Cloud Atlas 2012

Karina Longworth, L.A. Weekly: One man's ambitious, iconoclastic, like-nothing-ever-before-seen passion project is another man's Battlefield Earth. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: The feeling persists that Tykwer and the Wachowskis made the picture to prove they could. Read more

Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter: Everything gets homogenized into a blandish whole, the impact of each story softened by the constant need to connect the dots. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Galumphing and heavy-handed, its rare flights of lyricism stranded between long stretches of outright risibility. Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: It's kind of astonishing that for all its ambition and accomplishment, and for the ostensibly subversive philosophy it pushes, "Cloud Atlas" ends up being just another platitudinous overblown pummel-you-into-submission movie-machine. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: 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. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: The cast comes off like a third-rate stock company on the matinee after the night on which everyone got bombed on mescal (and possibly mescaline). Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: A trash heap of rubber noses and implausible high school accents that give new meaning to the word "pretentious." Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: It plays like a gargantuan trailer for a movie still to be made (one that, given the same ratio, would be 86 hours long). Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The cumulative effect is one of spectacle over substance. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: There are moments when it works wonderfully, but too many where it feels overlong and ponderous. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: It is so full of passion and heart and empathy that it feels completely unlike any other modern film in its range either measured through scope of budget or sweep of action. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: It's an imperfect film of great daring and tremendous humanity, a work of many stories, but a singular achievement. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: "Cloud Atlas" offers more answers than it does questions, and by the end of its nearly three-hour running time - which flies by surprisingly fast, all things considered - it feels like the most feverishly expensive late-night college bull session ever. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: An incomprehensible mess, held together only by the elaborate stunt of having the same actors play wildly divergent roles in each story. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The movie doesn't really work, but it's fascinating in the ways it doesn't. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The result is maddening, exasperating, occasionally exhilarating -- and mostly boring. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Take a collection of stories, connect them through portentous themes and watch it all spin. We've seen it before -Babel, anyone? - but nothing is quite like the daft, brazenly ambitious cosmic fantasia ofCloud Atlas. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: It will aid your experience of the swirling, sweeping dramatic adventure Cloud Atlas, if you embrace the idea of being a little bit lost. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Exciting, exhausting and energizing, a brazen film that leaves somber cinema seeming too passive for its own good. This is a movie as big as life itself. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Cloud Atlas is a cornily enthralling sci-fi kaleidoscope. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: 'Cloud Atlas' is like the entire 'Matrix' trilogy in micro. It starts out absolutely brilliantly, then segues into a pretentious slog. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Finally, what sinks "Cloud Atlas" is not the largeness of its ambitions but the lack of skill it displays in terms of writing, directing and acting. Read more

Charlie McCollum, San Jose Mercury News: "Cloud Atlas" is a film where the creators' admirable reach exceeds their grasp. You may be getting six films for the cost of one, but it may not really be worth the price. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: If you're interested in the sheer craft of filmmaking, Cloud Atlas is required viewing - a rare example of a movie getting by entirely on technique and creative bravado. Read more

David Thomson, The New Republic: Whatever your age, even if life is an ocean made up of many drops, you may resolve that life is too short for this errant nonsense. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Sumptuous visuals and audacious acting, but the quasi-profound message of cosmic connectedness isn't worth all the trouble. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: He best thing about Cloud Atlas is that it could, and should, turn into a properly divisive film... but one has to ask: does it allow for immersion? Even as we applaud the dramatic machinery, are we being kept emotionally at bay? Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: If the talented Wachowskis are ever going to achieve true artistic nirvana, they're going to have to be more disciplined with their grand ideas, more ruthless in their rewrites. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: Cloud Atlas is now a film, for better or worse. Mostly worse I'd say, but give these folks credit ... Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: For all its strengths, the film is cursed by an ADD-style structure and a flashy but inevitably ineffective casting stunt. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: It isn't as complicated as it thinks. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Did you hear the one about the Zen master who walks up to a hot dog cart, scans the menu, and asks the vendor to "make me one with everything"? Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: They key to successfully absorbing the movie may be in not trying to overthink what's on screen. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: It's a polarizing, ambitious, sometimes beautiful and occasionally maddening epic. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Surely this is one of the most ambitious films ever made. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: For all the spectacular settings and visionary designs, Cloud Atlas left me feeling disconnected Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: It's funny, violent and prodigiously romantic; it has immense heart and more gorgeous cinematic moments than I can describe. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Enormous in length and scope, a film whose purpose doesn't even begin to come into focus until two hours in. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: A bloated, pseudo-intellectual, self-indulgent slog through some notions that are really rather facile. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Three directors, plus six story lines, times five centuries equals one grandly conceived, impressively mounted megaflop. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Cloud Atlas" is superior filmmaking. Yes, it runs almost three hours - but you've probably seen 90-minute films that felt a lot longer. Read more

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic: An eminently peculiar mismatch of substance and form, like a Hallmark card written by David Foster Wallace. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Felicitous moments can't break through the dark nebula of self-importance around Cloud Atlas ... Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Cloud Atlas creates awe about worlds seen and unseen, frequently bypassing the brain on the way to the heart and soul. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: It's a puzzle I enjoyed piecing together, but when each tale came to a close and built up to what was intended to be a soaring, emotional climax, I felt no flutter in the chest or tingle up my spine. Read more

Tom Huddleston, Time Out: A film which piles on the action, the romance, the philosophical inquiry and the silly accents until the viewer is left punch-drunk and reeling. Seriously, what's not to love? Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: These disparate tales have been listlessly smashed together in the hopes that something substantial will emerge. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: An intense three-hour mental workout rewarded with a big emotional payoff. Read more

Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice: There is a great deal of humbug about art and love in Cloud Atlas, but it is decidedly unlovable, and if you want to learn something about feeling, you're at the wrong movie. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: "Cloud Atlas" deserves praise if only for not being the baggy, pretentious disaster it could have been in other hands. Read more