Movie Hell. Six stories told in ten minute segements over three hours of time.

Rating: 4/10 (29 May 2020)

Cloud Atlas is the story format I would envision if there were movies in Hell. Ever tried watching six different movies in ten minute segments over three hours of time? It is annoying and tedious, and even if you make it through, the idea of ever having to watch it again sounds like work.
Some find Cloud Atlas to be impressive if for no other reason than it has a lot of stuff in it. If I didn't already make it clear, Cloud Atlas rolls together six different alternating stories, and despite what some would lead you to believe, they have nothing in common except that they use the same actors. This is supposed to suggest some sort of parallel worlds of reincarnation, but the roles have nothing in common. They are totally different people with no correlation to each other. So why is this even a point worth making?
Each story presents a different conflict, whether that be in the form of slavery, sexual oppression, oil companies, racism, money, or tribal barbarian hordes... basically whatever the author could think of at the moment, and he came up with six. I think liberation from oppression is supposed to be the transcending factor here, and the movie tries to neatly wrap everything up with a narrative message at the end, essentially telling us that people who fight oppression are good and people who create oppression are bad, and that our actions effect the future of our reincarnated entirely different selves and other actors who are rotating through different character roles of different stories. I'm going to be blunt here; as it is portrayed in this movie, this is a dumb concept, because if one incarnation is an oppressed gay composer, and another is an abusive villain who has no awareness of his other selves, then contextually it doesn't matter... no more so than if you had the an actor play Captain Hook in one movie and then later plays Sneezy the Dwarf in another. You have one actor playing two different roles in two different movies. So what? And even if you want to fall back on the theme of oppressed vs. oppressor, then drop the pretentiously complex method of using six stories and just find one good one. You might find yourself asking, why didn't they just play each story all the way through one at a time? I have no idea. Not complicated enough maybe?
The individual stories are not bad, but the directing is poor, especially in the first hour, as every story feels rushed and insincere, and all the characters lack tonal believe-ability.
Cloud Atlas isn't bad, it just isn't good either, and it seems to want to be more than it is. It also makes sense that the Wachowskis wanted to make this film as there seems to be a lot of characters randomly smoking pot.