"Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others."

This was a much anticipated movie for me, so I really wanted to give it a proper sit down and give it my full attention. It turned out it needed it too. The movie falls into the category 'hella long' and with the different story lines, sometimes difficult to understand accents and philosophic punch it feels even longer.

With it being based on a book (which I didn't read) that has 6 separate stories with a specific order, this could not have been translated to the big screen without changing the structure of the stories. So it got chopped into many different smaller pieces and throughout the movie the viewer jumps from one story to another.
It makes for a more proper build up, but it unfortunately also created a big mess that must've been hard to follow for at least a part of the viewers. You can see even the actors having some difficulty with it at times.

It is obvious right from the start that this movie is aiming for a more intellectual public and wants to deliver a wide spectrum of ideas and views. It tries its very best, and succeeds in a multitude of ways, but never grasps the feeling of completion. As much as it brings out a message of everything is connected, the script might have needed a few more rewrites to make it more interconnected itself.

You could argue it is either too long with no strong red line, or too short to succeed in making the connection between stories and between audience and characters. There are the obvious crossovers; like a flashback to a previous story in time and the recurring actors, plus some (broad) recurring themes. But besides that it doesn't link the stories together well enough.

There are many great actors in many different roles they handle quite well. I was especially surprised by Hugh Grant as an oil company executive. Hugo Weaving is, unfortunately, type-casted as the villain in every storyline. He does a great job of course, but with such a diversity of stories and settings I expected him to get a good guy out of it as well. (Besides maybe during the very last scene as an interrogator.)
Also Korean actress Bae Doo Na was a treat playing a sort of 'ghost in the shell' girl in futuristic Neo Seoul. I think something the Wachowski's had a lot of fun with.

It is an interesting and entertaining movie to watch, and I think it is best to watch it at least two or three times. But doing that would just take too much time for making it really worth your while.
There probably will be people who will absolutely love this movie completely, but it is not me. Seeing the 75% rating on trakt is about the best it gets on the internet I am fairly confident to say it isn't for the masses either.

When I first saw the trailer for Cloud Atlas I was entranced. I needed to know more immediately so set about reading the book long before the movie was released; it instantly became my favourite. David Mitchell span a tale which enthralled me and honestly made me rethink the way I went about my whole life.
I was nervous when I saw the movie as surely it wouldn't be able to capture the level of detail and interwoven stories I'd grown to love; but it did! Having read the book first it was easy to find my feet with it and see those people come to life and of course I could follow the story just fine. I wasn't sure if the same could be said for a non-book reader though.
Last night I watched it again but with someone who hadn't read the book. He was a bit taken aback at first and overwhelmed by the sharp changes of stories but he soon settled in. Every so often I would comment to try and gauge if he was following what was happening so far but turns out I didn't need to tell him anything, he easily caught on to it all. We had a long discussion afterwards and he'd even noticed aspects I hadn't! Such as the house Frobisher worked at with Vyvyan being the same one Cavendish was later trapped in! Excellent little detail.
The film could have benefited from emphasising the karma aspect of the book a bit more I think rather than focussing only on the social change/one can make a difference theme.
I feel bad for people who didn't enjoy this movie and found it 'confusing' as they must struggle with a lot of complicated concepts day to day. Perhaps a simple action movie would be better suited for them.

Interesting film with an exceptional cast, fantastic performances and characterizations. The story, though, is a bit difficult to follow and, in the end, seems to not have a real point.

Cloud Atlas was a very well made movie but unlike most of the "simultaneous stories that all come together at the end" type of movies, this one just didn't. I'm still unclear as to the point of it all.

Another issue I had was a general feeling of goofiness. Sure, the Cavendish story was pure comedy but the rest of the stories just didn't feel serious enough to me.

It carried my attention for the 172 minutes well enough and it was entertaining. I just expected more of a pay off at the end.

All in all, it's definitely worth seeing but I still haven't made up my mind if I truly liked it or not. What did you think?

A not-easy-to-follow film, we are presented with sub-plots from several times and places, both past and future - in which the same characters seem to be involved.

An interesting idea, good images but yu need to have a particular taste in movies in order to fully enjoy Cloud Atlas. I feel that the average audience may not be heavily impressed with they way it conveys its message - by going from one timeline to another and slowly building up all these sub-plots in parallel.