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You've got to give it up for a movie that goes the big-canvas route and then some: Cloud Atlas is a mega-project, a star-studded near-three-hour opus that reaches for deep metaphysical meaning. And instead of one story, the movie adapted from David Mitchell's novel features six interlocking narratives, ranging from a 19th-century seafaring yarn to a pair of futuristic dystopias (one high-tech, the other a postapocalyptic return to barbarism). To emphasize the themes of eternal recurrence and transmigrating souls, the hard-working actors play multiple roles across these timelines, so you get to see Tom Hanks and Halle Berry et al. ensconced in a variety of makeup and prosthetics. This includes casting across gender and race, which means if you've ever wondered how Hugo Weaving would look as a tough female nurse, or Jim Sturgess as an Asian action hero, this is your chance. (Coming across best are a sprightly Jim Broadbent, a mournful Ben Whishaw, and a genuinely haunting Doona Bae.) This tapestry is so large it required three directors: Andy and Lana Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer, who applied all their talent to a project that, the more it goes on, begins to resemble a kind of glossy New Age seminar complete with chase scenes. Cloud Atlas is often fun to watch just for the sheer ambition of it, in the way you'd watch a circus act full of dangerous stunts… but nonsense dressed in highfalutin clothes is still nonsense, and in the end the approach feels more than a little silly. --Robert Horton

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