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We are republishing this review in honor of the 10th anniversary of the passing of Roger Ebert . Read why one of our contributors chose this review here .

Even as I was watching "Cloud Atlas" the first time, I knew I would need to see it again. Now that I've seen it the second time, I know I'd like to see it a third time — but I no longer believe repeated viewings will solve anything. To borrow Churchill's description of Russia, "it is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." It fascinates in the moment. It's getting from one moment to the next that is tricky.

Surely this is one of the most ambitious films ever made. The little world of film criticism has been alive with interpretations of it, which propose to explain something that lies outside explanation. Any explanation of a work of art must be found in it, not taken to it. As a film teacher, I was always being told by students that a film by David Lynch , say, or Warner Herzog, was "a retelling of the life of Christ, say, or 'Moby Dick.' " My standard reply was: Maybe it's simply the telling of itself.

Yet "Cloud Atlas" cries out for an explanation, and surely you've noticed that I've been tap-dancing around one. I could tell you that it relates six stories taking place between the years 1849 and 2346. I could tell you that the same actors appear in different roles, playing characters of different races, genders and ages. Some are not even human, but fabricants. I could tell you that the acting and makeup are so effective that often I had no idea if I was looking at Tom Hanks , Halle Berry or Jim Broadbent . I could tell you that, and what help is it?

I could tell you that each segment is a refashioning of the story contained in the previous one. That the same birthmark turns up in every period of time. That a repeated motif is that all lives are connected by a thirst for freedom. That the movie was inspired by the much-loved novel of the same name by David Mitchell . That in the novel, the stories were told in chronological order, and then circled back again from end to beginning. That the movie finds its connections through the reappearances of the same actors in different roles and deliberately refers to one story from within another.

Now are you wiser? I'm treading water. And now could follow a very long paragraph introducing and describing the different characters played by the actors. But you would lose your way all the same, because many of the performances and disguises are so cunningly effective. I could tell you that Halle Berry's work as a mid-1970s investigative reporter works well for me, and the gnarly wisdom of Tom Hanks as an old man telling tales is the most impenetrable.

I despair. I think you will want to see this daring and visionary film, directed by Lana Wachowski , Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski . Anywhere you go where movie people gather, it will be discussed. Deep theories will be proposed. Someone will say, "I don't know what in the hell I saw." The names of Freud and Jung will come up. And now you expect me to unwrap the mystery from the enigma and present you with a nice shiny riddle?

Sometimes the key to one movie can be suggested by another one. We know that the title refers to early drawings of the shapes and behavior of clouds. Not long ago I saw a Swedish film, " Simon and the Oaks ," about a day-dreaming boy who formed a bond with an oak tree. In its limbs, he would lie reading books of imagination and then allow his eyes to rest on the clouds overhead. As he read a book about desert wanderers, the clouds seemed to take shape as a ghostly caravan of camels in procession across the sky.

I was never, ever bored by "Cloud Atlas." On my second viewing, I gave up any attempt to work out the logical connections between the segments, stories and characters. What was important was that I set my mind free to play. Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives. Because we have minds and clouds do not, we desire freedom. That is the shape the characters in "Cloud Atlas" take, and how they attempt to direct our thoughts. Any concrete, factual attempt to nail the film down to cold fact, to tell you what it "means," is as pointless as trying to build a clockwork orange.

But, oh, what a film this is! And what a demonstration of the magical, dreamlike qualities of the cinema. And what an opportunity for the actors. And what a leap by the directors, who free themselves from the chains of narrative continuity. And then the wisdom of the old man staring into the flames makes perfect sense.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film Credits

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Rated R or violence, language, sexuality/nudity and some drug use

172 minutes

Jim Broadbent as Timothy, etc.

Halle Berry as Luisa Rey, etc.

Susan Sarandon as Horrox, etc.

Tom Hanks as Zachry, etc.

Hugh Weaving as Noakes, etc.

Hugh Grant as Kona Chief, etc.

Written and directed by

• Lana Wachowski

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Everything you need to know about Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004, David Mitchell’s ‘Russian doll’ saga remains one of the most original, unusual and polarising works in the Booker Library. As it celebrates its 20th anniversary, here’s our guide to the genre-defying work  

Written by Donna Mackay-Smith

What exactly is Cloud Atlas about?

Cloud Atlas , which was shortlisted for the /node/2929 Booker Prize in 2004, is a novel comprised of six interconnected tales, each written in a unique style and told from a differing perspective: a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified ‘dinery server’ on death row; and a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation. Each of David Mitchell ’s characters has a comet-shaped birthmark and names, dates and references reoccur, hinting at a greater connection between the six protagonists.

Beginning in 1850 and ending in a dystopian future, Cloud Atlas ’s stories all echo and impact on each other, showing how fates can intertwine. Together, they point to a terrifying vision of what is to come. Throughout his novel, Mitchell weaves a deep critique of the post-industrial age. But the heart of Cloud Atlas is a labyrinth of tales that delve into the human experience, which Mitchell tells through multiple voices.

Mitchell purposefully interrupts each of the stories to begin the next, and civilisation - as we know it - ends in the middle of the novel, only for the author to pick up with a post-apocalyptic vision of the future, allowing him to conclude each tale. His novel defies literary conventions and erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

How is the book structured?

Cloud Atlas is comprised of six distinct stories, told in eleven parts. But while most novels conventionally use chapters to delineate sections of their plot, Cloud Atlas dovetails its own stories together, meaning one may simply end, abruptly and without conclusion, for another to begin. The following tale takes the reader to a new time and location, essentially to begin all over again, without acknowledgement of the previous narrative. After the sixth story ends, Mitchell then resumes the previous five stories at points further into the novel. 

