Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is a bold and ambitious film that links six stories set in differing time periods which uses actors to play roles in each of the periods as if to suggest that we are all linked, through time, history and space. I saw the film over a week ago on a plane and while I usually try to write reviews within 24 hours of seeing a movie, it wasn't possible with Cloud Atlas. The time between seeing and reviewing as well as the nature of the movie means that I don't feel I can write a proper review so I'm just going to bullet point some of the thoughts I had while watching it. So here we go.

The opening five minutes are incredibly confusing.

An 8" screen in the back of a seat on a plane isn't the optimum medium to watch a movie like Cloud Atlas. 

I experienced character overload.

In the story set in 2012 London, Tom Hanks resembles an angry, mahogany Pirate with a half Irish, half Cockney accent. It's ridiculous.

Korean Hugh Grant doesn't work.

The film is bold for taking the Babel style interconnected stories movie a step further.

A friend from work left after 80 minutes. I don't really blame her.

Hitchcock

Hitchcock is a behind the scenes telling of the making of Psycho (1960) and the relationship between its Director Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife and long time collaborator Alma Reville (Helen Mirren). The plot encompasses Hitchcock’s search for a follow up to the hugely successful North by Northwest and then the difficult production of Psycho, ending at its Premier. Although Psycho and its production provide the backdrop, the plot is really about love, jealousy and aging. Hitch and Alma had been married for almost thirty-five years by 1960 and one of the avenues the film explores is the fractious relationship which they share. Hitch’s obsessions with his leading ladies, here Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) is something which Alma has put up with for decades but when the writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston) takes an interest in Alma, Hitch’s jealousy effects their relationship and his work.

Hitchcock isn’t a bad film and it’s always nice to see behind the scenes of a Hollywood production but even if it had been great there would still be one problem and that is that it isn’t Psycho. All the way through I thought to myself that I wish I was watching Psycho and the underwhelming central performance and flabby plot just made me think back to what is in my opinion one of the greatest films in history.

W.E.

W.E. or Wallace and Edward or Woefully Excruciating, What Ever, Without Evidence, Worse than Empty, Withering Exacerbation or Wasteful and Erroneous is a film by Madonna that desperately seeks parallels between a modern day love story and that of Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII. It’s rubbish, like really rubbish.

In 1998 a lonely wife called Wally (seriously, Wally) (Abbie Cornish) is obsessing over the life of Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) the woman behind the sensation of the century who met, fell in love with and married King Edward VIII of England. Simpson was not only a colonial commoner but was also twice divorced and it was inconceivable that a woman of her standing could marry a Royal let alone the man that would become King. This film tracks Wallis and Edwards’s love affair and the controversy it created while drawing comparisons to a modern day tale of love, suffering and redemption. And did I mention it’s rubbish?