I encountered David Mitchell’s novel on which this movie is based back in the twelfth grade. It wasn’t the easiest book to read – starting innocuously enough with an 18th century journal aboard a ship, it abruptly skips to another narrative about an aspiring composer set in the early twentieth century, before taking another sharp left turn into a ’70s conspiracy thriller. Next up are stories about an aging, institutionalized publisher, a futuristic dystopian tale, and finally, a post apocalyptic quest. Mitchell allows for this last story to conclude, then doubles back to finish the other stories in reverse order. So yes, it wasn’t a particularly easy read, but it remains one of the most satisfying – and daring – literary feats I have yet encountered. I was naturally nervous about the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer’s adaptation, wondering how they could possibly bring this seemingly unfilmable novel to the screen.

Well, they brought it. And how.

If the book was daring, this movie is flat out insane in the best way possible. No more nested narratives – the six stories now happen simultaneously, weaving in and out of each other in a mind-boggling act of orchestration. What this juxtaposition does quite beautifully is enhance the sometimes dormant themes of the novel, and a clearer picture emerges before us. Cloud Atlas is ultimately the tale of how the human spirit strives for freedom, how the small everyday acts of bravery are no less heroic than the grand tales of rebellion. In its own way, it takes the history of humanity and paints it into a wondrous narrative that spans time and genre.

And it doesn’t stop there. The other huge gambit the directors take is casting actors across different roles in different time periods. Except for bits where the makeup team occasionally fails them, this is a perfect decision. The novel snuck in the theme of reincarnation through hinting that the protagonists in each its stories were iterations of each other – the movie manages to take that theme and suffuse it with deeper meaning. Lovers cross and re-cross paths, meeting each other in one period, losing each other in another. One character’s ultimately triumphant struggle with his dark side becomes a motif across each story. Connections established in one lifetime determine the choices made in another. Days after watching this film, I’m still going over its intricate puzzle pieces in my head.

This is incredible film-making. Through its final half hour, I was fighting back tears of astonishment, marvelling at the way it managed to work through moments of such grandeur to touch on experiences so deeply intimate. The romantics said that if you describe the particular with enough detail, the universal will begin to seep through – Cloud Atlas approaches this situation in the reverse, and through its broad abstractions, it finds its emotional reverberations.

One of the greatest book to film adaptations of all time, and hands down, the best movie of the year.

Okay I’m going to cheat here and give you a list of the best television episodes of 2011 – it’s a much simpler list to make, and it allows me to include shows that would have otherwise not approached a top ten list with a ten foot pole (I’m looking at you, Glee). It’s well established that we’re in the golden age of television, and even with my relaxed criteria, it became hard to narrow the list down to ten. Here we go -

10. Silly Love Songs, Glee: Ah, how the mighty have fallen. There was a time, not too long ago, when this musical comedy was at the top of the pop culture echelon, a critical and ratings smash. Then, before you could shout “Regionals!” we found ourselves stuck with too much grating Sue Sylvester, too little sensible Will Schuester, and gaping continuity issues. Still, the reason I continue to watch Glee is for its ability to occasionally pull out episodes like its Valentine’s Day confection: this was a delightful little ode to teenage love, and it gave us the show at its best. Puck gyrates to Fat Bottomed Girl, Kurt pines over Blaine, and Rachel gets to be a Firework. The episode caps off with a lovely acappella rendition of the song that it gets its title from, with Kurt heart-gesturing to his two faithful fag hags. Heartwarming, really.

Tied with: Rumours, Glee:  A lot of the theme episodes on the show haven’t really worked (ugh Britney, and UGH Gaga), but with this Fleetwood Mac tribute, the show fired on all cylinders. It was touching, it had some great performances, and it actually managed to integrate the songs – and the theme of the album itself – in manner that was organic and NOT outside the established story canon of the show. Now how hard can that be Ryan Murphy?