Still with us? The book has been written in what’s called a ‘Russian-doll’ style structure, meaning each narrative sits within the following story. Each story is connected to the next by something placed within the text, such as mention of a document, a series of letters, or even a novel - containing a wry nod to the events of a previous chapter. 

Cloud Atlas is then brought to its conclusion in reverse chronological order in the second half of the book and things come full circle when Mitchell wraps up the opening narrative, as the novel’s finale. It’s complicated, but that’s really where the genius of the book lies. In a nutshell, think of it as six separate novellas with a small easter egg, nodding to the previous story, within each.

Tom Hanks and Halle Berry in the 2012 film adaptation of Cloud Atlas

Who is David Mitchell?

David Mitchell has written nine novels as well as essays and adapted his work for screen and stage. He was born in 1969 on the Lancashire coast, but was raised in Malvern, Worcestershire. 

As a child, Mitchell didn’t speak until age five, after which he developed a stammer at age seven. As a result, his childhood was often one of solitude, which meant he spent a lot of time alone with his head in a book. He spent his formative years reading J.R.R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin. Mitchell went on to complete a degree in English and American literature and an MA in comparative literature, after which he dedicated himself to writing. 

He was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001 with his novel number9dream . But it was Cloud Atlas , Mitchell’s third book, that was his breakthrough. Published in 2004, it was shortlisted for the Booker that year and was listed for multiple other awards. The novel was acclaimed by critics and the literary community, too. 

Mitchell has now been nominated for the Booker Prize five times. In 2018, he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer’s entire body of work.

David Mitchell. © Paul Stuart

What have people said about Cloud Atlas?

Cloud Atlas has garnered praise from across the literary world, and beyond, since publication. Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote about it on his personal website, GatesNotes . In a blog titled ‘A wonderful, mind-bending novel’, Gates praised it as a wholly unique read, stating he had ‘never come across anything quite like it in a book before’ and was ‘eager to see how he would connect each story to the ones that came before’. The businessman turned philanthropist concluded that Cloud Atlas was ‘a grand tale about human nature and human values - the things that change and the things that don’t, over hundreds or even thousands of years’.

Critic and novelist A.S. Byatt , who won the Booker Prize in 1990 with Possession , wrote about the novel in the Guardian when it was published in 2004. ‘ Cloud Atlas is powerful and elegant because of Mitchell’s understanding of the way we respond to those fundamental and primitive stories we tell about good and evil, love and destruction, beginnings and ends,’ she said. ‘He isn’t afraid to jerk tears or ratchet up suspense - he understands that’s what we make stories for.’ 

More recently, Shehan Karunatilaka , the winner of the Booker Prize 2022, cited Cloud Atlas as a big influence on his novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida . He read Mitchell’s novel ‘many times’ during the process of writing Seven Moons, as well as watching the adaptation. ‘I know some people say it’s confusing, but those people are wrong,’ he joked, when answering readers’ questions on video for The Booker Prize website earlier this year. 

Writing for the  Spectator , Philip Hensher said ‘Mitchell is a novelist who knows exactly what he is doing, and one who is always one or two steps ahead of the reader; and at the end it seems to evaporate like the best dream you ever had’.

But while there was plenty of acclaim, not everyone loved Mitchell’s work. In the Telegraph , Theo Tait wrote: ‘Mitchell’s ambition and his dedication compel respect’ but added ‘there is a mighty problem of tone’ stating ‘ Cloud Atlas spends half its time wanting to be The Simpsons and the other half the Bible’.

In the New York Times , Tom Bissell wrote that ‘the novel is frustrating not because it is too smart but because it is not nearly as smart as its author’. While acknowledging the novel’s expanse, they said ‘it might very well move things forward. It is also a book that makes one wonder to what end things are being moved’. 

In 2019, the novel made the top 10 in the Guardian ’s 100 best books of the 21st century , coming in at number nine. 

What has David Mitchell said about Cloud Atlas?

When writing in the Guardian in 2010, Mitchell acknowledged where the spark for Cloud Atlas came from. ‘I’d had an idea for a polyphonic “Russian doll” novel ever since Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller had wowed me at uni in the late 80s,’ he recalled. ‘Calvino’s book is made of interrupted narratives which are never returned to – my idea was to write a novel whose narratives would be returned to, and completed in reverse order,’ Mitchell said. 

The author spoke to the Guardian again in 2019 and, discussing some wider influences that helped shape both characters and plot, Mitchell acknowledged Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , as well as ‘pioneering SF classics such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World , Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We and The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster – yes, that E.M. Forster’. He also said that Cloud Atlas contained ‘rich dollops of Blade Runner ’. 

The structure was something he purposefully chose to experiment with, he said, yet was unsure if it would pay off: ‘The Russian-doll structure gets remarked on a lot, often with the word “ambitious”. I can’t truthfully claim I set out to be ambitious: it was much more a question of, “What’ll happen if I try this?”’

This non-linear structure, while unusual, was something he - surprisingly - wrote in a more conventional manner. ‘I wrote the six novellas in order and then just spent a morning with the marvellous “cut and paste” function on Windows and assembled the novel in just about an hour or so’, he told the BBC when he appeared on their World Book Club in 2013.

Should I watch the film adaptation?

Despite being deemed ‘unfilmable’ by some commentators, Cloud Atlas was adapted for the big screen in 2012 by the Wachowskis, known for the Matrix films; alongside Tom Tykwer, director of Run Lola, Run ; with David Mitchell himself on writing duties. With a budget in excess of $100million, it was one of the most expensive independent films ever made. Structurally similar to the book, with six interlocking stories, it featured a cast who reappeared within each story in different roles, defying age, gender and race.  

