As with my feelings on music, I watch all films I can without a major bias towards a genre. I won't ignore what sounds like a good movie just because it's a documentary or anything. So it's not really so much as an inclination towards documentaries dominated my list of "first to come to mind", but that there were just … so many noteworthy ones, or good ones period. 2010 was just riddled with them.
One of the things that makes so many of 2010's major films being documentaries interesting is that, no matter the quality, they are not inherently films that you watch for entertainment's sake. Documentaries are, at heart, about education, or information. You can find Exit Through the Gift Shop's subversively "jokes on you" style of possibly fake, possibly pseudo-documentary making entertaining. You can find Last Train Home's real-"real life" drama entertaining as it breaks your heart. You can find Inside Job's information that it so horrifyingly imparts entertaining because of how it handles its subject matter.
But what I've really been missing in 2010 was the kind of film I love the most, which is a good old character-driven drama, for the vaguest way of wording it. One of my favorite overall films is Ikiru, for example. I love movies like that. Some superb fiction. There have been some, but I just haven't hit one that I really want to call my favorite. 2010 has been missing something for me because of it.
@Jumping:
Just curious as to what Nolan films you have seen.
All of them. I just don't like his movies.
