Like An Art Piece with Different Interpretions

Rating: 1/10 (28 June 2020)

You either love this movie or scratch your head wondering what in the world did I just watched. I'm the latter. The only movie I like by the Wachowski brothers who were men and are now transgender women directors was The Matrix and that movie was alleged to be written by a black female author named Sophia Stewart. The Matrix was a revolutionary movie (red pill, blue pill, 360 degree camera angles, and slowing down the action, Westerners defying gravity like their Asian counterparts before them in Asian action films). The sequels had great action but was overall didn't live up to the hype of the original.
Cloud Atlas is an expertimental movie which plays around with editing, time periods, and actors playing different roles in different time periods. This movie is almost three hours long and I frowned when I paused the movie to see if it was almost over and saw I had only watched an hour and had two more to go. Yet, my brain got the better of me and I went to LaLa Land.
This confusing plot of a movie is like staring at a painting. One may think it's mediocre or ugly. Another may see it as revolutionary, beautiful, or a masterpiece.
I see it as Hollywood being full of themselves and overcomplicating a movie with a very simple plot and then thinking they're brillant and creative geniuses for doing so. This movie is a nothing burger, pretty to look at with no real substance.
The story could have been told in an hour in a half to two hours in an easy to follow along plot in chronological time in each time period. Instead of Tom Hanks being in the 18th century then the next scene he's playing a different character in the 21st character. The plot in Christopher Nolan's Momento, The Prestige, Inception, and Interstellar were told out of order but were done right, the audience understood the plot from the beginning and were able to follow along with the story even when some scenes were confusing with ambigous endings left to interpretation.
I hate movies like this because it's Hollywood self-congratulating itself and forgetting it also has to create a coherent and enjoyable movie for the audience too. Cloud Atlas is a vanity project. It's Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive. A dramatic version of Hail Caesar or Movie 43. Hate to add from one of my favorite actors, but this is Will Smith's After Earth.
If you're a wine snob who pretends you're a wine expert, you'll love this movie. If you're honest and can admit you don't know the difference between a bottle of wine from 1843 and 2012 and are content with the box wine or cheap store brought wine, then you may want to skip this movie unless you have two hours and fifty-two minutes of your life to waste.