Cloud Atlas (Movie)

[Malthus]

Well, it has premiered at TIFF over the weekend, and the reviews are ... are absurdly polarized. I've never seen such a division. Half the reviewers are raving about how this movie single-handedly revitalized movie-making, and the other half think it is unmitigated crap.

Insanely positive:

I walked out of Cloud Atlas utterly overwhelmed. Days later I'm still processing it. It's a movie I could write about for days, the kind of film where each shot, each transition, is worthy of discussion and dissection. I haven't even touched on the way that the telling of stories - through letters, memoirs, movies, manifestos - is used to speak about our endless human connection. There are so many aspects of the film I've only brushed past in this review, giving scant words to magnificent things.

I can't wait to see it again. Until I do I'll hold on to the feeling this movie gave me, an incredible sense of hope for the future of cinema. And the future of humanity. How many movies give you that? 

http://badassdigest.com/2012/09/08/m...etely-amazing/

Insanely negative:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2...2-cloud-atlas/

"What is an ocean," one character asks smugly, "if not a multitude of drops?" And what's Cloud Atlas if not a multitude of terrible details and unwatchable moments? When Hanks throws a walking cliché of a stuffy British critic of literature from the rooftop terrace of a high-rise, I very seriously considered walking out; by the time Hugo Weaving shows up in drag as a nursing home bully, I was ready to renounce film criticism altogether and take up a less emotionally or psychologically taxing occupation, like the operator of an emergency suicide hotline (in fact, I could have made use of one myself by the end). The problem isn't that this is one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life; the problem is that it's seven of the worst films I've ever seen in my life glued together haphazardly, their inexorable badness amplified by their awkward juxtaposition. Tom Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowski wanted to make a movie unlike any other, and they certainly did: Cloud Atlas is a unique and totally unparalleled disaster.

Ebert gives it a very positive 'non-review', compares it to 2001:

I know I've seen something atonishing, and I know I'm not ready to review it. "Cloud Atlas," by the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer, is a film of limitless imagination, breathtaking visuals and fearless scope. I have no idea what it's about. It interweaves six principal stories spanning centuries--three for sure, maybe four. It uses the same actors in most of those stories. Assigning multiple roles to actors is described as an inspiration by the filmmakers to help us follow threads through the different stories. But the makeup is so painstaking and effective that much of the time we may not realize we're seeing the same actors. Nor did I sense the threads. The actors Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant and Jim Sturgess together portray 14 different characters, and not even sex is a clue because some of their roles cross gender categories. The end credits, which go by a little too fast, will surprise a lot of audience members. Sat what? Hugo Weaving plays Nurse Noakes? "Cloud Atlas" has locks on Oscar nominations for best makeup and costume design.

The stories, much adapted and retold from a David Mitchell novel, include characters, times and locations as diverse as a 19th century sailing ship, a futuristic Korea, Aboriginals, young gay intellectuals at Cambridge, a nuclear scientist, a slave, a classical composer and others. There is a good deal of narration, most of it about the nature of human life (and some of it about lives of fabricants). There are chase and action scenes as good as than the best work by the Wachowskis (the "Matrix" films) and their friend and collaborator Tykwer ("Run, Lola Run"). Moment by moment, scene by scene, story by story, I was enthralled.

What did it sum up to? What is the through line? I can't say. Not today, anyway. Not yet. Maybe there isn't one. What will its first audiences get out of it? My mind travels back to the first public screening of "2001: A Space Odyssey," the film the Wachowskis says made them filmmakers, and inspired this one. As Rock Hudson walked out in the middle of the second half, I heard him quite audibly ask, "What the hell was that about?" 

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2012..._ive_seen.html

Interestingly these are all by reviewers who quite evidently have not read the book.

I'm certainly interested in seeing it.

[grumbler]

I just cannot imagine the people who made Matrix Reloaded and whatever the third Matrix film was called as creators of a visionary film.  I can see them fooling some into thinking that their shit is shinola, though.

The cast looks good, though.

