Ambitious, beautiful, mixed results

Rating: 8/10 (24 May 2013)

First thing you should know is that this movie is made up from multiple stories, and some of them are seriously ambitious cinema. Some of the stories are great, really fantastic. Others...well they don't quite pull it off. Nevertheless, I really respect the actors and directors for such a brave and different movie.
As there are several different stories, I will review each separately
South Pacific Ocean, 1849 - Seriously predictable, mushy, sentimental and very difficult to believe. Good anti-racist message though. 4/10
Cambridge, England and Edinburgh, Scotland, 1936 - Charming, well acted, delightful. Gorgeous depiction of a homosexual relationship, no cheese. 9/10
San Francisco, California, 1973 - Pretty average. Pretty good performance from Halle Berry but comes of a little conspiracy theory- est. Not Berry's fault, but her character kept changing. I didn't feel like I knew her. 5/10
United Kingdom, 2012 - I know most people found this part boring because it was about old people, but I thought this was hilarious. I could have watched a whole movie about just this. Stunning performance from Jim Broadbent. 10/10
Neo Seoul, (Korea), 2144 - This was by far the most ambitious plot thread and I thought they really pulled it off. Beautiful special effects and a gruesome, haunting vision of the future. Also a fantastic performance from newcomer Bae Doona. Gives Bladerunner a run for its money. 9/10
The Big Island (dated "106 winters after The Fall", in the end credits and book cited as 2321) - Again this was very ambitious but this time with less success. Truthfully I thought it was silly. 4/10
Obviously all these stories link together and it's WAY too complicated for me to explain how. Because of this complexity, the movie is very long and yet seems to skip over everything quite quickly. Not a lot they could have done about that though. Movies are movies. I'm not sure I really understand Cloud atlas, but I would advise anybody to see it because I think we could learn a lot about the future of cinema.