Reviews

One after another, Hollywood churns out films that are either sequels, prequels, remakes, or reboots. It seems there is a real problem with writers these days, as the ability to make anything original seems to be in very short supply. Want to make a summer blockbuster? Put a costume on, spend some time setting up a story, and then spend sixty minutes blowing everything up. Superman, World War Z, Elysium, and Iron Man 3 would be some good examples. All these films were visually satisfying, but for this viewer, emotionally empty. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy all of them in some way, along with the popcorn and Milk Duds.

Now we have Gravity, and instead of characters who are larger than life, we have Sandra Bullock as Ryan Stone. Maybe that's a key here...the lead is a woman, and while men are logical, women are emotional. So it's easier from that standpoint for an audience to build an emotional connection. Stone is any of us, if we somehow were brilliant enough to make it in to Space, yet she still crashed the simulator, every time. We can relate.

So why do I think this movie is a 10? It really isn't perfect. How much abuse can a person's body take without breaking? This, like many other films, subjects its stars to some serious body blows. There are things that are repeated in its zippy 90 minutes. Still, it had me holding my breath, literally, more than any film since Hurt Locker. Gravity had me feeling that I was there with Ryan Stone as all hell was breaking loose, and I believed that it was possible to survive, to keep living...to tell you a story. Open your eyes, your ears, your heart, and live.

Technically brilliant, beautiful, challenging, intelligent, and narratively complex, but perhaps not quite as emotionally satisfying as it hoped to be. Maybe just a little too big for itself, but I wish I was 30 years younger so I would have time to watch it a few more times in my life.

I love films like this. It's why I go to the movies; to be taken someplace else, to another time and another place, where I hope to see something that makes me think and feel about my life and my place in the world a little differently. Regardless of the few shortcomings which I'm sure other people have raged on about, if you enjoy looking for both the bigger picture and the smaller, more intimate moments in films, Cloud Atlas will certainly have you covered.

As an homage to the Spielberg films of the 80's, this movie succeeds. As a piece of original entertainment? Nothing happening, folks. Now, if you're a kid and have never seen The Goonies, Jaws, ET, War of the Worlds, and Cloverfield, you may think this film is absolutely wonderful. And judged through the lens of cinema history, it may well be looked upon as a culmination of all that came before.

Let's just hope that the future is filled with something in rare supply: originality.

It's not that I wasn't entertained, it's just that I expected something more.

And I suppose that's another problem with getting older. There aren't as many surprises left in the world.

I laughed, I cried, I never wanted it to end.

After spending what might have been the last 30 minutes of the film nearly racked with sobs, sitting through the entire final credit sequence, and wondering what I was supposed to do next, I decided I had to leave the pages of the book that I just saw and face the world again. It was not easy.

There are many scenes in this film that I forgot to breath. I remember exhaling on more than one occasion, as I was held breathless by the images that I had witnessed.

I'll tell you something though...nothing is perfect. There were some scenes which I felt were actually lacking (in my desires for things to be "by the book") in places. I thought it started slow, and the opening sequence, while good, felt out of place. It needed to be somewhere, I'm just not sure where. In the battle with Shelob, I never felt what it was to be faced with that light, as she was. Or to have felt the Sting. However, just how do you convey the emotion of a giant ancient spider?

I don't care. It's the Best Picture. The Best Trilogy. A Towering Achievement. Can anything else done on screen compare, in our lifetimes? I wish I could have been lucky enough to be more than just a part of the audience.

This film failed to reach out and grab me. Yes, it had amazing, seamless visuals that didn't get in the way of the story, and some wonderful cinematic -moments-. But if you look closely at the story, it is so full of holes. I'm a science fiction fanatic, and the best sci-fi suspends your disbelief. It doesn't give me time to think about why things don't make sense, such as why Andertons's access wouldn't have been shut off, or why the Dr. who he put away wouldn't have done something nasty to him, like amputating his feet (a classic "Twilight Zone" I've always remembered).

I know Spielberg was trying to pose some big, Stanley Kubrick questions again, but Spielberg isn't Kubrick here-he's only inserting some Kubrick -elements- into his films now. In A.I., he posed questions that made you think, and that film had more Kubrick and more heart.

Any comparisons to the originality of Swingers is a joke. Vince Vaughn's character was ridiculously idiotic to the point of complete unbelievability. Favreau at least knew enough to let Vaughn do all the talking, since anything he said other than "Shut up" would have made no sense at all.

A few laughs, but nothing very memorable. 2 out of 4 stars at best.