Showing posts with label Tom Hanks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Hanks. Show all posts

Saturday, July 05, 2014

Cloud Atlas


Reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas left me thinking that this is one book that meanders all over the place and could never make a coherent film. The Wachowski siblings of course proved me wrong.

In 1849, a young lawyer has a brush with slavery and is dying of a mysterious illness on ship while harbouring an escaped slave. In 1936 a young composer is slaving away under an arrogant maestro while composing his own masterpiece. San Francisco in the 1973 sees a journalist trying to unearth a conspiracy. Present day London finds a publisher running away from gangsters in the most amusing fashion. A futuristic Seoul in 2144 shows a genetic clone discovering that she is human. And then there is the really far away time set in a post apocalyptic time. A film set over multitude timescapes that has been stiched together to make a coherent whole. 

Rating: * * +

"Cloud Atlas Poster" by May be found at this website. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Charlie Wilson's War

A regular, insipid hollywood take on how the Afghanistan issue was first brought to the attention of Washington DC in the early 80s; the genesis of the Pakistan - mujahideen connection resulting in the defeat of the Russians. Tom Hanks plays the congressman Charlie Wilson - completely predictable and efficient - but a tad difficult to accept him playing a playboy, cocaine sniffing maverick wheeler dealer of a politician. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays his bit of a disgruntled CIA operative rather well. Good movie to watch on a flight.

Rating: * *