9. Spooky Endings, Happy Endings: The first Friends knock-off that is a genuinely good show in its own right, Happy Endings supplies the highest rate of laughs-per-minute for this particular viewer. This episode is one of its most hilarious, and bizarre, with a mother-and-child costume that features the baby’s head peeking out kangaroo style and a move-to-suburbs-plot that goes for some great sight gags. There’s also a drag competition. With a Marilyn Monroe dance. Please watch.

8. White Wedding, Grey’s Anatomy: The long running medical drama enjoyed a creative resurgence in its seventh season, with a cathartic storyline as the surgeons moved past the trauma of the hospital shootings. The best moments of the season featured people pushing forward to make decisions that featured just how much their characters had matured post the crisis. The perfect showcase was this double wedding episode that featured strikingly lovely interweaving between a perfectly legal straight marriage, and a purely ceremonial lesbian one. Just another sweet payoff for those of us who’ve stuck with this show through its now eight year run.

7.  Queen of Jordan, 30 Rock: It might be an ageing comedy, but 30 Rock is still capable of delivering some of the best – and strangest – laughs on television. This inspired take on reality television was the best kind of spoof – one that actively pushed the story forward, while simultaneously going to some particularly strange places. Of course, it doesn’t quite compare to the other show that does a similar thing with many episodes (and features prominently near the top of the list).

6.  Lonesome Sundown, Cougar Town: This show has long transcended its banal title to become one of television’s most underrated treasures – episodes spent in the company of the wine-guzzling gang evoke the familiarity of just sitting and having fun with your closest friends. This particular one features the inanity of a punishment council when the gang takes each other for granted, coupled with a moving plot where Courtney Cox’s Jules takes an important step forward in learning to let go of her teenage son.

5. Pilot, Revenge: Delicious, delicious fun. This is the soapiest show currently running on television, and man does it take its duties seriously. Spinning a story of how one wronged woman plots a web of revenge around the people who destroyed her father’s life, the pilot episode gives us a big dose of what will go on to be one of the show’s most reliable pleasures: the always on the edge of hostile standoffs between Madeline Stowe, chief betrayer and high society extraordinaire, and Emily Vancamps’ Amanda (well, Emily actually. uh, it gets confusing) as the wronged woman with a vendetta. Like I said, delicious. The best way to watch this show, internet consensus has it, is to end every episode with your fist pointed to the sky and yell “REVENGEEEEE”.
Do it.

4. Pilot, Homeland: A U.S. Marine-turned-Prisoner of War is rescued 10 years after being captured. He’s a war hero – but Claire Danes’ CIA Agent has her doubts. She suspects he might have “turned” and is plotting an attack on the country, and will breach every ethical principle to get to the bottom of the mystery. Also, she’s mildly unhinged. The show takes this fantastic premise, and gallops with it, giving us one of the most cinematic episodes of television it a while with its compelling opener. Without hitting us over the head with the point, the show talks about  how the casualties in war extend beyond mere body counts, as we watch our marine struggle to interact with his family, and our agent struggle with her grip on reality.

Tied with: Executive Order 13224, The Good Wife: An exceptionally smart show, The Good Wife combines a mix of great ripped-from-the-headlines plots with an enthralling mix of workplace and family drama. Ever so often, it also teaches you a thing or two about the legal system, and in this, its best episode in a very good year, it centers on the controversial eponymous post 9/11 order. Questions of state security are weaved into a narrative where Alicia Florrick finds her personal interests might just be at odds with that of her firm. Cue an absolutely stellar performance from recurring lawyer Elsbeth Tasconi, and a tense cat-and -mouse game with the government.

3.  Paradigms of Human Memory, Community: . You know that tired old thing where a show does an old clips episode, where the characters ruminate on past events? Cue audible groans from the bored audience. Well, Community tried a clip show too: except that it featured new clips, from memories that we’d never seen before. As if that wasn’t good enough, the memories that we see allow the creators to go flat out surreal –  Community does Glee! Community goes to a ghost town! Community goes to an asylum! – and in the process, even more hilarious.

