Kicking off our review of the year, Xan Brooks picks the twelve films you should have seen this year. Whether you've seen them or not, you can read on to recap a year coloured by deaths, controversies, and tax regulations.

　　January

　　Swimming to Cambodia Man Missing

　　The body of Spalding Gray, who used his experience of playing a bit role in a Hollywood film to create the memoir Swimming to Cambodia, was recovered from the East River in New York yesterday, two months after his disappearance.

　　February

　　The Oscars

　　With a new date, a month earlier than traditional, and bitter rows in the run-up over freebie videos for Academy voters, the 2004 Oscars seemed something of an unknown quantity. In fact, it well went much as foreseen; lots of gongs for Peter Jackson and a gushy acceptance speech from Charlize Theron in which she thanked her lawyer.

　　March

　　Passion of the Christ

　　By the time it got here, we'd had nearly a month of foamy-mouthed debate from the US, from both critics and supporters of Mel Gibson's bloody crucifixion movie. The British reviewers mostly thought it over-the-top, and almost unwatchably violent.

　　April

　　The Curious Incident of Kevin Spacey and the Dog in the Night-time

　　Sick to the back teeth of controversy? Ready for a little apolitical intrigue, and media schadenfreude? By April so were we, so all credit to Kevin Spacey for livening up our month with this perplexing tale of how he was - or wasn't- mugged while walking his dog in a London park in the wee smalls.

　　May

　　Cannes 2004

　　The Palme d'Or went to Fahrenheit 9/11. Michael Winterbottom kept the British end up with the tremendously saucy 9 Songs, widely reported to be the "most sexually explicit British film ever made". And Wong Kar-Wai arrived, breathless and a day late, bearing "a rough-cut" of 2046, which even unfinished proved one of the highlights of the festival.

　　June

　　Fahrenheit 9/11

　　We had to wait until July, but the big US opening of Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary created plenty enough heat and light to be visible from this side of the pond. Everyone waded in; US critics, French critics, Alex James from Blur, and Pete Townshend from the Who, who declared Moore a 'bully'.

　　July

　　Marlon Brando Dies

　　It wasn't really a shock, but it still caught many on the hop. Shortly before he died, Brando was reported to be penniless, but he still left $21m in his will, and expressly requested that details of his final hours be kept from the press; even in death Brando refused to give up his secrets. Of his importance to the history of film, however, there could be no doubt.

　　August

　　Edinburgh Film Festival

　　... at which Wong Kar Wai's 2046 was not shown; apparently it wasn't ready, not even as ready as it had been months earlier at Cannes. Still, there was plenty to enjoy, notably Hamburg Cell, about the September 11 terrorists, and Ken Loach's Ae Fond Kiss.

　　September

　　In A Secret Paris Cavern, the Real Underground Cinema

　　Police in Paris discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement.

　　Disney's Eisner to Retire in Two Years

　　Walt Disney chief executive Michael Eisner announced his retirement in the middle of a bad year for Disney, as they tried to forget The Alamo, and considered parting company with the Weinsteins. ... but the Weinsteins stayed

　　Sony's ?2.7bn MGM Deal Agreed

　　Sony Corporation reached agreement to buy the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Hollywood film studio, the last 'independent' studio. All in all, September was a busy month.

　　October

　　London Film Festival 2004

　　It was less glitzy and less groundbreaking than in recent years, but London still packed a punch, opening with Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, a real British movie now an Oscar favourite. Still no sign of 2046, though.

　　November

　　Controversial Dutch Film Director Shot Dead in Street

　　Theo van Gogh, the Dutch artist's great grand-nephew and a provocative filmmaker, was shot dead in a street in Amsterdam, apparently because of a film he made about Islamic violence against women.

　　December

　　Brown Lifts Filmmakers' Gloom

　　In the last act of a drama that had been playing out all year, Gordon Brown announced that some lucrative tax loopholes for film-makers would be closed, but that relief was available. The Inland Revenue had led the industry a merry dance since February when the rules were abruptly changed, shutting some projects down at an advanced stage.