Waitress was a wonderful, charming flick that was buried by the glut of summer blockbusters

If the year 2007 in film was an animal, it would be a cocker spaniel. Not a cocker spaniel with horns, not a talking cocker spaniel, not even a cocker spaniel with a particularly distinctive colouration. Just an ordinary, commonplace dog being walked by an overweight woman in a pink muumuu.

Granted, there are some examples of greatness to be plucked from the mediocrity, like the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, Ridley Scott's American Gangster and Brad Bird's Ratatoullie (maybe the dog has cancer-curing blood?). Then again, Spider-Man 3 — a film so banal it can’t even match Ghostrider's funny badness — is the third highest grossing film of the year.

In this spirit, here is a list of four films. They aren't the worst you could possibly have seen this year, but they each illustrate the disgusting blandness of 2007. The films are listed chronologically, for no meaningful reason whatsoever.

• Smokin' Aces — The trailer is awesome. Colourful assassins battle in a hotel, a rhythmic bass kick thumping like a racing heart. After a few quick, dirty seconds of explosions and knuckle-clenching tension, solid pastel colours and a bold, black typeface wash over the screen, displaying the credits. “From Joe Carnahan, creator of Narc.” Promising. So promising, in fact, that some people might have gotten their friends to take them to the movie for their birthday. Instead of a gritty, self-effacing action film, though, what they got was akin to the time they asked for a puppy and got half a glass of their mom's vodka in the eyes when they asked if she remembered. Great way to bring in the new year, Joe. Now I have to wear glasses, thanks.

• 300 — While not strictly a “bad” movie, the hype surrounding Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel seemed to bamboozle many audiences and inflate the film's importance. Suddenly, we had muscled frat boys shouting “SPAAARTAAA” in the street (oblivious to the film's myriad homosexual undertones), comics flying off the shelves and a hundred critics scratching their heads, thinking “Zack Snyder? Didn't he do that Dawn of the Dead remake?” Sadly, the spontaneous cultural explosion caused by 300 blinded most to the release of a much better film in the same month: David Fincher's Zodiac.

• Spider-Man 3 — If the previous two movies on this list were the perfectly enjoyable if somewhat bland and over-hyped pooch in the opening metaphor, then this movie is the malodorous excrement the poor thing drops after getting into the dairy bar. While I didn't ascribe to the pervading notion that the first two Spider-Man flicks were comic-book-movie perfection, at least their action sequences were fun. The third instalment, however, has audiences sitting through painfully long segments of unlistenable dialogue, and when the action comes, it seems to have confused the definition of “kitschy” with that of “irredeemably stupid.” When Peter Parker fuses with the Symbiote, apparently he just becomes an emo version of The Mask and fails to do anything remotely interesting with his potentially cool new powers.

Sadder still is that this festering pile of garbage (along with the less-festering third Pirates of the Caribbean flick) was released right alongside Adrienne Shelly's adorable Waitress. As with Zodiac, it's not really fair to complain about audience absorption — the masses who flocked to Spider-Man 3 probably weren't going to see Waitress anyway — but it is indicative of a greater problem. Better movies don't get seen because their studios don't have the money for competitive PR campaigns, and then fewer and fewer good movies get made. Did anyone else notice the incredible abundance of franchise sequels this year? Not a coincidence. On that note.…

• Live Free or Die Hard — From the start, I don't want to be taken wrongly on this one. Considering the context in which it was introduced, this movie was perfect. It was the bombastic tie-off of a series that was getting more and more over-the-top with each sequel, and it delivered on all the promises of its predecessors. The problem with the new Die Hard isn't the film itself, it's what the film represents in contrast with the rest of the series.

The original film was bold in its reinterpretation of the action hero. Rather than an invincible super soldier, John McClane was a flesh-and-blood human being with as many personality flaws as the villains. The McClane character made the action fresh and compelling through that sense of vulnerability — the scene in which Hans Gruber is confronted by a barefoot McClane with glass shards embedded in his feet is still held high as one of the greatest action sequences ever filmed, even 19 years later. In this latest version, while all of his personality quirks are still intact, John McClane is basically Jason Bourne (read: an invincible super soldier). So, rather than stick with what made the series classic, Len Wiseman and company decided to take the fashionable route (ie: the safe one).

Admittedly, the safe route didn't result in a bad film, but it's an indication of the problems with Hollywood franchise production. From a marketing standpoint, it's much safer to produce a film that hits all the same beats as the last successful film in that genre. While this system might lead to a veritable slew of crowd-pleasers, it doesn't do wonders for variety within the genre. With blockbuster production costs now commonly stretching into the hundreds of millions, though, it's tough to blame an investor for trying to recoup.

It's this resistance to change that produced Spider-Man 3, Smokin' Aces and, to a lesser extent, 300. Luckily (for Hollywood, at least), the quality of a film often has very little to do with how it sells. Now, making the point of “lower budgets breed greater integrity” is rather tired, and, honestly, something I don't believe in the slightest. Greater integrity leads to greater integrity. One look at the recent hipster-chic Juno is proof that there's more than one way to sell out. The problem is that artistic integrity is such an abstract concept that “low budget indie” becomes an easy shorthand.

Still, film is an art form, and talented artists will continue to express themselves even without $100 million budgets. Whether or not they're seen — or, indeed, whether or not they make any money at all — they will continue to be made, and the good ones will wait patiently in the shadows of giants like John McCane and Leonidas.