In his article highlighting the best movies of 2010, Richard Brody of The New Yorker said: "At times it feels as if we’re living in something of a cinematic golden age, but one that’s altogether different from earlier halcyon days.
The best filmmakers working in Hollywood have a passionate grasp of the cinematic past, but they don’t swoon over its polish or emulate its styles, they excavate it for its raw materials.
There’s also a ferment here of independent filmmaking that liberates young people who, in earlier times, might have had to scuffle or supplicate for years while angling for a practical chance that now, with video, and with adequate effort, they can seize for themselves.
They make their lives, their homes, their families, their problems, and even their art the focus of their movies, and because, in their individuality, they share much with others in their generation, their stories, at their best—reflecting the age-old clashes and strivings of talented and ambitious youths in life, love, and art—reverberate deeply and widely.
And, thanks to the Internet’s rapidity of ripple-effects that carry word from bloggers and enthusiasts to the world at large, the independent aesthetic and its artists have quickly had an impact on the Hollywood mainstream, in salutary ways.