As a film critic I would love to have the luxury of
seeing every new film and writing about it. As this is not a paying job for me,
I have to pick and choose what I see, mostly based on personal preference, but
often choosing films that are popular or important benchmarks. The subject
matter of Cloud Atlas hardly
interested me, although the filmmakers involved certainly did. The Wachowski
siblings, Andy and Lana (formerly Larry) brought us The Matrix trilogy, the first installment of which I think is
filled with wonderful vision, a great story, and brilliant use of visual
effects. I found Tom Tykwer deeply intriguing as a filmmaker with both Run, Lola, Run and The Princess and the Warrior, although admittedly I know nothing of
his work in the past decade. Together these three directors decided to bring
David Mitchell’s complicated 2004 novel which involves six stories in different
time periods and characters that exist as alternate versions of themselves across
time and space.