But even a cast of Hollywood A-listers - including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant and Jim Broadbent - couldn’t save the ambitious movie from polarising reviews. Film critic and Pulitzer Prize-winner Roger Ebert called it ‘one of the most ambitious films ever made’, yet it only scraped 6.7 out of 10 on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes . In the UK, film critic Mark Kermode called it ‘an extremely honourable failure, but a failure’ and it was declared the worst film of the year by both the Village Voice and Time magazine. It seemed the fate of the film was not to follow that of the novel. 

But despite ultimately being deemed a flop upon release, the film has since garnered a cult following, with many film aficionados now claiming it to be one of the Wachowskis’ overlooked masterpieces.

Cloud Atlas

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Den of Geek

Cloud Atlas review

The sprawling, ambitious Cloud Atlas arrives in the UK. Here's our review of a flawed yet mesmerising film...

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Why would anyone think that a book as lengthy and as complex as Cloud Atlas could be adapted into a workable movie? David Mitchell’s dense, epoch-spanning novel is perhaps an example of the what can be achieved in prose but not necessarily on a big screen: multiple characters, disparate time lines, and philosophical themes about death and the Dirk Gently -like interconnectedness of all things.

Attempting to summarise Cloud Atlas in a paragraph is nigh on impossible, with the opening half hour skipping along with the dizzying momentum of a haunted television – the channel keeps changing, and you can only guess what you’ll end up seeing next.

The story begins in the far-flung future, with a campfire tale recounted by Tom Hanks, scowling beneath a considerable amount of old man makeup. From there, we’re introduced to Ben Whishaw’s well-spoken Robert Frobisher, a musician in 1930s England, who works as an amanuensis for a noted composer played by Jim Broadbent. Then there’s Halle Berry’s reporter in 70s America, who’s investigating Hugh Grant’s sinister nuclear reactor magnate. Then we’re on a ship in the 19th century, then late 21st century Korea, then the 24th century again.

Cloud Atlas moves rapidly and almost seamlessly between these different moments in time, where the same actors play different characters in each scenario – the idea being that each character’s actions has an indirect impact on the next. Jim Broadbent, who plays the 1930s composer, also appears as a publisher in the present day. Hugo Weaving, true to form, shows up in every epoch as an antagonist in different guises, whether it’s a ruthless contract killer in the 70s, an apologist for the slave trade in the 19th century, or most terrifyingly of all, a stern Nurse Noakes in the present.

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So heavily made up are some of these actors, spotting them in each timeline turns into a sort of Where’s Wally mini-game. Look, there’s Ben Whishaw as a bearded shopkeeper. Here’s Hugh Grant as a vicious tattooed post-apocalyptic chieftain. And isn’t that Susan Sarandon as an old man with a robot eye? My God, I think it is.

Perhaps inevitably, some of these performances are better than others. Tom Hanks is good value as a conniving 19th century doctor with big teeth, but is rather out of his depth when asked to play a violent Irish novelist. Hugo Weaving makes a surprisingly good nurse, but the heavy facial prosthetics used to turn him into a late-21st-century Korean bureaucrat is rather distracting.

The result of all this dress-up – and filmmakers’ considerable use of green screen effects – is a film that feels almost dreamlike in its unreality, like a philosophical Mighty Boosh. Casting different actors for each part, rather than recycling them, may have resulted in a more grounded-looking ensemble movie, like Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line , for example. But this clearly isn’t the path the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer (who all gamely wrote, directed and produced) wanted to take; with its ‘ripples through time’ underlying theme, Cloud Atlas shifts madly from dark to light, from tear-jerking romance to abrupt bloodshed, from bleak drama to levity.

For some, the constant swing between different times and tones may prove too much, and this is perhaps why Cloud Atlas has polarised critical opinion so far. In attempting to be broadly humorous, thrilling and philosophical, the film finds itself in an odd middle ground, where pop-existential ponderings, Matrix  slow-mo shoot-outs and Benny Hill-like moments of slapstick in an old folks’ home are bizarrely intercut.

Depending on how cynical you’re feeling, you could also argue that, with a three-hour duration, the film takes a long time to get across its feel-good messages about goodness, badness and the value of human life. But at the same time, there’s never a moment where Cloud Atlas drags; the decision to constantly cut between stories (a technique handled differently from the novel) works extremely well, and even though some moments are many times better than others, the film sweeps along on its own batty momentum.

Against considerable odds, Tykwer and the Wachowskis have managed to wrestle this behemoth of modern writing into an entertaining movie. Sprawling, perplexing, sometimes beautiful but often kitsch, Cloud Atlas is a true oddity. It’s flawed, but there’s an urgency and vigour in its storytelling that is strangely beguiling. It’s the closest thing we have to a 21st century  Zardoz , and that’s surely a good thing.

Cloud Atlas is out in the UK now.

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Ryan Lambie

Review: 'Cloud Atlas' is the Most Daring & Satisfying Film of the Year

by Jeremy Kirk October 26, 2012

It'll be difficult not to dip into hyperbole, but that's what you get with something as ambitious as Cloud Atlas , a film that easily leads the year as most daring and bar none the most satisfying movie experience. The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer have reached into a novel best described as inscrutable - Some would aptly call it cloudy - and pulled out a visual feast every bit as much for the brain as it is the eyes. Cloud Atlas is the kind of film you need a break from, or its grand themes and colossal structure might overwhelm. But the rewards in experiencing and reflecting on it are precisely why we love films. Read on !

