Time Magazine's top ten Best and Worst films of 2012

Time Magazine has published its list of top 10 best and worst films of the year. Topping the list of best films was Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or winner Amour. This is a sensible and unsurprising choice as it has won numerous other awards since its triumph at Cannes. The top ten selection was made by Richard Corliss.

The number one worst film, however, has proven controversial. Taking the top spot for worst film of 2012 was Cloud Atlas, the adaptation of the David Mitchell novel by Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski.

I personally had issues with it, not least of which was the yellow-face casting and acting. Sure, many actors cross races in the movie, but none in a main role in the story as Jim Sturgess does as a Korean. Nonetheless, it has good intentions, I suppose. But it has other flaws as well as strengths. I didn't find it confusing as many did, but I did find it muddled.

Still, it's far from the worst movie of the year. Although it doesn't achieve all it sets out to do, it manages a great deal. And many people love it. One would be hard-pressed to find anyone who loved the Adam Sandler vehicle That's My Boy. It had a low bar, and failed even to meet that. I think the choice of Cloud Atlas for worst of the year is a very personal, harsh response by the critic in question.

Time critic Mary Pols who made the selection of the ten worst wrote:

We’re all connected. Human beings repeat the same mistakes, generation after generation. And — man, this part is heavy, so maybe, like, sit down for 172 minutes to think about it — even though bad people try to enslave other people, someone awesome will always try to throw off the shackles. Cloud Atlas is so much like the bong-fueled conversations I had in college that I almost ordered a Domino’s pizza afterward. The problem is there’s no emotional hook in this bloated fantasia of special effects and makeup wizardry; the passion is all in the brute labor of adapting David Mitchell’s novel for the screen. Co-directors Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer flit across centuries and genres in a whirlwind of bloody violence and cross-dressing, ethnicity-shifting performances, but there’s as much opportunity to get attached to characters as there would be watching people go by on a roller coaster.

http://www.time.com/time/top-10-lists-of-2012


Time Magazine's list of Top 10 Best Movies

1. Amour
2. Beasts of the Southern Wild
3. Life of Pi
4. Anna Karenina
5. The Dark Knight Rises
6. Zero Dark Thirty
7. Dark Horse
8. Dragon
9. Frankenweenie
10. The Invisible War

Time Magazine's list of Top 10 Worst Movies

1. Cloud Atlas
2. John Carter
3. Hyde Park on Hudson
4. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
5. This Means War
6. The Lorax
7. Alex Cross
8. What to Expect When You’re Expecting
9. The Odd Life of Timothy Green
10. One for the Money