Sequel year

There were signs in 2007 that Hollywood is getting bored with making films that appeal primarily to adolescent minds. The trouble is, spectacle still sells and the studios can't afford to stop churning out comic-book romps like Spider-Man 3, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Beowulf that give audiences a periodic fix of SFX. Indeed, such is the fear of not making a profit that Tinseltown indulged in a summer of 'threequels', with Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End, Shrek the Third, Rush Hour 3 and Ocean's Thirteen all competing for the same box-office buck. Yet, of this desperate band, only The Bourne Ultimatum, pictured, succeeded in pleasing both punters and pundits.

This was also the year of the comeback. Bruce Willis had fun in Die Hard 4.0 and Sylvester Stallone did well enough with Rocky Balboa to tempt him into contemplating another Rambo picture. But the most notable shoot 'em up action came in the latest revival of the western, with 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford not only doing respectable business, but also reaping reverential reviews.

Another supposedly dormant genre showed signs of life during the last 12 months. But, as this critic pointed out in The Rough Guide to Film Musicals, audiences have always been susceptible to people breaking into song and dance in unexpected situations and, while the French best showed how it should be done in La Vie en Rose, The Singer and Les Chansons d'Amour, there was enough invention and vibrancy in Dreamgirls, Hairspray, Once and Disney's delightful Enchanted to atone for the sins committed against both the genre in general and Lennon and McCartney in particular in Julie Taymor's dismal Across the Universe.

It says much, however, that the most memorable musical moment of 2007 was Homer's rendition of 'Spider-Pig' in The Simpsons Movie, which nevertheless disappointed as many as the effects-laden odysseys into the imaginations of J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and The Golden Compass.

Indeed, people seemed more in the mood this year for some common denominator comedy than anything more refined. Thus, the success of Knocked Up, Superbad, Hot Fuzz and Run, Fat Boy, Run was as unsurprising as it was dismaying. But at least critics and audiences alike had the sense to give Eddie Murphy's Norbit the wide berth that ensured its place among the year's worst movies, alongside Number 23, Middletown, Edmond and The Bridge, a cynical exercise in voyeurism that astonishingly persuaded some commentators that its exploitative investigation into why suicides jump from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge was both insightful and artistic.

It wasn't all bad news on the actuality front, however. Musi-docs like Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten and the sublime Sigúr Ros profile Heima were matched by such acute socio-political exposés as Jesus Camp, Taking Liberties and I Is For India and science factuals like In the Shadow of the Moon and A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash. Fittingly, as the home of the annual OxDox festival, Oxford itself figured in one of the year's best documentaries, Blue Blood, which followed the fortunes of the university boxing team. But too few of these films made it to the city's screens and it would be nice to see our estimable venues setting aside a little more time for non-mainstream items in 2008.

They don't have to be documentaries or foreign-language films, either. The past year has seen the indie sector on fine form. Indeed, so-called niche pictures seem to be the only place where actresses can find decent roles these days, as Meryl Streep discovered in Robert Altman's final feature, A Prairie Home Companion, along with Joan Allen in The Upside of Anger, Julie Christie in Away From Her and Maggie Gyllenhaal in Sherrybaby.

Conversely, actors in indie features seem to have a harder time securing critical acclaim, despite Ryan Gosling and Forest Whitaker scooping two of the year's surprise Oscar nominations for their work in Half Nelson and The Last King of Scotland. Why weren't Will Oldham and Daniel London lauded for their melancholic sweetness in Kelly Reinhardt's Old Joy or stuttering Reece Daniel Thompson commended for holding his own against high-school blue-stocking Anna Kendrick in Jeffrey Blitz's Rocket Science. Moreover, why was Jonas Bell overlooked by all the major award bodies for his devastating performance as the psychotic Mark Chapman in Andrew Piddington's The Killing of John Lennon?