Even the structuring is an ambitious undertaking, but we have David Mitchell to thank for that. Like his 2004 novel, Cloud Atlas takes us through different moments in time, six stories to be precise, each about a struggle to do what is right in the face of adversity, a common theme but never quite told like this. Mitchell's novel tells each complete story, but the filmmakers here choose to bounce between settings with little more than a quick cut, taking us from the Pacific Islands in 1850 to Belgium in the 1930s to San Francisco in 1973 to modern times in the United Kingdom then onto Korea in the distant future and a post-apocalyptic, distant future where tribes fight for survival.

The characters we meet in these settings and their stories unfold quickly, Andy & Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer keeping the film's momentum always on the go. At first, Cloud Atlas feels like a deluge, your mind working overtime to keep up with who or where or what we're seeing. The uninitiated might throw their hands up in frustration when Doona Bae 's Sonmi-451 appears, throwing what's previously been a period piece into the stylishly computerized world of tomorrow. But the Wachowskis and Tykwer understand their audience needs establishment, and their fast-paced introduction to these six stories right at the top of the film is a required foothold needed to let yourself sink into the overall story.

From there, the writers/directors don't let the film's pace or structure get away from them, choosing to focus on two or three of the stories at a time and cutting between them for large sections of the film. As you experience each story, the underlying narrative and main theme - Really the reason why a collaboration of the makers behind The Matrix and Run Lola Run were perfect to bring this story to the screen - make themselves known. Each of the stories work on their own, but they also fit into the grand scope of what could only be referred to as the design of the world perfectly. Bits of information learned in one has a hand in the events shown in another, and every action by every character ends up having a purpose, almost a guide for Event A and how it leads to Event Z. Forget the Butterfly Effect. That's a ripple in a pond compared to the grand-scale ideas at work here.

And if this description of the film is opaque thus far, it's because the themes Mitchell set down in his novel and the filmmakers have pulled out for this film are more easily explained through visual examples. Someone can tell you a letter written centuries ago can help spark a revolution centuries from now, but until you see those events play out in exceptionally detailed ways, the impact just isn't the same. Thankfully, the Wachowskis and Tykwer know precisely how to grasp the viewer's emotional chords as well as their mental ones, and the genuine power of Cloud Atlas rests in much deeper areas than even the Cloud Atlas Sextet, a beautiful piece of music that sits at the center of one story. Tykwer himself wrote the piece, and it's one of the most beautiful written for film in some time.

The ambitious nature of the film married with the way they handle the depiction of their characters may be where Cloud Atlas loses some. Jumping between scenarios comes with its own share of tonal shifts scattered throughout, and you may be in a serious drama about slave traders one minute and a slapsticky comedy about a man trying to escape a nursing home the next. Nearly every actor in the film plays multiple roles, some switching up age, race, or even gender between parts. Seeing Tom Hanks as a Cockney gangster then watching him lead a post-apocalyptic tribe of survivors might keep the engrossment of much of Cloud Atlas at an arm's length. However, the intricate way in which every detail of this film is handled keeps the wheels on the track, and where most inexperienced or mediocre filmmakers might offer up an ugly wreck of a film, the three at work here have given us what could be viewed in years to come as a masterpiece. Hugo Weaving showing up in drag might bring up scattered unintentional laughter, but even that fits in with the story and tone at hand.

Each actor takes absolute charge with each of their roles, as well, most of them quite literally disappearing in front of our eyes under heavy makeup and surely some CG facial enhancements. Nearly every actor has a part in each story, though many of them will be difficult to point out. Having said that, though, everyone in Cloud Atlas does a remarkable job, the chameleon aspect of much of their roles only a part of the praise. Whether it's Hanks as a quirky doctor with strange teeth, Halle Berry as a journalist trying to uncover a conspiracy, or Weaving as an enigmatic creature named Old Georgie who lives in the forests of the post-apocalyptic world, every actor gives every role their full attention. In doing so, the viewer does exactly the same thing.

Some film makers are just working on a grander scale than others, and while Michael Bay and James Cameron are making mindless or semi-mindless adventures that look like a billion dollars, the Wachowskis and Tykwer are reaching for something with a deeper meaning. Cloud Atlas is another experience from them that brings an audacity and visual extravagance to a beautiful, moving, and audacious story about love and the effects such works of art have for future generations. It's a film about the enduring strength of our most powerful emotion and what one person's passion can lead to in the grand scale of the universe. Cloud Atlas is a film intended to endure, and bravo to the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer for making it such an awesome experience.

Jeremy's Rating: 10 out of 10

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23 Comments

Jeremy, i know i have disagreed with you before on movies but after seeing this... i cant help but be right there with you in saying its one of the best.....

Jericho on Oct 26, 2012

This got a score of only 59% on RT, but a 10/10 from Jeremy? Sounds suspicious. I wonder how well it will do with all the mixed reviews.

ion677 on Oct 26, 2012

This is one of the huge problems with critics. They want to prove how knowledgeable and sophisticated they are by trashing on original, daring projects like Cloud Atlas. I guess it makes them feel good about themselves. Whether or not they think this movie is great or not is irrelevant. Film criticism is so subjective, it is almost pointless. That's why critical opinion varies so wildly. Do yourself a favor and stop listening to critics. Cloud Atlas is a polarizing movie. It was always going to be. You don't even have to see it to know that. It will either speak to you and you'll love it, or it won't and you'll probably dislike it. This movie is worth taking a chance on. We need more daring projects like this to be developed.

racquetman on Oct 26, 2012

i thoght CA was very good - but not great....mostly due to some of the execution. i responded to you because you are SO RIGHT about needing more unique projects like this. i'd rather see a CA over 5 superhero rehashes.....sad to say - i don't think it'll happen - hollywood is always looking for the safe cash-cow.

beevis on Oct 26, 2012

i would never cite RT for anything.

