Film Review of the year: Blockbusters with brains edge out those threequels

The past few months have saved the reputation of 2007, with a run of releases which offered entertainment with substance

For a month or two, it looked as if 2007 would be remembered without much fondness as the Year of Threequels. Every week there was another thunderously unnecessary Part Three and even, in the case of Die Hard, a Part Four. At the last minute, though, 2007 became the Year of Blockbusters With Brains. For people who liked their movies to roam far and wide, there was Sean Penn's freewheeling American odyssey, Into The Wild, and a stately study of hero worship, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Michael Clayton was an atmospheric conspiracy thriller which never talked down to its audience. And The Bourne Ultimatum, from the same writer, was almost as intelligent as it was thrilling. Yes, it was a threequel, but seeing it was like watching a Channel 4 "Top 10 Greatest Action Sequences Ever" programme, without the annoying commentators in between the clips.

Two cracking German examples of the Blockbuster With Brains genre were The Lives Of Others, probably this year's most acclaimed film, and The Counterfeiters, which managed to set a riveting thriller in a Nazi concentration camp. And if you're going by the nationality of the director, a third German example was Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, the most bizarrely upbeat film ever made about a Vietnamese prison camp. Britain didn't do too badly, either. The Last King Of Scotland is still a contender for the year's best film even though it came out at the start of January. And you didn't have to know or care about Joy Division to be floored by Control, Anton Corbijn's haunting recreation of Ian Curtis's life and death.

Even the stunning 3D animation of Beowulf hid a surprising amount of food for thought. It was a fable about the seductiveness of power, and not just about a man wrestling with a dragon. Hairspray was smarter and more subversive than the average musical, too. If you didn't have a tear in your eye when John Travolta and Christopher Walken serenaded each other, you should be condemned to a triple bill of 2007's musical stinkers: Across The Universe, August Rush and The Magic Flute.

Among this year's romantic comedies, Knocked Up got most of the press, but I preferred the spiky, sparky Two Days In Paris. Julie Delpy wasn't just the writer-director, she was also the star, the composer, the producer and the editor. Who knew that the New Woody Allen would be a beautiful French woman? Other worthwhile comedies were the Indian railroad movie, The Darjeeling Limited, which revealed that Wes Anderson could do slapstick, Blades Of Glory, which confirmed that Will Ferrell's hit-and-miss career still has its hits, and Enchanted, which worked its magic on adults as well as children.

But getting back to those threequels ... If we all chip in to fund George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh's experimental art films, do you think they'd promise not to make Ocean's 14?