Cloud Atlas (2012)

“Cloud Atlas” is 2012’s Must See’s Big Screen Glory. That few people will ever see. I say this not for the greatness or splendor of this wunderkind time-hoping epic of faith, art, love, souls, and reincarnation, but because “Atlas” is also a train wreck of all those things, careening out of control like nothing before it. That in itself is glorious.

Written and directed by the Wachowskis -– Andy and Lana (formerly Larry), who gave us “The Matrix” and also its diminishing sequels –- and Tom Tykwer (“Run Lola Run”), “Cloud” is an endlessly fascinating and just as perplexing tale of time. My gut reaction falters and dodges, swooning from absolute devotion to flippant disregard. Joyous, no? Is this not what the best of art does? This is a film to watch again and again, ranking among “Gangs of New York” and “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” flawed modern masterpieces.

Based on the celebrated 2004 novel by David Mitchell –- which I have yet to read -– “Cloud” follows six interconnected stories across roughly 500 years: A privileged and gravely ill lawyer on a Pacific Ocean voyage in 1849 who is awakened to the horrors of slavery, a pre-war 1930s London as a young and deeply troubled gay composer lands a dream-job-turned-nightmare under a retired and senile musical maestro, then onto 1970s San Francisco as an African-American reporter investigates dirty dealings at a nuclear plant.

Deep breath. We’re only halfway through.

In modern England, 2012, a nerdy book editor runs afoul of a gangster and his own twisted, vengeful brother. In 2144, Seoul, South Korea, a very “Blade Runner”-like replicant-type waitress makes a break for freedom and realizes her human masters are most inhumane, with our final story in the 24^th century where much of the world rests obliterated under the oceans, and the last few humans live as primitives, except those who escaped Earth for distant worlds. This last story spans decades out, book-ending the film as a narration.

In the book, the stories follow chronologically, unbroken. In the film, they have been broken and scattered about, chunks and tidbits each flowing into the next and back. The movement is seamless, never off-putting, as smart and careful edits allow us to flow from the rush of a man or a horse, into the rush of a car or train. A birthmark is marks a reincarnated soul coming back tine and again to get it right. The lover of the ’30s composer turns up as an elderly and doomed man in the ’70s nuclear plant investigation. 

If anything, “Atlas” isn’t about reincarnated souls trying to get their own souls right in a lifetime, but get society as  whole right. The efforts, of course, as they must, lead to murder, accidents, and suicide. It also, of course, is how all people are connected, each influencing and setting a path for another. Trite? Maybe. But we need this film now, I do. There is no Tardis, btw.

Here, also, is where Wachowskis and Tykwer truly shine as they show how art influences our lives, not just misery and failed salvation, and allows us to live on for infinity via our creative mind. The lawyer’s life journal is published in a book to be read by the gay youth whose music the reporter obsesses with whose own novels will one day flow into another story. The film “Soylent Green” briefly appears in the background of one chapter, and comes up horrifically ugly later. In the Korean scene, a movie adaptation of the book editor’s life plays and power drives the plot forward. The film thread is a fabric with a sense that the world of 2350 overlaps into 1850. (Note: Nearly all of the main players are creative artists, not, say, a sad plumber whose name will be lay forgotten.)

Also connecting these stories is the cast, a hefty lift itself: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Ben Whishaw, Keith David, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Susan Sarandon, James D’Arcy, and Hugo Weaving. Almost all of the actors appear in every chapter, a stunt ingenious and yet a sharp double-edged sword as it turns too comedic, and one of the reason why the film derails and crashes, only to rise again.

Hanks plays a doctor in 1850, a hotelier in 1930s England, a nuclear engineer in the 1970s story, the gangster with a vendetta against the book editor in the 2012 chapter, an actor on TV playing the book editor (previously played by Broadbent) in the Korean segment, and a simple farmer in the last chapter. Throughout Hanks wears heavy makeup, as do all the actors in every nearly scene, and as with the makeup, which ranges from deft and extraordinary to purely off-putting and uncomfortably laughable, the acting soars and dives. This is a movie of many parts, all moving at different speeds in different orbits.

As the scientist, Hanks is soulful and romantic, heroic and stalwart, and he’s grand. As the gangster, he crashes bad with the worst comedic “SNL” guest skit he’s never done, seemingly parodying Bob Hoskins’ bloody killer in “Long Good Friday.” How far the crash? When Hanks as the mobster kills a man, the audience laughed. I groaned. That’s not the reaction I imagine the directing team was going for. If it was, they clearly misaimed.