Nobody, (not even film critics) walks into a movie wanting to hate it. Everyone loves a great movie. There are some movies that are universally praised like Argo, and I'm glad to have RT around so I can save my $10 for movies I'll actually enjoy.

ion677 on Oct 27, 2012

hey, if you and others want someone else to decide what you watch - that's fine. i don't. i watch everything that sounds good to me and do NOT rely on reviews. btw - i thought argo was "so-so" but i loved cloud atlas. rotten tomatoes loved argo and thought much less of CA. so, if i'd gone with RT, i'd had missed out on CA and only seen a argo....a movie i didn't hate - but didn't love either.

beevis on Oct 27, 2012

well that's elitist of you. Gathering the opinions of scores of experienced movie-goers to help you pick between movies is not relying on reviews, its using a tool wisely in the decision making process. but hey, if you wanna spend a few hours watching a movie that got a 5% on RT without even taking that into consideration, I guess it's your time.

Wafffles on Oct 27, 2012

i have done just what you suggest - i've went and gotten reviews and scores of movies that people have left on RT. but, i've done so AFTER i watched the films being reviewed to see if their opinions held ANY significance for me....i've also done this with with other sources such as MSN and USA TODAY. and, i've found that if i did do as you suggest, i'd have missed many movies that i would have loved and wasted time with films i didn't like. it's not "elitist" at all - it's making choices based on what i believe i'll like - or watching something based on a suggestion from someone i've found (over time) makes good choices on film. as far as extreme ratings (your 5% example)........i don't think going to RT (or any review forum) is necessary - anything that is universally panned to the extreme will spread faster by "word of mouth". and any way - one persons "terrible film" COULD BE another persons "cult classic". this isn't to say that i don't encounter a "clunker" now and again. i watched one this week i thought would be ok and i HATED it (peace,love,understanding)......but, that's the way it goes sometimes. i use sites i trust to keep me appraised of what is coming out in movies. people like alex and ethan on FS do a great job in keeping movie fans informed as to what's coming and happening in the flim industry...it's why i have their site bookmarked and check it every day- from there, i make my own choices. again - that's not elitist...i don't think i'm better than anyone - i'm just having fun watching movies. and i do NOT like rotten tomatoes.......

But don't you see the hypocricy?! 'Word of mouth' is just a form of reviews! My issue isn't that you don't like RT, it's not my favorite either, my point was that there is some use to that average viewers opinion. We're almost agreeing really...you like to gather opinions by word of mouth, I like to gather opinions on internet forums and websites. The only place where we really disagree is that I'm more picky about what I watch. I'm more easily annoyed by watching a dud in the pursuit of good movies, while you seem to be more forgiving. To each his own, I just think a lot of people are like me where they'd rather let a few good movies slip through the cracks (and probably end up watching them a few years later if they are really that good) than watch tons of movies, many mediocre, to make sure we catch as many gems as possible.

Wafffles on Oct 28, 2012

"word of mouth" is NOT a review. it's several friends simply saying they liked it.....THAT is what i meant by that phrase. as far as what/how/why you watch......that's your decision.

beevis on Oct 29, 2012

I'm extremely excited, and this looks to be a divisive film. I loved The Fountain, and that was much of the same in terms of love/hate. Beyond that, acting like James Cameron and Michael Bay are making the same kinds of films is ridiculous. Avatar had more credibility than all 3 Transformers films combined. It had something to say about quite a few subjects, some felt like it was too much, some felt like it was barely there...but it's there. The movie DID have deeper meaning. Sure, it pales in comparison to films with the depth of 2001: A Space Odyssey or the aforementioned The Fountain. But Avatar operates on a level far above the works of Michael Bay.

Chris Groves on Oct 26, 2012

Was my most anticipated film of the year. I cried during the trailer, that's how much I connected with this film's premise. And I'm a huge fan for ambitious, out-of-the-box, epic filmmaking. Caught a screening last night. My thoughts (this might be spoiler-ish): - messy. editing is all over the place. - cockblocker. the moment I would get fully invested in a scene I'd be taken somewhere else. I never got to fully appreciate any one storyline. - makeup. lots and lots of makeup. some of it amazing, some of it so bad it's disturbing to look at. I can think of 4 makeup jobs in particular that I simply couldn't help but be distracted by. - music. at times distracting and really not that fantastic - i thought the stories would tie together more cohesively to express the idea of interconnectedness. I mean, isn't that the point of Cloud Atlas? I found that they tried to use dialogue to force this idea though. didn't flow as the trailers suggested A fantastic and thought-provoking idea that unfortunately missed the mark in a muddled way for me. Ambitious yet I felt that the first trailer communicates the grander ideas far better than the 3hrs I watched.

Marty on Oct 26, 2012

you bring up some all of the same problems i had with the film. it was very good - but i'd give it an 8.5 and no higher due to the issues you mentioned. i do wish more studios, directors, producers would try challenging stuff like CA.

I kinda agree.. Especially about the cohesiveness. Or did I miss something? Can someone point me to a link that explains the connection between the stories? The one on imdb is from the book and the movie was slightly different.

Deepak T on Oct 27, 2012

Was my most anticipated film of the year. I cried during the trailer, that's how much I connected with this film's premise. And I'm a huge fan of ambitious, thoughtful, out-of-the-box, epic filmmaking. Caught a screening last night. My thoughts (this might be spoiler-ish): - messy. editing is all over the place. - cockblocker. the moment I would get fully invested in a scene I'd be taken somewhere else. I never got to fully appreciate any one storyline. - makeup. lots and lots of makeup. some of it amazing, some of it so bad it's disturbing to look at. I can think of 4 makeup jobs in particular that I simply couldn't help but be distracted by. - music. at times distracting and really not that fantastic - i thought the stories would tie together more cohesively to express the idea of interconnectedness. I mean, isn't that the point of Cloud Atlas? I found that they tried to use dialogue to force this idea though. didn't flow as the trailers suggested A fantastic and thought-provoking idea that unfortunately missed the mark in a muddled way for me. Ambitious yet I felt that the first trailer communicates the grander ideas far better than the 3hrs I watched.