2. A Fistfull of Paintballs, Community:  Yes, Community deserves two slots on this list, it’s that good. The strength of this hugely ambitious show lies in its ability to take on pop culture tropes and fashion storylines around them. This was the most wildly entertaning version of the idea, with the show taking on the Western genre with dazzling style, an abundance of wit, and actually propelling the emotional arc for its characters foward.

1. Andy and April’s Fancy Party, Parks and Recreation: The show with the most heart on television is also one of the medium’s funniest. This episode focuses on one of the things Parks and Rec does best: its focus on the woozy romances between its utterly lovable characters. A housewarming party thrown by new couple Andy and April turns out to be a surprise wedding. In one step, the show strode past the engagement and wedding jitters tropes so characteristic of this genre and gave us this marvellously heartwarming piece of showcraft. This show frequently knocks it out of the park (ha! pun) in so many ways, and here’s the best example.

I got some of what I bargained for, to be sure. Morel most certainly has elements which Lost would put to such atmospheric use, starting with its conception of a seemingly fantastical island to the mysterious experiment that it stands as a base for. It also satisfies the ideas criterion – the exposition heavy last third of the book throws dizzying ruminations on immortality and the nature of love at the reader.

Where it surprised me though, was on the count of it being, on the one hand, a furiously compelling ride, and on the other, a complex, often devastating, love story.

We start with a escaped fugitive who’s found refuge in a remote island in the south seas. There exist concrete traces on the island of recent occupation: a museum, a chapel, even a swimming pool. He enters into a solitary routine, which is broken one day with the arrival of a group of people on the island – men and women who engage in dance and drink and merry chatter – whom he observes from a distance. One of these women captures his fancy, and he starts attempting to make contact with her. But nothing is what it seems ….

For any piece of science fiction to truly work (and this is a science fiction novel through and through), it needs to resonate in ways both political and emotional. That is to say, the technological aspect, the imagined creation, needs to function on some level as a commentary on some aspect of the world we inhabit. Of course, it’s positively difficult for any such work to not, even unintentionally manage this task, but that’s where the second level of resonance needs to take place. There needs to be weight and consequence, a sense of the characters involved, of their importance, and of our connection to them.

The Invention of Morel is a triumph in how it succeeds at both those goals – without giving too much away, I’ll say that the invention in question mirrors ideas about cinema, and in extension, ideas about how we live our very lives. What does it mean for us that we cannot understand anything outside of time and space? That we will only know what someone else has already thought or felt, or the possible transpositions of those thoughts or feelings? And what kind of mortality accrues to an image that lingers on even as the subject dies and decays?

Tied into those ideas is that aforementioned love story. It’s a love that may or may not be unrequited, depending on how you approach the questions above. It’s a love that either destroys a perfectly lucid man, or salvages a madman and inserts him into a vision of immortality. Again, that depends on what you think about the ideas Casares places before you. Me, I’ll take the easy route of ambivalence for now. Given my own issues with mortality, Morel presents an intoxicating alternative, a suggestion that the approach of looking at the body as the vessel for eternal life is a flawed one. I’d like to go with Casares’ vision to the logical end-point – but there’s a certain very physical reluctance holding me back.

Tied into those ideas is that aforementioned love story. It’s a love that may or may not be unrequited, depending on how you approach the questions above. It’s a love that either destroys a perfectly lucid man, or salvages a madman and inserts him into a vision of immortality. Again, that depends on what you think about the ideas Casares places before you. Me, I’ll take the easy route of ambivalence for now. Given my own issues with mortality, Morel presents an intoxicating alternative, a suggestion that the approach of looking at the body as the vessel for eternal life is a flawed one. I’d like to go with Casares’ vision to the logical end-point – but there’s a certain very physical reluctance holding me back.

