hate it 30-40% of the time.

March, 2008's A Woman in Berlin, about which I seem to have used the unusual adjective "miraculous." Also the brutally amazing Red Riding trilogy. And Un Prophète, which seems to have blown me away even more than the Haneke. Incidentally, I seem to have used the headline "An education" 3 times in 2010, all in tribute to the Carey Mulligan film, of course.

April started with a concert stunner whose existence I had been unaware of, The T.A.M.I. Show, from 1964, and I'm going to keep telling people from my generation about it until you've all seen it, dammit! A few days later I finally saw F. W. Murnau's 1927 Sunrise; oh, my--the best of an very good M4, maybe the last one ever (oh, that way madness lies!). And can it really be that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and both sequels all came to America in one year? Well, this is the one that remains worth seeing.

May: Terribly Happy: from my wispy review of this Danish flick: "the best Coen brothers film I've ever seen that wasn't made by the Coen brothers"; 'nuff sed. And The Secret in Their Eyes, the Argentine (Argentinian?) Best Foreign Film winner of 2009. But Nicole Holofcener's Please Give made it worthwhile to see an American movie this month, too.

June: hey, it's my bully pulpit, so sue me for giving another plug to Leading Ladies, still looking for distribution. Though even as a loving father I must confess that the best film I saw that month was 1987's Wings of Desire. And then there was the astonishing Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone--like it, loved her.

July? I'm crying already, just typing in Toy Story 3. And my brain's hurting already, just typing in Inception. Who the hell won the World Cup final anyway? It wasn't France, I know that, but they have this to boast of: Wild Grass.

The Happiness of August was Life During Wartime. And speaking of life during wartime, Steven Soderbergh's 2008 Che is worth a 4-hour look if you're an unreconstructed lefty. But I think I'm just gonna come right out and say my favorite film of the year is the quiet, understated symphony of sexual tension Cairo Time. OK?

September was Mesrine, whose star Vincent Cassel I didn't recognize as the starfucker/starmaker of Black Swan until it was pointed out to me, but it makes perfect sense.

Don't hate me 'cause I'm popular: The Social Network is one of the best films of the year, notwithstanding its accessibility. And to salvage my art house cred, let's put Howl in here too. But what's Halloween month without a creeper, even if Let Me In gets in only as a pointer to the Swedish original?

November: OK, I'd seen Metropolis before, but not this Metropolis. Stunning. As is, in a much squirmier way, 127 Hours.

December: I don't think it's any secret that I digs me some mumblecore. So: Plastic Furniture. Nor that I loves me some Coen. So: True Grit.

And so, if I never tell you what I think about any more movies, we'll always have Paris. And Cairo. OK?