[Malthus]

I just cannot imagine the people who made Matrix Reloaded and whatever the third Matrix film was called as creators of a visionary film.  I can see them fooling some into thinking that their shit is shinola, though.

The cast looks good, though.

I read the book awhile ago and loved it (on the recommendadtion of Gups actually) - it is one of my all-time favorites. This makes waiting for the movie version particularly nerve-wracking. A film adaptation of a favorite book (widely thought to be unfilmable)? By the Matrix crew? Great potential for disaster.

However, I did really like the (massive 6 minute) trailer. The thing certainly looks good in that. The fact that some critics who have not read the book seem to like the film gives me hope.   

[CountDeMoney]

Interestingly these are all by reviewers who quite evidently have not read the book.

I'm certainly interested in seeing it.

Haven't read the book either, but just watched the "extended first look" on its website.

Don't need to read the book to recognize a pretentious, over-produced film targeted specifically for the masturbatory Timmay Assburger demo.

[Malthus]

Interestingly these are all by reviewers who quite evidently have not read the book.

I'm certainly interested in seeing it.

Haven't read the book either, but just watched the "extended first look" on its website.

Don't need to read the book to recognize a pretentious, over-produced film targeted specifically for the masturbatory Timmay Assburger demo.

Well, it has an Asian hottie who is also a slave who works in a fast-food joint in one of the stories. That part should be right up your 'demo', so to speak. 

[CountDeMoney]

Well, it has an Asian hottie who is also a slave who works in a fast-food joint in one of the stories. That part should be right up your 'demo', so to speak. 

I wasn't too impressed.

[Malthus]

Well, it has an Asian hottie who is also a slave who works in a fast-food joint in one of the stories. That part should be right up your 'demo', so to speak. 

I wasn't too impressed.

Hey, I'd join her in the "comfort hives". 

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3026103040/nm0046277

[Ideologue]

Pretentious and overproduced?  This may be my bag.

But when you say the Tim demographic... there's not a presidential cyborg riding a dinosaur into battle against the apes,* or some shit, is there?

*A novel coming soon to a book store near you.  Fucking probably.

[Malthus]

Pretentious and overproduced?  This may be my bag.

But when you say the Tim demographic... there's not a presidential cyborg riding a dinosaur into battle against the apes,* or some shit, is there?

*A novel coming soon to a book store near you.  Fucking probably.

Not unless the adaptation from the book was rather ... too free. 

[Habbaku]

I eagerly await reviews because there's no way in Hell I'll go see a Wachowski Brother-Sister-It film sight-unseen.

[Syt]

I'm intrigued and have ordered the book. If Gups and Malthus recommend it, it's good enough for me.

[grumbler]

I'm intrigued and have ordered the book. If Gups and Malthus recommend it, it's good enough for me.

I'll be interested in your opinion.  I thought it was an interesting failure, myself.

[Malthus]

I'm intrigued and have ordered the book. If Gups and Malthus recommend it, it's good enough for me.

That's very flattering.  But I gotta warn you - the book is not universally loved either.

Basically, it deals with the interactions between six wholly different stories in different genres and set in different times. The "fun" is in seeing exactly what these connections consist of. There are at least three different layers of connections - one is simple: the recording (in whatever form) of one story features, if tangentally, in another (a character in the 1920s reads a journal written by the 1840s character, that sort of thing); another is that it is possible that the characters are reincarnations of earch other (in the book at least, this is dealt with as a mere suggestion); but more importantly, they are connected thematically - the stories all consist of variations on a theme. This is referenced in the title, which is the title of a piece of music written by one of the characters in one of the stories - the "Cloud Atlas Sextet".

It really is quite clever and I think works surprisingly well. But some find it confusing and/or overly pretentious. It would not have worked were it not for the fact that the writer makes the individual stories both unique and interesting (while still keeping thematic unity) - at least, in my opinion. 

One thing I think everyone who reads it would agree on, is that it would not be easy to make it into a film.

[CountDeMoney]

Sounds like a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Pretentiousness.

[crazy canuck]

Sounds like a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Pretentiousness.