At the movies, a year of comebacks and throwbacks

If a movie year is measured by its quotient of highly watchable films, then 2007 was a very good year. With one or two exceptions (see Top 10 list below), I didn't detect any masterpieces, but I would have no trouble recommending several dozen movies that, while not for the ages, are perfectly fine for right now.

If, on the other hand, a movie year is judged by the new directions it lays down, 2007 was, at best, a work in progress. The good movies were like happy accidents that fell off the factory assembly line.

For those of us who revere the Western genre and bemoan its long-term near-obsolescence, two such occasions for happiness were "3:10 to Yuma" and, especially, "No Country for Old Men," which, like all good Westerns, transcends the genre in the process of fulfilling it.

The comeback of the Western this year was the positive offshoot of an otherwise dubious movie trend: the rise in macho posturing.

I'm thinking not only of steroid-pumped bicep-burners like "300" and "Beowulf," but also "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," an overcooked dysfunctional family rumble that seems designed to ease people through "Sopranos" withdrawal, or self-important male-bonding epics such as "American Gangster" and "Michael Clayton," where Russell Crowe and George Clooney spend quality time between shoot-outs playing downbeat deadbeat dads basking in their own somnolence. Isn't there a better way to utilize these romantic icons?

Another genre that got a boost this year was the musical (see story). "Hairspray" was a marvelous surprise, "Enchanted," probably the best family film of the year, was enchanting, and "Once," while I'm not nearly as gaga about it as most people are, conveyed, in the way its performers expressed themselves in song, the essence of why we love musicals in the first place. And "Sweeney Todd," while too Tim Burtonish – i.e. grody to the max – for my taste, nevertheless amazes with the singularity of its dark vision.

Darkness was also the watchword for the slew of Iraq-themed films this year – "Rendition," "In the Valley of Elah," "Redacted," "Grace Is Gone, "Lions for Lambs."

Their lack of commercial success says nothing, I think, about our views of the war and everything to do with our desire – now more than ever – to be entertained, to be gripped, by moviemakers who are more interested in rousing our spirits than saving our souls. The big casualty here was "A Mighty Heart," a quicksilver political horror story that, despite one of Angelina Jolie's best performances, was snubbed by audiences.

At times, the movies this year seemed to require the assessments of a sociologist rather than a film critic. What to make of the fact that two big hits, "Knocked Up" and "Juno," are out-of-wedlock pregnancy comedies in which abortion is never a serious option?

A few regrets: I wish Francis Ford Coppola's comeback film "Youth Without Youth" was better, I wish the second half of "Atonement" was as good as its first, I wish Cate Blanchett's astonishing turn in "I'm Not There" wasn't the only thing to admire about that misbegotten art mess. I bemoan the fact that so many marvelous foreign-language films I saw on the festival circuit did not make it into our theaters. But there is much to applaud as well – as in the following Top 10 list (in alphabetical order):

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