Eight seasons is a hell of a long run for most network television shows today, and to maintain a semblance of quality that late in the offing, a pretty hard task. Grey’s Anatomy started off quietly, morphed into a sensation propelled by a mix of romance-and-thrills best exemplified by that spectacular bomb in the body episode. From peaks like that, the only way to really go is down, and sure enough, the hospital drama sank to a soggy melodramatic mess somewhere over the course of its third season. There was a bit of a resurgence in the fourth season, and steadily the show recovered to find its bearings, with all the elements coming together for the sixth season finale – easily one of the most thrilling/ gut wrenching pieces of television to air in the history of the medium. There was no way to really top the nerve wracking tension of that episode – and Grey’s, to its credit, didn’t try. Instead, it went into the seventh season exploring the fallout of the incidents of the finale on each character, taking them on a journey of recovery, leading to a wonderfully introspective series of episodes that dealt with people in pain pushing each other forward.

The show had re-found its groove and stuck with it, and as we left it at the end of the seventh season, the brilliant (and often brilliantly cold) surgeon Cristina Yang was struggling with the news that she was pregnant. Her surgeon husband Owen wants the kid. She doesn’t. Her resolute refusal to listen to him leads him to walk away from her at the season’s end, and we’re left with uncertainty regarding their – and the kid’s – future.

Snap back to the season eight premiere and Yang still hasn’t got the abortion. My first reaction was to groan: were we going to have to deal with yet another instance of a woman discovering that true, lasting happiness can only be determined by having a child? Is this, the most ruthless, motivated, and talented surgeon in the galaxy of Seattle Grace-Mercy West hospital going to decide that her career can take a mild detour while she savours the delights of motherhood?

Grey’s answered: an emphatic No. In a set of ravishingly powerful monologues, Cristina expresses her regret at her inability to even want a child, but emphasizes that that’s exactly the case – she just does not want to have and raise a child. “I don’t want to make jam. I don’t want to carpool. I really, really, really don’t wanna be a mother. I want to be a surgeon, and please—get it.”

I got it, and so does Meredith, who serves up an ever more powerful speech to Owen: “Do you know what it’s like to be raised by someone who didn’t want you? I do. To know you stood in the way of your mother’s career? I do. I was raised by a Cristina. My mother was a Cristina, and as the child she didn’t want, I’m telling you: Don’t do this to her because she’s kind and she cares and she won’t make it. The guilt of resenting her own kid will eat her alive.”

This is enough for Owen, who finally comes around, and tells Cristina he’ll accompany her for the procedure. And then, in a beautifully directed final scene, with a typically lush piece of indie music in the background, she lies on the table, heartbreakingly fragile, holds Owen’s hand, allows the inevitable grief of the process to catch up with her, and goes ahead with the abortion.

And with that moment, Grey’s Anatomy became essential, groundbreaking television once again.

Sure, we’ve witnessed abortions on prime-time television before. But look at the caveats – they’ve involved teenage pregnancies, or those that were conceived in affairs and need to be hidden, or some other convenient plot device. The overwhelming majority involves instances where characters come to miraculously realize how having a kid will transform their lives for the better, and enter into the halo of motherhood.

You know what? Bullshit. Every one of these shows has contributed in laying out a route for the woman that still needs to end in contracting into a painstakingly constructed idea of womanhood. The only juncture at which it is appropriate to not have a child is when circumstances simply force you not to. That doesn’t sound like a pro-choice argument to me. What Grey’s did so powerfully last night was allow a happily married, successful woman, who could have afforded to have a kid and still continued to be happy and successful, choose not to.  No preaching, no moralizing, no judgments.

Power to you Grey’s. At a moment where most shows would be wheezing out their final, clunky denouements, you’re powering on to pop-cultural significance.

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” asks God of Job, as Terrence Malick’s newest film begins.

Two and a half hours later, when it came to a close and the screen faded to black, I found it hard to move. It wasn’t out of being overwhelmed by the experience – not that I wasn’t – it was more simply my fear of breaking the stream of ideas that had, over the last two and a half hours,  permeated my consciousness. At multiple points during the film, I got the sense of coming close to the brink of some grand revelation, only to have Malick decide he didn’t want to make it that easy for me, and snap away. With the black screen in front of me then, all I wanted was to hold those different frames of thought and force them all together.

