It’s that time of year again, film festival season, and as usual, I am the proverbial bride’s maid lacking an invitation to my own perceived ceremony. As Telluride and Toronto, Venice and Tribeca gear up, each one prepared to let the traveler and the film tourist in on what’s hot (and what’s hard-up for a distributor) at the end of 2010, I am, once again, a wall flower. You see, as a lowly web writer, someone who Harlan Ellison would shun like a billion other blog writing content whores, I am fiscally incapable of such celluloid star cruises. No outlet is paying—or prepared to pay—my way, and what little cash I do collect goes to much more meaningful endeavors, like shelter and sweet meats.

So I sit in Se7en like jealousy at all the updates and mini-reviews streaming out of these critical gatherings, my fellow freelancers ramping up my aesthetic appetite for the celebrated shape of award winners to come. Beginning with South by Southwest, which usually offers a Spring full of surprises, to Comic-Con and its carnival barking belief in all it surveys, my Facebook page and Messageboard memberships have been blowing up with promises and potential. Of course, living in the rear end of America—otherwise known as the wanna-burn-a-Koran state of Florida—many of these movies will never darken my theater doors. Instead, I will have to catch them as part of a studio screener package sent out in anticipation of my Year End list… if then.

Apparently, I am easy to please. Soaked in the slop of a continuing line of mainstream movie muck, I will jump at any above average mediocrity and call it a “masterpiece”. I’ve drunk the Dark Knight Kool-aid, worship unabashedly at the altar of Memento and its muse, and fail to recognize a naked cinematic emperor when he struts naked and exposed right in front of my fawning eyes. From my outright championing of The Prestige as 2006’s Best film to the relentless conviction over Inception‘s creative brilliance, I am a dope. A dunderhead. An aesthetically challenged part of geek nation whose fanboy love of all things Nolan clouds my already questionable online critical judgment.

Watching the Inception debate unfold over the last few days, a few givens must be mentioned. First, there are some in the world wide webisphere who’ve never gotten over the impact of Christopher Nolan’s reinvention of the Batman mythology. For them, everything since Heath Ledger sputtered his way to a posthumous Oscar is an apple of artistic gold (for the record, I am not one of them). So challenge said position at your own flame war risk. Secondly, something like Inception was bound to draw sharp, “love it or hate it” criticism. It is a film that fails to lend itself to an anchored middle ground. Finally, the actual published opinions of those on both sides seem stuck in an “us vs. them” mentality, a weird protracted positioning that allows little leeway for contrary or complex arguments.

Actually, that’s not 100% accurate. I hate BAD romantic comedy, the kind of limp, lusterless romantic comedy that Hollywood has been peddling over the last decade or so. I can go back in my book of memorable movies and pick out several successful examples of the genre, from Woody Allen’s wonderful Annie Hall and Manhattan, to more recent titles like Sleepless in Seattle, Chasing Amy, Jerry Maguire, and Knocked Up. If there is one consistent thread running through many of the RomComs I love, it’s a sense of intelligence. It’s a knowledge that the characters aren’t just some cookie cutter cretins slammed out of some interns Powerbook. Instead, they function like real human beings - mostly - and use the budding attraction between each other as a more universal commentary on the truth of relationships.

But somewhere along the line, “zany” got added into the mix. Perhaps it was the work of the flummoxing Farrelly Brothers who brought insanity to the interpersonal. With gimmicky efforts like There’s Something About Mary, Me, Myself and Irene, and Shallow Hal, they infused a level of crudity and gross out gagging into the category that hadn’t been seen since John Waters got his drag queen pal to eat dog turds. Their success - especially among men - gave Hollywood an easy out. Instead of finding scripts where truly authentic individuals fell in and out of love, all a studio needed was a star, a stupid idea, and a bucketful of bodily fluids. Eventually, the last two elements would fall out of favor, leaving the A-lister (or their currently popular TV equivalent) to take up the slack. All they ended up doing was increasing the crap.

It hasn’t been a good month for movie critics. At the Movies was finally cancelled, A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips unable to raise the flatlining Ebert and Siskel showcase from an already obvious fate. Todd McCarthy was fired from Variety and that famed contrarian Armond White found himself stuck in the middle of a massive brouhaha surrounding Noah Baumbach and some previously printed comments regarding mothers and abortion. Kevin Smith “tweeted” that film reviewers should be replaced by paying audience members, the aforementioned great unwashed being a better judge of cinema’s value than someone whose made a career out of trashing his talent. And all around Austin, SXSW and its dedicated followers of film fashion continued to give the online writer a decidedly dorky, geeky, fan boy façade.

Really makes you want to get out of bed and head for the keyboard (or screening), doesn’t it. Frankly, the inconsistent fortunes of my chosen profession are disheartening, to say the least. Apply any cliché to it you want - one step forward, three back…survival of the fittest/shittest…the new school overwhelming the old guard - whatever you want, but the truth remains that film criticism is at a crossroads. Actually, it’s been standing at the intersection of ‘reinvention’ and ‘irreverence’ for quite a while now, the universal cyber soapbox known as the ‘Net providing anyone with a blog and a significant amount of BS the right to punditcy. Like finally discovering a like minded audience for your rants and raves, the web is wiping out print media as we’ve come to know it. What will take its place, however, is as frightening as it is flawed.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the end of 2009. It comes with the career territory. In a scant two weeks, the movie year will be officially over, all high profile titles screened and tucked away for the long winter’s nap between release and Best-of reverie (or lack thereof). All the important DVDs will be in your local brick and mortar, hoping to coerce a little additional cash into their coffers. Everyone, from legitimate press heads to basic bloggers will have their own opinions on what ten (or twenty, or fifty) films meet the final tabulation of determined excellence, and with said statements, the arguments will start all over again - mainstream vs. arthouse, trendy indie vs. good old reliable Tinseltown tripe.