I can't wait to see it! Look so great. The negative reviews are not swaying me in the least. Here's an awesome review of it by a whacked out Finnish film critic. Just great. Hopefully the bad review critics who "didn't get it" won't stop people from going. Google: Cloud Atlas and Kimmo Mustonenen

Jenny Murphy on Oct 26, 2012

Cloud Atlas is a mediocre film at best with little to no entertainment value. The 6+ timelines as a whole are uninteresting, predictable, cliche as are the individual plots within each timeline. The sci fi action story was a poor knock off of Equilibrium. The Caucasian male actors in ethnic prosthetic make up were very distracting. The futuristic post Apocalyptic world ripped straight off of Mad Max/Waterworld right down to the way they talked was laughable. A smorgasbord of different genres each poorly executed. Red Box Rental at most. True true.

truetrue on Oct 26, 2012

Another overrated movie. Guess I didn't get my T-shirt in the mail.

castingcouch on Oct 27, 2012

I've been reading this site for nearly a decade now and this is the first time I've ever completely agreed with you.

Matt Peloquin on Oct 29, 2012

U need to understand that "getting it" is both easy and difficult in this movie. This is a book that should have stayed a book. The movie is only good if there is an amazing revelation tying each story together. this does not happen and the fact each character playing multiple roles in the timeline is just more misleading.. the best part of cloud atlas? A t least you get 6 movies for the price of 1 ticket

carl stasch on Nov 4, 2012

The RT rating might lead you to think it's an average movie, but that simply isn't the case. This is a love-it or hate-it movie, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey which also deeply divided critics. If you don't get it, you won't like it. I'd also like to add that this wasn't a Hollywood film; all 100 million of those dollars were independently financed.

skepticMelody on Nov 4, 2012

10/10 and the best movie experience I've had in 17 years. Gets better with repeated viewings, too. Bravo!

Jan Bloxham on Mar 13, 2013

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Cloud Atlas Review

22 Feb 2013

172 minutes

Cloud Atlas

As with most things that pique the interest of the philosopher-geek Wachowksi siblings — on this occasion enrolling compeer Tom Tykwer into their wizard schemes — David Mitchell’s time and tale-traversing novel presented another chance to dally over vaulting matters of life, the universe and everything. Mitchell’s tapestry of six stories contends with the cycles of time, the eternal bust-up between fortune and predestination, and our lonely quest for higher meaning. How mankind is cursed and blessed to repeat himself. And how he makes sense of his capacity for both great good and hideous evil by transforming them into stories and myths; religions and science; songs, novels and movies too. Here also was the chance for Wachowski, Wachowski and Tykwer (who sound as if they are as likely to file a tax return as direct a movie) to spread their creative wings and swoop from the benighted city-state of Neo-Seoul populated by slave clones (forms of slavery persist across storylines), back to a Joseph Conrad-flavoured, 19th century sea-faring tale adrift in the boundless Pacific (oceans and islands are significant), concerning a treacherous ship’s physician with a thing for collecting teeth (baring their own tales of former owners).

Mitchell’s literary remix devised an ingenious Russian-doll structure, moving forward in time through the beginnings of the first five stories of his pyramidal saga, before the sixth, most temporally distant episode played in full, then reversing outwards, completing each story in turn to end exactly where it began. That’s the book. Fearful such a framework might make their adaption feel too much like a portmanteau movie (a set of short films housed under one roof), even if that is exactly how Inception works, the directors take a more cinematically conventional, if technically challenging, approach by crosscutting back and forth between time and place, story and story, guided by an underlying thematic and associative blueprint. You could opt to simply relax and see what comes of letting the waterfall of stories wash over you. Yet, the cryptic layering of it all urges you to open your eyes, ears and dusty lobes to decipher what the Hydra-headed film might be getting at.

There is little doubting the glorious ambition of the project, both as an epic tableau and in terms of its filmmaking engineering. In an age of relentless safety, its cocktail of human foible and movie madness is intoxicating. Even at nigh on three hours, it never drags.

Most daring of the directors’ narrative chicanery is to embody the concept of recurring souls (or a genetic strain) by having the same actors play different parts in different stories. The cast rises to the crazed multiplicity of it all with aplomb. Tom Hanks, marked out by a cornucopia of conks, variously assays that wicked ship’s doctor (stage one), a brute Irish gangster-turned-memoirist (stage four), a sullen landlord in ’30s Edinburgh (stage two), and a cowardly tribesman, mottled in tattoos, in a far-off scorched Earth, whose face greets us as the chronicle begins (stage six). “I’ll tell you the true true...” he warbles in Mad Maxish pigeon-speak, a peculiar man telling tales by an open fire like an aged Homer with its wink to the oral tradition. A good ‘for instance’ of the many drawstrings that pull Cloud Atlas into shape is this referencing of different modes of communication: body art, folktales, music, letters, journalism, fiction, television, the push and pull of interrogation, the dating of incisors. Investigative reporter Luisa Rey (Halle Berry), cottoning on to a cover-up at a local power plant (stage three), is transformed into one of the ‘Luisa Rey’ detective novels by stage four.

You’ll be reading until kingdom come if we supply all the actors and all their parts — and one of the movie’s pleasures is clocking where each materialises, like a game of Where’s Halle?. A hint: amongst her more elusive occurrences, Berry turns up as a Jewish mistress and a Korean man. Another hint: there are through-lines for each actor, where each of their characters echoes a sense of the others. Hugo Weaving, be it as a fusty matron (stage four) or Satanic apparition (stage six), always possesses a menacing aspect not so distant from Agent Smith.