It didn’t happen then – and now, more than a week since I’ve seen the film, it hasn’t happened yet. I have one kind of understanding of what it’s all supposed to mean, but I am certain that it remains my understanding alone. The Tree of Life displays a resolute unwillingness to push you into connecting its beautifully composed frames, and the end result I would imagine, is a composite of different interpretations for different viewers, as its grand abstractions veer into some narrow personal alley of nostalgia.

Like any great work of art, don’t you think?

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?”

Twenty minutes in, we pull away from stolen moments of suburban life, to the creation of life itself.  In images that evoke quiet wonder, we follow the journey of a molten rock that becomes the Earth, right through to the birth of consciousness on the planet.

Malick pays off this narrative gambit with another series of quick sequences that are equally extraordinary: another birth of consciousness, this time of one particular life itself. We move from birth to perception to triumph to jealousy to ennui. At one level, the images that precede might be telling us about the insignificance of human life in the grander scheme of things – but no, I think Malick is going for something more generous here. He’s equating the two miracles instead – the grand triumph that is every single life lived, with the grand triumph that resulted in a speck of consciousness arising in some far corner of the universe.

Large segments of the movie are whispered to us – different characters take up the narrative, all hushed seemingly in prayer.  The way of grace and the way of nature are the choices laid down before our protagonist – his mother represents the former, and the sequences with Jessica Chastain are segues of controlled rapture. The way of nature is represented in all its nasty, brutish and short glory by Brad Pitt, and his scenes crackle with misplaced menace.  Hunter McCracken is the son who has to chose either path , and in an astonishingly assured performance, he conveys the mix of anger, frustration and guilt largely without speaking.

Prior to The Tree of Lifes’s Palm D’Or win at Cannes, the first screening was met by a balance of jeers and cheers. It’s easy to see how this could be a deeply polarizing movie – all you need to despise it is a healthy dose of cynicism and a lack of faith in Malick’s overall vision.

No, The Tree of Life isn’t for everyone, but then as Roger Ebert would have you know – a movie that’s made for everyone, isn’t particularly for anyone at all.

….Aaaand, we’re back. I’ve been busy getting over the awesomeness that was Deathly Hallows Part 2 (hint: it’ll be a while before you see it on this list). But, back to the lesser Potters. This week, we’re going back to the start.

A lot of Potter-philes spend so much time castigating Christopher Columbus for his slavish textual faithfulness that leached some of the wonder out of the first 2 movie adaptations, that we forget just how many good decisions he brought to the table. It was Columbus who had the gargantuan task of actually given us the first look into the wizarding world, to construct the cinematic conceptions of the mammoth cast that would have to stand over the course of the next seven book adaptations, to make sure the adaptation satisfied the fans and the neutral crowd simply so that there would be the required commercial success to allow for the later movies to come into existence.

Quite a burden – and if he didn’t craft a great Potter movie, what he atleast gave us was an eminently serviceable one. It was Columbus’ solid foundation that would allow more accomplished auteurs to soar subsequently, it was his visual palette they’d draw from, and his casting choices they’d benefit from.  The theme music alone is probably one of the most recognized tunes in the history of cinema.

We have to run through a fair bit of exposition to get to the fun Hogwarts stuff, and again it’s to Columbus’ credit that he manages to keep a good sense of momentum going. The leads aren’t perfect at this point. At crucial junctures in the movie, Radcliffe comes off as frustratingly wooden, while Watson’s Hermione is constantly caught in a state of suspended hyperventilation. No, seriously, Emma, NO POINTS FOR GRYFFINDOR. Okay, but any dramatic want is made up for by the incredible adult lineup that has often been lauded as a who’s-who of British cinema. Oh yes, British cinema – I believe it was Rowling’s imperative that the cast stay authentic to her vision, and it pays off remarkably from the very start. If Columbus is unsuccessful capturing the sense of danger, and the thrill of the central mystery in the book, what he does manage to evoke resoundingly well are the British boarding school roots of the story, with a good amount of help from that wonderful cast.