More column inches were devoted to flashier displays of thesping by the likes of Peter O'Toole in the decidedly dubious Venus, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench in the overwrought Notes on a Scandal, and Keira Knightley and James McAvoy in the self-satisfied Atonement. But it's not been a good year for luvvidom, with Kenneth Branagh misfiring alarmingly with As You Like It, Sleuth and The Magic Flute, and much-anticipated titles like When Did You Last See Your Father?, Brick Lane and Hallam Foe all failing to live up to expectations.

Thank goodness, therefore, for Shane Meadows's This Is England and Anton Corbijn's Control. Neither was perfect. But each had a ring of authenticity that is missing from too many Britpix - a fact that was cruelly emphasised by the classics reissued during the Summer of British Film. Most significantly, each boasted a standout performance, from Thomas Turgoose as the Nottingham tweenager who is led astray by some National Front thugs in the aftermath of the Falklands War, and Sam Riley, who captures the creativity and confusion of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis with an intensity that will surely be recognised during the forthcoming awards season.

With UK directors seemingly scared off period pieces for fear of incurring accusations of Merchant-Ivoryism, it's been left to their European counterparts to fly the heritage flag. The costumer was admirably served by Laurent Tirard's gleeful Molière, Jacques Rivette's typically assured Don't Touch the Axe and Jan Svankmajer's unnerving Lunacy, while Rachid Bouchareb's Days of Glory, Paul Verhoeven's Black Book and Stefan Ruzowitzky's Counterfeiters shed new light on such little-known aspects of the Second World War as the role played by North African troops in the defeat of Nazism, the efforts of the Dutch resistance and the plot to flood Allied countries with forged banknotes.

Equally impressive were such inter-war sagas as Emanuele Crialese's The Golden Door and Pascale Ferran's Lady Chatterley, a sensual retelling of D.H. Lawrence's most notorious novel that was beautifully paced and photographed, and played with an affecting mix of passion and poignancy by Marina Hands and Jean-Louis Coulloc'h. But the London press seemed most fascinated by events behind the Iron Curtain, although neither György Pálfi's madcap triptych Taxidermia nor Corneliu Porumboiu's bleakly satirical 12:08 East of Bucharest could match Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Stasi memoir The Lives of Others for superlatives. The late Ulrich Mühe excelled as the martinet agent who is touched by culture, but the storyline was highly melodramatic and, consequently, this must rank as the year's most overpraised foreign film, alongside Guillaume Canet's Tell No One.

By contrast, too little attention was paid to the likes of Stéphane Brizé's Not Here to Be Loved, Alain Resnais's Private Fears in Public Places, Tony Gatlif's Transylvania, Bruno Dumont's Flanders, Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo's The Night of the Sunflowers, Valeska Grisebach's Longing and Saverio Costanzo's In Memory of Me. Similarly short of coverage were such world cinema outings as Deepa Mehta's Water, Vidi Bilu's Close to Home, Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes, Pablo Trapero's Born & Bred, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's Daratt and Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako.

And who knew that 2007 was the year of Paris on screen, with the BBC's three-part series being complemented by Christophe Gans's Truffaut-inspired Dans Paris, Julie Gavras's charming 1970s flashback Blame It on Fidel and Paris je t'aime, which set its stories in 18 different arrondissements and numbered the Coen brothers, Gus van Sant, Alfonso Cuaron, Olivier Assayas, Tom Tykwer, Christopher Doyle and Walter Salles among its directors and Juliette Binoche, Natalie Portman, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi and Marianne Faithfull among its cast.

Indeed, the City of Light even provided the backdrop for the year's guiltiest pleasure, Julie Delpy's directorial debut, Two Days in Paris. The influence of Woody Allen and Richard Linklater is evident in almost every frame of this witty and cheekily observed romcom, in which kvetching New Yorker Adam Goldberg gets a severe case of culture shock when Delpy's short-sighted photographer brings him home to meet her parents. It's a bit obvious in places and it rather runs out of steam. But Delpy directs with a nouvelle vague panache that never lapses into predictable pastiche.