From my Top 10 Best Movies of 2012, here comes my Top 10 Worst Movies of 2012:
10. JOHN CARTER
With a lavish budget of $250 million, JOHN CARTER looks set to be one of the most spectacular sci-fi epics of the year. Why not, since this movie is directed by Andrew Stanton (in his first live-action feature after directing three Pixar's animated classics, A BUG'S LIFE, FINDING NEMO and WALL-E). I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Well, a lot. The story is heavy-handed, the fantastical sci-fi element feels seriously deja vu, the action is lackluster and worst of all, Taylor Kitsch is totally bland to make him iconic enough as the titular character.
9. JACK REACHER
The marketing people does a great job convinced me that I'm on a rollercoaster ride of a muscular, yet refreshingly low-tech crime thriller with Tom Cruise playing bad-ass character! But it turns out to be that JACK REACHER is nothing than a clunky, wannabe thriller tries so hard to be cool and serious. Tom Cruise is fatally miscast here, while Christopher McQuarrie's direction is terribly haphazard. Frankly, the whole movie is so draggy I almost dozed off a couple of times.
8. TAKEN 2
The sequel that shouldn't be existed at the first place. But yet, TAKEN 2 managed to make a lot of money at the box office. But whatever it is, this sequel is an absolutely lazy rehash from the first movie. The action is badly framed with annoying shaky-cam, coupled with haphazard editing all over the place. Liam Neeson looks tired here, and director Olivier Megaton made this sequel so awfully generic and bland it should have been belong in a direct-to-video market instead.
7. THE POSSESSION
Despite this would-be shocker is produced by none others than Sam Raimi, THE POSSESSION is a shockingly dull horror picture all around. Ole Bornedal's direction is terribly pedestrian, while all the scary parts are always abruptly cut off in favor for the next scene. Just about everything here is dreadfully formulaic.
6. TAI CHI ZERO
An old-fashioned martial-art genre with a steampunk twist? Why not? Once in a while, it's good to see an oft-seen genre is given a new lease of life. But for all the fancy bag of tricks actor-director Stephen Fung tries so hard to pull off here, TAI CHI ZERO is surprisingly uninvolving. The story is a bloated mess and the pace is awfully sluggish to get to the point. Newcomer Jayden Yuan is terribly wooden as the lead role.
5. TAI CHI HERO
What can I say? It's the same old mistake Stephen Fung has made in TAI CHI ZERO. Sure, this sequel is considerably restrained in term of its visual excesses but it's still a painfully boring picture that tries too hard to be hip, funny and entertaining altogether.
4. LINCOLN
Steven Spielberg's passion project is certainly greeted with such universal acclaim amongst critics and it's surprisingly a box office success in US so far. Daniel Day-Lewis is a spot-on as the 16th President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln but his acting performance is hampered by terribly clunky script. Spielberg has certainly made a big mistake for stripping his would-be remarkable epic to a bare-bone of a stage-like production. And he is definitely out of his element here. LINCOLN is too talky for its own good, and its enormous 150 minutes is really tough to sit through. (Full review coming soon!)
3. NIGHTFALL
This wannabe thriller has Nick Cheung and Simon Yam, but director Roy Chow has wasted their talents with his terribly dull movie filled with absurd plot, snail pace, and lots of talky expositions. And that climactic third-act... you just have to see it for yourself how Roy Chow ends his movie in such a convoluted manner.
2. SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN
An oft-told Snow White fairy tale gets a revisionist makeover, and that is something interesting I really looked forward to. But after watching the movie, imagine how disappointed I am to find out that SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN is such a complete disaster. First-time feature director Rupert Sanders has no sense of pacing and everything here looks lifeless. All the cast are seriously undermined, and it's really hard to swallow that the always-glum Kristen Stewart plays the "fairer" kind.
1. COSMOPOLIS
Oh, here goes... COSMOPOLIS! It's hard to believe that David Cronenberg can do so much worse in his directing career. He's clearly out of his element here directing this weird, but painfully boring movie that relies a lot of dialogue rather than his usual captivating visual flair. He looks hopelessly lost trying to make a talky movie (just like he did before in A DANGEROUS METHOD). Robert Pattinson is seriously dull in the lead role here, and so do everyone else involved here. This is a monumental waste of time.