Beyond the book’s intricacies, Cloud Atlas, the film, ponders the architecture of filmmaking. Making connections across time and space is pretty much how films are assembled, and the editing here proves a virtuoso display of overlapping storylines, interweaved via character, theme, image, music and plot. Though subdivided into six parts, the overall film retains a distinctive arc: six starts, six middles and six conclusions. All intermingled. It is, indeed, a symphony, as emphasised by stage two, where Ben Whishaw’s itinerant amanuensis composes the ‘Cloud Atlas Sextet’. A recording of which turns up on vinyl in a San Francisco record shop early in stage three.

Yes, there are flaws — the exuberant sprawl of it all almost welcomes them. Just keeping up can wear you out. Patience is called for. In the book, the pastiche of narrative styles is readily established and cleverly divided, a charm dispelled by the film’s more frenetic structure. This leads to violent lurches in tone. Alighting from the quasi-fantasy, island-set, post-apocalyptic future (stage six) upon the vulgar whimsy of British sitcoms in the contemporary ‘old-people’s home’ sequence (stage four) — in which Jim Broadbent’s geriatric publisher plots escape as if absconding from a POW camp — threatens whiplash. While the high-wire daring of having actors transgress racial lines more often loses its flirtation with taste.

Then, casting Hugh Grant (overarching theme: a rotter) as a rampaging future-world cannibal (stage six) as well as a sun-leathered nouveau riche slimeball (stage four), a deceitful power company exec (stage three), and a predatory Korean restaurant manager (stage five) is surely not to be taken too seriously. Maybe such shudders of taste and style should be applauded. If you’re trying to encompass the entire human story, there’s sure to be as much ridiculous as sublime.

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TIFF 2012: CLOUD ATLAS Review

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Cloud Atlas – review

Follies don't come more intricate and extravagant than Cloud Atlas, adapted by a trio of directors from the David Mitchell novel and bouncing through the eras with a wide-eyed eagerness that borders on the ridiculous. Here is a film that travels from the 19th century to the distant future, from thriller to sci-fi to romance to farce. It comes to tell us that we are all connected, all part of the same karmic continuum. Yet never once, in the course of nearly three hours, does it amount to anything more than the sum of its parts.

The parts, too, can be infernally jarring. Cloud Atlas's big idea is to install its cast as a kind of repertory company, with each player required todouble up on a variety of roles. Tom Hanks alone appears and reappears as a cackling Victorian doctor, a slovenly Scottish hotelier, a tattooed tribal elder and a roustabout Irish novelist, complete with diamond stud and silver chain. At no stage, however, does he convince as anyone other than Tom Hanks piled high with hair and makeup, and all but winking at the camera to remind us that it's him.

Cloud Atlas is never boring, exactly. The whole thing is too busy, too mercurial and too sincerely meant – even during the extended comic interlude in which a toothy London publisher (Jim Broadbent, channelling Ken Dodd) attempts to break out of an oppressive nursing home. And yet, if the mark of a truly great folly is its flaws and ambiguities, then Cloud Atlas falls short. The film runs wide, but it is as deep as a puddle; simplistic to the point of vapidity. The film-makers want to paint an epic picture on the broadest of canvases, explaining how laughter can co-exist with tragedy, and how our stories all link up. Unfortunately, these bold ambitions come to naught. They confuse the cosmos with the costume department and wind up lost in a world of wigs and bonnets.

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Cloud Atlas is the most daring studio film I've seen this year. My feelings are decidedly mixed, but I can appreciate the sheer magnitude of effort. Coming in at a whopping two hours and fifty-minutes, Cloud Atlas is a labyrinthine exercise in philosophy and storytelling. It's comprised of six stories that take place over hundreds of years. These vignettes have several dominant themes that bind them together. The first is the strong oppressing the weak, and having the courage to fight for change. Then there is the theme of an immortal bond between lovers that transcends different lifetimes and bodies. Finally there is the idea of karma, and that one can right a wrong that damaged their soul in a previous life. The actors play multiple characters. The film is edited so that each scene cuts to a different story in another time. This style makes Cloud Atlas a highly immersive experience, but somewhat confusing in the sense that it takes a long time for the story to develop. I suspect some audiences will rave, while others may find it tedious and pretentious.

Cloud Atlas has a fine ensemble cast that pushes their acting range. While the primary stars are Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, a bevy of excellent actors populate the film's disparate plot. Each actor has quite a few parts, sometimes under heavy make-up, to play another race, sex, or age. There's too much going on plot-wise to get into great detail, but I will discuss my favorite part. The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish takes place in modern times and stars Jim Broadbent. Cavendish is a huckster publisher on the run from a gang of brutes he owes a small fortune. His evil brother, one of the characters played by Hugh Grant, gets him committed to a funny farm. Cavendish's treatment by the head nurse, a wicked Hugo Weaving in drag, leads him to concoct a goofy escape plan. This particular tale is quite funny, and in the contextual thread of Cloud Atlas , is indirectly responsible for a future rebellion hundreds of years in the future.

The film was directed by the Wachowskis (The Matrix Trilogy) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). Here you have three directors shooting six stories for one film. The trio also adapted the script from David Mitchell's prize winning science fiction novel. I applaud them for their boldness of vision. Find what fault you may, Cloud Atlas is maverick filmmaking with purpose. Each story is very well done, edited skillfully into the overall plot with quality production design, costumes, and prosthetic make-up effects. The filmmakers succeed in portraying a world that ranges from Victorian to futuristic. Cloud Atlas may have issues but the craft behind the film is not one of them.

