Saying you liked a film doesn't automatically warrant a response. Bartist, you didn't make any points in your Cloud Atlas review that I could really argue with. You could follow its many plotlines. I couldn't.

Look. There are certain films I know from Jump Street that I am not going to see on a bet. Funny Games was one of them. I would never subject myself to a film that traffics in such palpable human suffering. Big Daddy I will not see. Adam Sandler I can take, even in certain low-brow comedies (I loved You Don't Mess with the Zohan, for instance), but there is a limit, and Big Daddy (and The Waterboy and Grown Ups) are it.

Endless movies are a problem for me. I've loved some of them. Schindler's List for me is one of the best movies ever made. I adore Gone With the Wind.

But Cloud Atlas's trailer did me in for starters. It looked (by my lights) pretentious, overblown, and totally unwatchable. I cannot spend three hours of my life experiencing something I know know know going in I will utterly detest.

Sigh.

OK, the Chinese say that people are (depending on their inner animal) about power or love. There are six animals that represent power, six that represent love. What I found in Cloud Atlas was a fascinating approach to following that dynamic through several human lifetimes. Those who were about power kept with a dynamic of manipulating others and controlling every aspect of their lives. Those who were about love kept with a dynamic of finding freedom, wrestling free of oppressors, and finding ways to help others. It wasn't hard to follow each person through multiple lives, even with the costume and makeup changes, and I don't think my facial recognition skills stand out among a group of artistic people who love film.

Some characters move from power towards love - Tom Hanks, for example, starts out as rather greedy and corrupt, a ship's doctor who preys on a sick passenger, but grows in other lives and moves towards love and the strength to throw off his inner demons. Others have shorter arcs, like Hugo Weaving, who is always about control and subjugation, but at least begins to doubt his own values by the time of his life in a distant future.

These threads of character show illuminating struggles, and are NOT pretentious or overblown. They are fascinating. THE TRAILER IS BULLSHIT. As we have often discussed, good movies can have bad trailers. This is one of those movies.