STEVE PRATT looks at the best and worst movies of 2006 and picks out his favourite ten films seen on the silver screen in the past 12 months

HIS was a good year for film piracy. Not the illegal copying of movies, although that's flourishing despite efforts to stamp it out, but Captain Jack Sparrow and his crew.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest became the third film to gross one billion dollars at the global box-office.

The Disney people must be glad that they filmed a third instalment back-to-back with the sequel. At World's End is ready to release in May with all the regulars, led by Johnny Depp, back on deck.

The public loved it but Pirates 2 won't feature on many, if any, critics' best film lists for a year like any other with its mix of the good, the bad and the unwatchable.

Again, there were too many sequels and remakes as studios tried to extract that extra dollar from a once-successful format.

There was nothing particularly wrong with remakes of The Omen or Poseidon but they failed to improve on the originals. The only reason for remaking horror movies - the 2006 batch included The Hills Have Eyes and When A Stranger Calls - was to up the gore content.

The Grudge 2, Big Momma's House 2, Garfield 2, Final Destination 3, Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (it was a sequel, don't let the title fool you) all debuted with little fuss.

Every week seemed to bring another computer animated feature with an animal cast.

Barnyard, Chicken Little, Open Season and The Wild fell into that category.

Hoodwinked, a retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story, was more original than most. Monster House and Ice Age 2: The Meltdown stood out as more entertaining than most, until Flushed Away, from the creators of Wallace & Gromit and Shrek, came along late in the day.

British comedy had a funnier year than usual thanks to Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon teaming up in A Cock And Bull Story, and the cast of improvised wedding competition comedy Confetti.

Sacha Baron Cohen had a hit on both sides of the Atlantic with the disgracefully funny Borat , while Ant and Dec made a respectable job in straightish roles in Alien Autopsy.

The marketing people came a cropper with Snakes On The Plane, refusing to screen it before its release, convinced that all the web publicity would cause a stampede at the boxoffice.

It didn't.

It was a bad year for several established star. Tom Cruise didn't have his Paramount contract renewed after executives blamed his off-screen antics for causing Mission: Impossible 3 to underperform.

Mel Gibson's arrest on a driving charge and subsequent remarks made him unpopular.

Kevin Costner in The Guardian and Bruce Willis in 16 Blocks enjoyed limited success.

Sylvester Stallone is the next to try - he's back as boxer Rocky in the New Year.

George Clooney, on the other hand, had a good year with a double whammy of Good Night And Good Luck and Syriana, serious films you see all too rarely in the mainstream.

The most triumphant return was James Bond in Casino Royale with Daniel Craig defying his critics to prove himself a real 007. Emerging from the sea wearing tight trunks convinced female cinemagoers.

Spike Lee had a rare commercial hit with the thriller Inside Man, starring Clive Owen, who also proved his leading man worth in futuristic thriller Children Of Men, making up for the lacklustre thriller Derailed.

Martin Scorsese took a Hong Kong thriller and made it his own in The Departed, pairing Leonardo di Caprio and Matt Damon but allowing a demonic Jack Nicholson to steal the film as a mobster. Disappointing too was the film of the London and Broadway stage hit The History Boys. Enjoyable enough, I felt that there was a better film to be made from Alan Bennett's play than director Nicholas Hytner had managed.

As for the bad, US comedies Beerfest and The Pink Panther were laugh-free zones. A Good Year teamed Gladiator director Ridley Scott and star Russell Crowe in a comedy-drama set in the French wine growing region. The film was not a good vintage.

Sharon Stone spent years trying to make Basic Instinct 2 .

It wasn't worth the wait, being as sexy as sitting in a bath of cold baked beans. Charlize Theron showed that best actress Oscar-winners can be poor judges of material by slipping into a catsuit as sci-fi heroine Aeon Flux.

But let's banish the bad. Here are my top ten films of 2006 (in no particular order):

THE DEPARTED: Scorsese on top form with a good cop/bad cop thriller. Could it earn him that elusive Oscar?

CASINO ROYALE: I spy a great new Jemes Bond in Daniel Craig.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA: Meryl Streep's fashion magazine editor is the boss from hell.

PAN'S LABYRINTH: Imaginative fantasy from director Guillermo del Toro.

CHILDREN OF MEN: The world is crumbling and Clive Owen must save the last baby on earth.

THE QUEEN: Helen Mirren as HM and Michael Sheen as Tony Blair fret in the aftermath of Diana's death.

LITTLE CHILDREN: Dark drama with bored mother Kate Winslet having an affair in suburbia.

SYRIANA: George Clooney stars in a drama about the battle for oil on a political and personal level.

UNITED 93: Paul Greengrass's unsettling recreation of the last hour of one of the 9/11 flights.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE: Oddball family take a road trip to a children's beauty pageant.