Fine, let's talk about the elephant in the room.

There's this movie, and as of the end of January, it's made the better part of $600 million in the United States alone. It's full of pro-environmental sentiment, anti-corporate themes, fancy military tech, and blue people.

Maybe I was partial to it because Nightcrawler was always my favorite of the X-Men, but I'll admit that I enjoyed Avatar.

A review at this point and time would be useless. Judging by the box office, you've probably seen it. And if you haven't seen it, the statistical likelihood that you know no one that has is approximately 0.04%, so you've no doubt ascertained for yourself whether it is a good movie or not.

I reckon that's true and not true as well. Sure, it's all subjective, and a movie doesn't necessarily have to be good to make lots of money. Witness Transformers 2, which came out last summer. High cinema? Not so much. Big moneymaker? No doubt.

My point is that it is irrelevant whether or not the movie is good these days. People can argue for days whether or not they enjoyed watching a movie or if it ascends to some criteria that make it true art.

Tastes change even as we march from decade to decade. The things that make Citizen Kane (arguably) the best movie of the 20th century might not even fly. Would it be realistic to watch old man Kane die in the opening scene and not expect one of the maids to start lifting silverware immediately?

So what makes a movie good in this day and age? Well, if you look at one of our favorite measuring sticks to let History know what the best movies are, we can get a fair picture.

Regardless of whether you agree that the Academy Award-winning best picture was indeed the best movie that came out in a given year, most folks will likely agree that it was a good movie. You might say, "Well, Star Wars should have won best picture. Sure, Annie Hall was a good movie back in 1977, but it wasn't better than Star Wars." (Yes, I have said those words. But I digress…)

What have the last few best pictures had in common? Since James Cameron is big in the news these days because of his fetish for funky blue aliens, let's go back to the big winner of 1998 and winners since to get an idea.

If there's any objective formula we can look at, it is that most of the winners since Titanic won just before the turn of the century (wow, doesn't that phrase make you feel old?) are at least two hours long. There are two exceptions: Chicago and Crash. See a similarity there? Yes; they both start with C's. So any movie over two hours is good, and a movie under two hours that starts with a C is necessarily good.

There. I've proven the criteria of a good movie. Mr. Nobel, my prize, please?

OK, you're right. I'm overlooking one key component. The "C" movies also have only one-word titles. That cannot be ignored.

So you can go out and make a movie; just name it something that starts with a C and is one word. We'll represent that with a "C—."

I can see that now. "Run to your nearest theater and see C—! Coming soon!" Just make sure you don't spend too much time with C—.

By the way, I hate Annie Hall. And Crash.

A Decade by Any Other Name

Another quick thing that has little to do with movies. This is 2010, and some people are saying it's the beginning of a new decade. I agree, and I'm fine with that.

Some say that the new decade shouldn't begin until next year since the century and the millennium didn't begin until 2001. Well, there's a certain sense to that, but that assumes that the decades are locked into centuries. I say they're not.

I look at it like weeks and months. Both are made out of days, but they don't necessarily align. Decades and centuries are made out of years.

Since we've gotten used to referring to the 1980s and 1990s as decades, that means the next decade would have been the 2000s (2000-2009). What to call that particular decade has been up for grabs since 1999 and still hasn't been settled. (I prefer the "twenty-aughts" myself.) Therein is a decade made.

So it's okay now to make your "best movies of the decade" list, as long as you don't phrase it as "best movies of the first decade of the 21st century" or something like that. Capiche?

By the way, my best movie of the decade? Well, if I can take them as a single movie, then Lord of the Rings. If not, gimme some Dark Knight. I'm easy to please.

And why don't garbage men get Martin Luther King Day off?