{"id":32013,"date":"2012-10-26T07:25:56","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T14:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/?p=32013"},"modified":"2012-10-26T10:18:48","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T17:18:48","slug":"cloud-atlas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/2012\/10\/26\/cloud-atlas\/","title":{"rendered":"ReThink Reviews: Cloud Atlas"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"inline-playlist playlist\" title=\"\"><li><a href=\"http:\/\/archive.org\/download\/DailyDigest102612\/2012_10_26_kim.mp3\">Listen to this segment<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n<p><a href =\"http:\/\/www.rethinkreviews.net\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=right width=55% src=\"\/home\/graphics\/rethink_reviews_small.jpg\" alt=\"Rethink Reviews\" \/><\/a><strong>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong>  <\/p>\n<p><em>Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. <\/em>  <\/p>\n<p> Read his reviews online at <a href=\"http:\/\/ReThinkReviews.net\">ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim\">www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews\">twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews&#8217; theme song is by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/restaurantmusic\">Restavrant<\/a>.    <\/p>\n<p><strong>Cloud Atlas<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At nearly three hours long, with three directors, following six interconnected stories spanning 500 years, with actors playing multiple characters (sometimes of different sexes and races), \u2018Cloud Atlas\u2019 is nothing if not ambitious. And for that, it deserves some credit, risking a budget estimated at around $100 million to tell a story that\u2019s difficult to even describe and is bound to lose viewers who get tired of the constant crosscutting between eras and waiting to see how they all tie together. But does being challenging and ambitious, while admirable, necessarily mean that a film is any good?<\/p>\n<p>In \u2018Cloud Atlas\u2019, we have three stories from the past, starting with a young man in 1849 (played by Jim Sturgess) who reluctantly helps a slave stow away on a transatlantic voyage. In 1936, a budding British composer (played by Ben Winshaw) must navigate the dual indignities of apprenticing under an arrogant, ungrateful master while hiding his forbidden love for another man. And in 1973, Halle Berry plays a reporter in San Francisco trying to uncover a conspiracy involving safety at a nuclear power plant.<\/p>\n<p>In the present day, there\u2019s a publisher (played by Jim Broadbent) on the run from criminals who finds himself trapped in a retirement home. In the future, we have a tale set in 22nd century Seoul, South Korea, where a waitress clone (played by Doona Bae) rebels against her assigned role and an authoritarian society to become her own person. And even further in the future, a post-apocalyptic goatherder in Hawaii (played by Tom Hanks) must decide if he\u2019ll help a technologically-advanced visitor reach a remote part of the island while avoiding a marauding tribe of cannibals.<\/p>\n<p>Through all six stories, all the actors \u2014 including Susan Sarandon, Keith David, Hugo Weaving, and Hugh Grant \u2014 play multiple roles, both big and small, recognizable and not, wearing lots of different makeup and wigs, implying reincarnation and the interconnectedness of souls throughout time.<\/p>\n<p>Got all that? Because, to be honest, for a time I didn\u2019t. Or, more accurately, I sort of checked out for a while partway through \u2018Cloud Atlas\u2019, which often felt like it was a puzzle solely for the sake of being a puzzle, and wasn\u2019t one that I was terribly invested in solving. I\u2019ve never found Berry to be a very compelling actress, since she\u2019s really only turned in maybe two good performances in a movie career spanning close to 20 years, and Hanks often seems to be hamming it up.<\/p>\n<p>The actors playing multiple roles with various accents and makeup effects often felt gimmicky and distracting, and nowhere was this more true than with the futuristic Seoul story, where Sturgess and Weaving wear prosthetics to supposedly make them look Korean. Now, I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019d call this racist since actors playing multiple roles is one of the film\u2019s conceits, but in case you didn\u2019t know, Asian people and white people look pretty different from each other. And I don\u2019t think anyone of any race would deny that the effects to supposedly make white people look like Asians looks GOD AWFUL in a way that was hard for me not to take personally.<\/p>\n<p>But \u2018Cloud Atlas\u2019 kind of won me back as I began to see what I think is the film\u2019s central theme: freedom from oppression. All six stories touch on this theme, with Sturgess\u2019 characters largely (though sometimes reluctantly) trying to free others while Grant\u2019s and Weaving\u2019s characters consistently try to prevent it. Berry\u2019s main characters seem to be searching for a truth that will set people free, while Hanks\u2019 arc is the biggest, as his characters span from an outright villain driven by greed to a humble man realizing the role he can play for a cause much bigger than himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Cloud Atlas\u2019 is a movie that some will love and some will hate. But the idea of characters being reincarnated in a centuries-old battle for freedom is a pretty neat one, and along with some impressive visuals, there\u2019s some nice stuff going on in \u2018Cloud Atlas\u2019, a flawed film that\u2019s not nearly as profound as it thinks it is, but still provides a decent mental workout.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Cloud Atlas\u2019 is rated R and opens today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32036,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32013\/revisions\/32036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}