Eric Lavallée

Joffe has proven himself as a strong voice: he began his career as a scribe for Pawel Pawlikowski's Last Resort, expanded a franchise with 28 Weeks Later and helped adapt The American for Anton Corbijn (also coming out this year and on this list). If core of the featured relationship between a thug and waitress comes across unscathed, then we'll be talking about Carey Mulligan for a good portion of 2010.

Hackford's film has been on the radar for a while now, but it has more to do with the proposed tandem of Mirren and Pesci and the site specific backdrop than my interest in the filmmaker.

In only a pair of outings, Kim has confirmed her presence as an indie filmmaker worthy of future auteurist theories -- her type of cinema, minimalist and miniscule triage dramas, reach for the highest levels of intimacy and with an isolated and an emotionally distraught Paul Dano, I'm expecting her to take up more room on the scene than her previous two combined. Seek out her films: In Between Days and Treeless Mountain.

Regardless if Woody in the past couple of decades was a hit (Sweet and Lowdown, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) & miss (Celebrity , Whatever Works), in my books his constant musings on the human relationships are more often than not, a treat. Ensemble cast headed by Naomi Watts should provide for a full, five-course meal.

I caught Neil Jordan's Ondine at the Toronto Int.Film Festival last September, and the first after-thought I had was, this'll be a tough sell. Not that the fabric of the film is off-putting -- you have your male lead in Colin Farrell, that I think people are generally interested in watching, but then you have a Sigur Ros singing mermaid, a divorced parent subplot with a spirited child years beyond her age stuck in a wheel chair (there is a resemblance to Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo) and you have antagonistic forces in the presence of a pair of thugs plotting their presence in a picturesque village that awkwardly don't measure up.