The makeup and alternating actors ensemble also interrupts the film’s flow as I could not help but play I Spy while watching the drama unfold. Oh, look Weaving as an assassin, then a (I kid you not) leprechaun, as a slave-owner dandy, as a bulbous female nurse straight out of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and -– here’s where the makeup borderlines on but never crosses the line of offensive –- a Korean autocrat. Weaving looks ridiculous, like a melted candle, in Asian-like latex, and it distracts. The viewer, me, is no longer watching characters in a startling, long, multi-layered epic, but a series of coming and going actors playing for Oscar or ham.

Berry is at her best donning a slight wig as the journo out for a scoop, but terribly awkward -– she looks pained and terribly self-aware –- as a WASP Brit in the 1930s segment. Hanks playing an old version of the farmer, looks like the makeup truck came by and shat on his face. Sometimes, more so than not, less is more. It is true here.

Berry and Hanks, in that latter segment, also speak a gibberish English that takes time to dip into. It’s alternately inspiring -– of course language would evolve or devolve dependent on the winds of culture, but it also has the slight whiff that they are doing a dead serious impersonation of Jar Jar Binks in the film that shall not be named. You know the one. Indeed, writing this, I realize how much of the acting is mere mimicry. And, yet, I wonder if that’s part of the tale, life imitating art and art imitating life. Art as life eternal. As circular as the movie’s story.

But that does not take away from the absolute passion on screen here. Every scene, every segment and sidestep, and inside joke (the music score we hear as part of the soundtrack is vital inside the story of the film, and yet is declared lost and unimportant by some characters) needs to be here. It’s fully apparent: Tykwer -– who composed the unforgettable music, FYI — and the Wachowskis had to make this movie, or they would burst. 

It’s as exhilarating and breathlessly paced in sections as “Matrix” and “Lola,” and bloody as a grim historical film a la “The Mission” with mass slaughter in the future, where Grant -– in his best turn in years -– plays a wordless tribal chief who has gone full-on cannibal. The scenes in Korea –- directed by the Wachowskis -– may be my favorite as they pulse and vibe like a rocket ship, filled with spectacular effects and action, and a romance that recalls “Star Wars” and “Blade Runner,” mixed with a Terry Gilliam hallucination of futuristic life. The book editor comedy with Hanks as Hoskins, not so much. Car mishaps anyone?

Financed out of Germany with little Hollywood involvement, “Atlas” also recalls the gone-glory days of Tinsel-Town spectacles with larger-than-life drama and action (“Ben Hur” and “Lawrence of Arabia,”) and massive power-cast epics (“The Longest Day”) before every big film became about superheroes and boy wizards. These directors are hitting for the stands, they are not fooling around or scraping by bored with a summer spectacle.

Along with “Lifeof Pi” -– another big screen wonder of immense beauty that falls short in the end -– “Atlas” also touches on the existence of God Himself. Nowadays, a rare occasion itself. Not mockingly or with dead-eyed Pat Robertson cult adoration, but mystery, who is He? What does He want?

And that may be the great question of the film: What did I just watch? It’s a mystery I hope to unravel with future viewings, the secret thrill: I may hate or love this film next depndent on how I feel that day. The very prurpose of art, no? Temporary grade: B

Skyfall (2012)

James Bond is back in form in “Skyfall” after the dive that was “Quantum of Solace,” a film as meaningless as its title. This third in the Daniel Craig series nearly equals 2006’s “Casino Royale,” the best of the 007 series since the Connery days. The plot: A mystery man from M’s (Judi Dench) past is plunging MI6 and London into chaos, unveiling secret agents and blowing HQ to chunks. The weapons of death and madness are not nukes or giant lasers hidden in volcanoes, but laptops; the trigger is the [ENTER] button. The sword cuts both ways: Both the villain (Javier Bardem, sexually ambiguous in an Oscar-worthy turn) and the new Q (Ben Whishaw) both hawk hacking as their life’s trade, setting old-fashioned Bond off his game. Craig as Bond is at his best when thrown off, clawing back from the dead and irrelevance. The admittedly comic-book plot mechanics clank, but director Sam Mendes (“Road to Perdition”) and his writers invoke the Connery era as if were Scripture, pulling a “You Only Live Twice” stunt and a ’64 Aston Martin homage, and then set a new path for the 50-year-old franchise by tearing down its past. A-

Vanishing on 7th Street (2011)

Hayden Christensen is on the run in the horror/thriller “Vanishing on 7^th Street.” He runs not from cops or crooks, nor space aliens. He runs from a dark cloud that vaporizes all life that it touches. George Lucas with more “Star Wars” prequel ideas? No. More biblical plaque a la “Exodus.” The Roanoke (N.C.) mystery plays a hand. No matter, director Brad Anderson (“Casper”) never tells us. We’re in Detroit at night when thousands of people disappear during a power outage. Only a tiny handful remain: Christensen’s TV news reporter and some stragglers (Thandie Newton and John Leguizamo) and a child. They bicker, fret, and flee the dark. God is invoked, but the majority of plot is set inside a bar. A church sits down the street. The mystery is a doubled-edged sword that leads to a WTF ending with plot holes wide open: The city falls into absolute blot-out-the-sun dark, but the moon shines bright. How? In horror, details matter. Christensen plays well against an endless void. It’s all uphill after Teen Vadar. B-

