The good, the bad and ugly of 2007

This year will hardly go down in the annals of Hong Kong cinema as one of its more distinguished years. With annual production hovering around 50 features, there simply isn't enough quality to fill a traditional top 10 list. So let's round up the good, the bad and the ugly with an unorthodox inventory.

Best sex: As if there were any question - Lust, Caution wins this category hands down. Ang Lee's erotic thriller had a lot more to offer than sex, but it was the publicity over the sadomasochistic relationship between Tony Leung Chiu-wai's traitorous official and Tang Wei's spy that turned this subtle second world war tale into the year's top Chinese-language box office attraction.

Best newcomer: Again, there's really no other choice than Tang Wei's debut in Lust, Caution. Tang (above with Leung) so totally inhabited her role that the character was convincing whether an idealistic university student or a conniving tai-tai.

Best social realism: Director Herman Yau Lai-to presented a frank look at a cross-section of sex workers and the problems they face, both professionally and personally, in Whispers and Moans. More commercial but equally effective was Protege, in which director-writer Derek Yee Tung-shing brought his keen sense of drama to the narcotics trade and its effect on an addicted single mother and undercover cop.

Best nostalgia: Of the three handover remembrances, Mr Cinema (with its evocative central performance by Anthony Wong Chau-sang) had more of a feel for local history than Hooked On You or Wonder Women. But top unintended nostalgia honours go to Happy Birthday, the last movie (though unremarkable) to feature the old Star Ferry Terminal before its demise earlier this year.

Best product placement: The ill-fated reunion of four of the 'Five Tigers' of 1980s TVB fame (Tony Leung Chiu-wai was absent) bore the cliched gangster saga that proved most memorable when hawking wares endorsed by star-producer Andy Lau Tak-wah. A worthy runner-up was Wonder Women, where the product placements were even more blatant than the script's pro-Beijing obsequiousness.