But 2009 is also different in two additionally significant ways. First, Oscar has decided to widen the berth for potential nominees, allowing ten Best Picture candidates for the first time since Jolson went talkie. Instead of the standard five, the Academy wants to double your pleasure - and directly, the possible TV ratings - by giving more titles a fighting chance. While this raises a whole series of questions that will be dealt with in a moment, it’s the second circumstance that it even more concerning. 2009 marks the end of the decade, the first ten years of the 21st century. As a result, along with the yearly Best-Of, everyone is also offering their own 120 month wrap-up…and therein lies the bigger problem.

For me, classicism is all about time. We don’t look back at films like The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, or Casablanca because they walked away with a boatload of accolades come 50, 60, or 70 years ago. We don’t celebrate the Golden Era of Hollywood because it resulted in so many positive artform judgments. Film stands as a symbol, a reflection of time, place, temperament, focus, interest, perspective, and in some cases, an undeniable fluke. And with the passage of time, comes a greater appreciation - and a label of legitimacy. Want proof? Look at the list of Best Picture winners since 2000 and imagine how many will be championed come 2070:

2000 - American Beauty
2001 - Gladiator
2002 - A Beautiful Mind
2003 - Chicago
2004 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2005 - Million Dollar Baby
2006 - Crash
2007 - The Departed
2008 - No Country for Old Men
2009 - Slumdog Millionaire

Clearly, this decade started out crappy. While I can defend American Beauty forever, the next three films for me represent the worst kind of studio crafted mediocrity. I can’t see anyone looking at this trio and feeling that, somehow, it represented the best of what the artform has to offer. Now granted, they didn’t beat out any underappreciated classics (a look at the list of 15 nominees for 2001 - 2003 finds slim pickings, to say the least), but as usual, Oscar is about 1000 light years away from accurately reflecting what many consider to be “the best.”

For example, in my opinion, the best film of 2004 may have been Pixar’s The Incredibles, or Ondi Timoner’s brilliant rock doc DiG! . In 2006, I was all about The Prestige. Last year, it was an almost virtual tie between the amazing Let the Right One In and the horribly misunderstood Revolutionary Road. I am by no means a contrarian, but I tend to go with my heart and not my head. I preferred Tim Burton’s take on Sweeney Todd to the Coen’s masterful No Country (if only by a hair), and there are numerous titles I’ve taken on - The Fountain, Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, Zack and Miri Make a Porno - much to the deference of my long suffering credibility.

This year, with the added emphasis on keeping an open mind - what else would adding five more films to the Best Picture consideration mean, when you think about it…aside from the obvious dollar signs involved in tagging your DVD/Blu-ray “2010 Oscar Nominee” - things are much, much worse. While some will argue that 2009 was a great year, I tend to disagree. Looking over the 210 theatrical releases I’ve seen (and this week I will see 12 more), there’s been very few reasons to celebrate. You know you’re in awards season trouble when Star Trek continues to haunt your Top Ten - albeit for reasons I can totally and completely justify (Hell, it’s better than Nine).

True, I haven’t finalized anything, and a recent bout with the standard End-of-the-Year screener pile has produced two gems - Werner Herzog’s The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans, and The Coens latest, A Serious Man. Still, I can guarantee that when I cast my ballot for the first of what will be five group/site/association lists, I will be favoring the recent without remembering what was great about something shown eight months ago. I’ll do what all critics do best - turn my opinion, my flat out flawed judgment about something I’ve seen - and turn it into a testament, a gospel of sorts supporting by nothing more than my love of film and my years immersed in said artform.

But as I go back and look at my selections from past years, I can help but feel there’s been padding - the same kind of pointless additions that Oscar will be offering in less than two months. In a year where I can justify almost anything - from Peter Jackson’s brilliant The Lovely Bones to Lars Van Trier’s uber-audacious Antichrist, I fear Hollywood harkening back to the days when the studio bosses ran everything. Ten nominees gives outside hopefuls like The Blind Side or even New Moon, a shot at getting some ‘one hand washes the other’ payback. Heck, Disney has been pimping Betty White as a Best Supporting Actress candidate for a fart of a performance in the totally forgettable RomCom The Proposal. Now tell me this isn’t part of some “Alan Arkin is dying” determination to get an aging actor some props.

That’s my overall problem with any kind of Top Ten. By the time you get down to eight or nine, you’re dealing with the dregs - the best kind of dregs, but the dregs just the same. While the winner beats out nine others, thus making it look like a more “important” victory, the losers are left wondering where they fit into the mix. Sure, it was the same when it was five, but the bigger the number, the bigger the discrepancy. I’m sure once the weekend arrives, once Sherlock Holmes is deduced and The Princess and the Frog unfurled, once I get through Moon and The White Ribbon and The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, I will be more settled. Still, unlike most years, I’m a lot more Top Ten-tative this time around.