Charade (1963)

This. THIS is what “Tourist” -– the dull-flat romantic caper with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie -– wanted to be, and failed. Starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, with assist from George Kennedy, James Coburn, and Walter Matthau, twisty-turny, tongue-in-cheek thriller/comedy “Charade” follows a new divorcee (Hepburn) whose Parisian rich ex-husband turns up dead before the legal papers can be signed. Woe for her, because $250,000 is missing, and the cops and the crooks know in their blood Ms. Hepburn has it. Enter Grant’s slippery admitted conman who switches identities quicker than he does clothes, and this film -– directed by Stanley Donen (“Singin’ in the Rain”) -– is a hoot of 1960s cool/suave. The turncoats, betrayals, and reveals are played for suspense and laughs, alternating one after the other, none better than when a parade of men stalk into dead hubby’s funeral, studying and abusing the corpse, making sure he’s dead. Grant is old enough to be Hepburn’s father, but the “ick” factor is joked away, with Hepburn on top, so to speak, even if some of the “you’re-just-a-girl” shtick is sexist. Doesn’t distract, though, from this cinematic shell game. Hepburn shines, as always. B+

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

Talk about a lump of coal: For a film titled “Santa Claus” ol’ Saint Nick is MIA for most of his own notorious movie, no less from the producers behind the “Superman” films. Dang. Fetch Rudolph, and sorry, Virginia, this cinema origin tale focuses on the jolly toy-giver for only 30 minutes –- covering the North Pole, reindeer, and toys. Then it switches sleighs for a runaway elf (Dudley Moore) who takes up with a corrupt toy company CEO (John Lithgow). Santa? Ho-ho-hum, dude is relegated to a sad-sack grump sitting by the fireplace wondering if he’s still relevant. That right, Santa has an existential crisis. Talk about meta. Frances Church, help us! Add in a dull and cheap-looking production, even recycling flying footage from 1978’s “Superman,” and watching this is almost as disappointing as finding out you-know-what about you-know-who. That said, we get David Huddleston –- “The Big Lebowoski” himself -– as Santa, and you can tell he cherished this role. Just don’t steal his carpet. Lithgow’s OTT Grinch is a parody of the famous “SNL” Dan Aykroyd villain Irwin Mainway, so … why not just hire Aykroyd? A missed perfect gift. C+

Arbitrage (2012)

Richard Gere is never bolder/better than when he plays an amoral cockup with sins to hide and a clock to beat. He is that and more in “Arbitage,” a timely thriller with Gere as a billionaire hedge fund manager who in one week sees a longtime financial fraud shell game crumble and accidentally kills his mistress in a crash, all while dodging police and his suspecting wife (Susan Sarandon). This is a 1 percenter who has been thieving and lying so long, the light of truth gets him sweating. But he knows the rigged system. That’s the twist in this ethics quagmire: We see-saw between wanting this pig nailed and wanting him to escape unharmed. Writer/director Nicholas Jarecki also takes an open shot at the real “takers” in this land –- not the poor or African-Americans or Hispanics as Fox News preaches, but the rich white Wall Street elite who own the banks. The scene where Gere’s CEO cluelessly asks a young black man who he has drawn into his scheme, “What’s an Applebee’s?” (The man wants to open a franchise), exemplifies modern American values. Money is all. A-

The Innkeepers (2011)

“The Innkeepers” harkens back to old-school horror, the slow, slow, slow drop into the macabre and death, the full-on the lingering question that settles over the viewer hours later: “Did I see what happen actually happen?” We’re inside an on old New England inn with a history of mishaps, deaths, and renovations, but time has not been kind. The place faces shuttering. Two employees (Pat Healy and Sara Paxton) are on duty, and both are wink-wink ghost hunters. They’re there to make some cash, but mostly get ghosts on tape. The tenants are few and odd, including an actress (Kelly McGillis of “Witness”). Slowly, ever so slowly, writer/director Ti West sinks us into the story of these, um college slackers with clichés of spooky stories, a dark and dank basement, slamming doors, midnight mirages, and  a suicide upstairs, plus locked doors and creaky stairs. He keeps on sinking us downward, these old tricks spun jokingly, nastily, anew until we are as frazzled as the heroes locked up with the desire of horror maybe trumping anything real. A tiny budget, mostly unknown actors, and a simple plot go a long way. B+