Your top 10 films of 2007

Scuttling in at tenth spot, Ratatouille was the year's best animated film. A rodential riff on Cyrano de Bergerac, the film featured a reviled rat who helps a lowly kitchen worker become a celebrity chef on the Paris restaurant scene. Classy and intelligent, Pixar's latest stuttered at the US box office before going on to become a global smash. Photograph: Public domain

At No 9, This is England was the film that showed Shane Meadows could move into the mainstream without selling out. Thirteen-year-old newcomer Thomas Turgoose was brilliantly watchable as the put-upon schoolboy befriended by a group of skinheads in Thatcher's Britain. Meadows caught the spirit of the 80s in all its tawdry, edgy glory. Photograph: Public domain

At No 8 ... Apocalypto. It would be so much nice to have confined Mel Gibson to the dustbin of history following his 2006 outburst. But here he was, bounding back with this bonkers, breathtaking epic about the fall of the Mayan civilisation. "This is an extraordinary cinematic journey upriver," wrote Peter Bradshaw. "A worryingly potent Mr Kurtz is sitting in the director's chair." Photograph: Public domain

Inland Empire was your seventh most popular film of 2007 - though and that's a fact. Everything else is fuzzy and oblique; a teasing, haunting journey around the darker corners of David Lynch's mind. Some saw this psychological thriller as a frustrating hall of mirrors. Others viewed it as a thing of genius. You clearly agreed with the latter point of view. Photograph: Public domain

Your number 6, The Bourne Ultimatum was the summer blockbuster it was OK to like. The plot-line could have been summed up on the back of a postage stamp, but director Paul Greengrass kept the set pieces flowing with such panache that it was impossible not to be swept along. Then there was the small matter of Paddy Considine as a Guardian hack - even if he did out to be a bit of a wimpy, lily-livered coward. Photograph: Public domain

In fifth spot, Into the Wild was Sean Penn's meaty, macho tale of Christopher McCandless, a top student at Emory University who gave his $24,000 savings to Oxfam and hitchhiked all the way to Alaska to live in the wilderness, the bloody idiot. Still, it made for a critical smash that looks well poised for recognition in the upcoming Oscars season. Photograph: Public domain

Into the final straight ... Zodiac, which you placed at No 4, was a serial killer movie with a difference. Instead of the usual fast-paced, blood-spattered narrative, David Fincher chose to deliver a lengthy examination of the investigations of a San Francisco cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) for whom the case became an obsession. It was a kind of existential murder mystery, a trail of fascinating dead-ends, played out in a dark and deadly San Francisco. Photograph: Public domain

In third spot, Control had critics of a certain age drooling into their lattes. Anton Corbijn's original 1970s photographs of Joy Division formed the visual basis for his debut as a director: a stark, black and white depiction of the rise and fall of singer Ian Curtis. The unknown Sam Riley excelled in the lead role and may well turn out to be the year's most notable find. Photograph: Public domain

In second place, Atonement was the film that proved Keira Knightley could really act. At least, the voters at the Golden Globes thought so, garnishing her with a best actress nomination and gifting the movie itself a total of seven nods. Centring on the devastating results of a young girl's meddling, Joe Wright's tale was this year's big British period drama, its high-class production, its Oscar hopeful. And all without even a sniff of Austen or Bronte. Photograph: Public domain

But your top film of 2007 was (drum-roll please) The Lives of Others. This taut, stealthy thriller offered an examination of the tight ring of control maintained over anyone even daring to breath the word "dissident" in the last years of Communist East Germany. It won the Oscar for best foreign film. More importantly, it got your vote too. Photograph: Public domain