IT HAS NUDITY, VIOLENCE AND SEXUALITY, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE: Cloud Atlas, um, is this going to make my head hurt?
Roger Ebert: "Surely this is one of the most ambitious films ever made.... Anywhere you go where movie people gather, it will be discussed. Deep theories will be proposed. Someone will say, 'I don't know what in the hell I saw.'"
A.O. Scott: "This is by no means the best movie of the year, but it may be the most movie you can get for the price of a single ticket. It blends farce, suspense, science fiction, melodrama and quite a bit more, not into an approximation of Mr. Mitchell’s graceful and virtuosic pastiche, but rather into an unruly grab bag of styles, effects and emotions held together, just barely, by a combination of outlandish daring and humble sincerity."
Keith Phipps: "Measured scene by scene, the film isn’t always successful, and its transcendent moments make it easy to wish it could reach that elevated pitch more often. But Cloud Atlas is the sort of work where the big picture matters more than the details. It’s an imperfect film of great daring and tremendous humanity, a work of many stories, but a singular achievement."
