It wasn't the greatest year for big family action films, but a few stood out in the crowded field of insipid superheroes.

X Men: First Class was the pick of comic book bunch though there were frustrations amongst its fine moments. Michael Fassbender made a great Young Magneto, though where his Irish accent came from (and where it goes to) remain unexplained. Perhaps the sequel will clear things up.

My favourite of this loose genre was Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which set a new bar for motion capture work while maintaining an engrossing and surprisingly human story. In case you missed it, it was that nasty kid from Harry Potter who was so mean to the apes that they, er, rose. And said Draco Malfoy was also, of course, on hand for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2, the worst movie title of the year but actually a pretty good film, certainly the pick of the series and benefiting from the fact that stuff actually happened.

Best kids ensemble, however, was the gang in Super 8, a charming film that started better than it finished but still had enough heart to evoke those long summer holidays of youth. The influence of Steven Spielberg was writ large but the result was a genuine pleasure.

There were fine documentaries too, the best being homegrown. Operation 8, about the raids upon activists throughout New Zealand and particularly on the Tuhoe people in the Urewera ranges, is a scary piece, made even more so by the complete lack of official dispute about its accuracy. Everyone should see this film, it really is an eye-opener. From America, Inside Job did a fine job of explaining the current financial crisis and its roots in the greed and corruption of Wall Street.

There were also a couple of terrific biopics. Gainsbourg examines the life of the controversial genius of French popular music Serge Gainsbourg, complete with surreal puppets and spot-on presentations of Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin and other famous lovers of the remarkable singer. Much darker and more serious was Carlos The Jackal, a French television production that plunged you into the life of a terrorist and the strange and seedy world of international crime. It's a brilliant piece of work.

My own personal favourite in this group though was Me and Orson Welles, a look at the famous director's stage production of Julius Caesar which both nailed the mercurial star and gave a thrilling glimpse behind the scenes at how exciting great theatre can be.

And there were three impressive – if somewhat unpleasant – crime films. A Prophet is French and takes place almost entirely in prison where a young inmate rises through the ranks to become head of the criminal fraternity, which seems to act pretty much as it would outside jail. The Killer Within Me is a brutal film noir, all seen through the eyes of a psychopathic small town sheriff's deputy (a brilliant Casey Affleck). Most unpleasant, however, and most extraordinary, was the ordinariness of Snowtown, a true story of Australia's ‘bodies in barrels' murders. It's an intensely difficult film to watch but sticks in your mind, even if you wished it wouldn't.

Thanks to Video Ezy Brookfield
for the DVDs