But honestly, Chris?

Meh.

It isn’t David Yates’ fault. It isn’t the cast’s fault. And it certainly isn’t the visual effects supervisor’s fault. The issue here is simply that the first half of the final Harry Potter book, is the single weakest portion of writing in the series. I remember being endlessly frustrated as I went through those initial 300-odd pages at the amount of padding Rowling had indulged in, the endless bits of our central trio stomping about deserted forests, the strange lack of forward momentum. In the book, it all redeems itself of course by the furiously exciting Battle of Hogwarts – but this movie by definition doesn’t have the luxury of striking that balance. And yet, what could have been an excruciating movie is somehow salvaged by Yates’ steady hand into instead ending up as a mostly solid Potter outing.

Mostly.

Not since the first 2 movies has an adaptation been this slavishly faithful to the book – and yet you see here the difference that a good director can make. This part of Deathly Hallows will stand out for Yates’ very unique flourishes : a poignant opening sequence with Hermione casting the most emotionally draining spell you’ve seen in the course of the series;  or the casually gorgeous bits of cinematographic work that capture the trio’s journey through British landscapes; or an impromptu dance between Harry and Hermione at a particularly dark moment. Again, this is easily the hardest of Rowling’s books to adapt to the screen in a satisfying way, and if Yates doesn’t always succeed, he still comes quite close. While an audacious sequence at the Ministry of Magic lacks the nervous tension that it crackled with in the book, the encounter with Bathilda Bagshot is chillingly effective. Emma Watson in particular fires on all cylinders as Hermione – the torture sequence with Bellatrix Lestrange at the end (oddly sexually charged, by the way) is a particularly strong showcase for her hugely improved skills.

The most remarkable portion of the movie is a visualization of the story of the Deathly Hallows itself: it is at this point that the movie takes leave of whatever fidelity it may have to the book or to the Potter film-making canon before it, and embarks on a stunning, audacious animated sequence that soars in a way the rest of the movie simply cannot.

The decision to split the final book into 2 movies was justified on “artistic grounds”: while this is the first Potter movie that consequently has spaces to breathe, it isn’t neccesarily a justified decision. Here’s hoping whatever’s waiting for us in the second half makes it worth the split.

Something’s trying to keep Harry away from Hogwarts in his second year – and when he finally does make it back, we find out why. The Hogwarts equivalent of an urban legend, the chamber of secrets is back in play, and whatever its unleashed, is preying on the students – and other inhabitants of the school. At the same time, Harry finds a diary that opens into a world 50 years in the past, but while he unearths secrets about some of his closest allies, the narrator himself might be an unreliable one.

Chamber of Secrets was the slasher-killer book of the Harry Potter series. The whole premise of characters being picked off one by one was transported from the Scream series into the Hogwarts setting with wonderfully chilling results. There’s a constant sense of dread that the book maintains ever so well right – amplified by that scene where the History of Magic class is shaken out of its stupor by a Chamber of Secrets question.

While the Potter movies have often  failed on some level to accurately recapture that intangible sense of wonder that permeated the books, this was the movie that made this fact the most glaringly obvious. This was the chance for Chris Columbus to set right some of the mistakes he’d made with the first installment - namely the drudging faithfulness to the text and the unwillingness to take artistic risks. Instead, so lost is he with recreating the minor details, making sure that as little is left possible on the editing table, that we pretty much miss the forest for the trees. With more commitment to keeping the plot chugging along like clockwork, the ominous atmosphere is replaced by simple forward momentum. This isn’t necessarily fatal for the movie – just disappointing considering what could have been.

But our concerns must lie with what we have, and here Columbus’ instincts do give us the joys of  Kenneth Branagh’s performance as Gilderoy Lockhart, of a majestically created Chamber of Secrets, and the painstakingly crafted visuals that bring Hogwarts to life. Whatever Columbus may be criticized for, he succesfully created the visual palette that future directors would use as a platform to ascend greater creative heights.