Sometimes a film can crumble under its own weight. Cloud Atlas is unfortunately too heavy for its own good. The runtime is way too long. It takes literally ninety-minutes before the film really starts coming together. And when it does, I felt a bit cheated. For all of its stature, the philosophy behind Cloud Atlas isn't that deep. Love lasts forever, karma will come back to haunt you, stand up for the weak, these are fairly common themes. Cloud Atlas dresses them up like thanksgiving, but in reality you're eating the same turkey for dinner. Art doesn't subscribe to keep it simple, but you can easily go overboard as well. Cloud Atlas could have cut thirty minutes and remained just as substantive.

I think you have to be mentally prepared for Cloud Atlas . It's so voluminous and artsy, a casual viewing will be a waste of three hours. I think it's a fantastic technical achievement bordering on pomposity. The new age spiritualism behind the story is flogged for too long and ultimately isn't that rewarding. However, the audacity of Cloud Atlas makes it a must see for any real fan of cinema. I'm stupefied that Warner Brothers shelled out a hundred million dollars to make a film like this. Good to know that art does trump commerce every once in a while.

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‘Cloud Atlas’ Sharply (and Kind of Weirdly) Divides Critics

Matt singer.

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It remains to be seen whether audiences will embrace “Cloud Atlas,” but if the reviews are any indication, it’s already the most divisive movie of the year. At Rotten Tomatoes , it currently has a 59% average; at Metacritic , it’s even closer to a perfect 50/50 split with a score of 52 — including four reviews graded 85 or higher and four reviews graded 25 or lower. At our own Criticwire Network , it has a B average — but check out that “Grades Snapshot” function. 10 critics give it an A — essentially calling it a great film — and 15 give it a C — essentially calling it a mess.

What I’ve found most interesting about “Cloud Atlas”‘ reviews are the ways that critics who love it and hate it are all describing the film in very similar ways. They generally agree about what this sci-fi epic is — they just disagree about whether or not they like it as a result. Below, I’ve linked to some examples where two critics described the film in near-identical terms to totally opposite value judgements.

Related Stories Tom Hanks Picks ‘Cloud Atlas’ as One of His Top 3 Tom Hanks Films: ‘Making It Was Magical’ Why ‘Paddington 2’ Deserves Oscar Nominations in at Least Five Categories

PRO: The movie is absolutely brilliant!

“It’s romantic, epic, unwieldy and absolutely brilliant .” — Brandon Marcus, Very Aware

CON: The movie is absolutely brilliant, but…

“It starts out absolutely brilliant ly, then segues into a pretentious slog.” — Jordan Hoffman, Film.com

PRO: It’s unlike any other movie!

“‘Cloud Atlas’ is unlike any other movie … enormous in length and scope, a film whose purpose doesn’t even begin to come into focus until two hours in.”  — Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

CON: It’s unlike any other movie, but…

“Tom Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowski wanted to make a movie unlike any other , and they certainly did: ‘Cloud Atlas’ is a unique and totally unparalleled disaster.” — Calum Marsh, Slant Magazine

PRO: It’s ambitious in scope!

“Enormously ambitious in scope .”  — Mark Dujsik, Mark Reviews Movies

CON: It’s ambitious in scope, but…

“‘Cloud Atlas’ is ambitious in its scope , for sure — edited fluidly and often wondrous to look at, but totally ineffective from an emotional perspective.” — Christy Lemire, Associated Press

PRO: It’s a manifesto!

“This is not a movie, it is a manifesto . A gonzo, breathtaking, deeply humane declaration of the belief that all people — regardless of class, race, gender, age, sexuality, and more — are deserving of the same level of respect.” — Brian Juergens, After Elton

CON: It’s a manifesto, but…

“A manifesto in the form of an enormously budgeted quasi-sci-fi epic, ‘Cloud Atlas’ is evidently personal, defiantly sincere, totally lacking in self-awareness, and borderline offensive in its gleeful endorsement of revenge violence against anyone who gets in the way of a good person’s self-actualization.” — Karina Longworth, LA Weekly

PRO: It’s full of big ideas!

“And though its big ideas can be reduced to well-worn phrases like ‘No man is an island,’ ‘All you need is love,’ ‘United we stand, divided we fall’ and ‘We’re all connected,’ ‘Cloud Atlas’ attempts to strip each one of the layers of familiarity that make them seem like greeting-card platitudes rather than genuinely provocataive notions.”  — Maitland McDonagh, Film Journal International

CON: Actually, about those big ideas…

“The alleged big ideas are sophomoric clichés.” — Kyle Smith, New York Post

PRO: It’s significant!

“Transcendently  significant .”  — Harry Knowles,  Ain’t It Cool News

CON: What significant? 

“The film is elephantine and pretentious without being in the least bit  significant .”  — Kirk Honeycutt,  Honeycutt’s Hollywood

PRO: This critic loved it!

“Enthralling… far-reaching… grandiose.” — Leonard Maltin, Movie Crazy

CON: The exact same critic also hated it!

“Frustrating… obtuse… gimmicky.” — Leonard Maltin, Movie Crazy

PRO: It’s the best movie of the year!

“‘Cloud Atlas’ is the most daring and satisfying film of the year.” — Jeremy Kirk, First Showing

CON: Did I say best? I meant worst!

“‘Cloud Atlas’ is probably the worst big-budget film so far in 2012.” — Paul Chambers, Movie Chambers

Now it’s up to audiences to decide. I think you should see it. At the very least, the post-screening conversations should be mighty interesting.

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Metacritic reviews

Cloud atlas.

• 80 Variety Variety As inventive narratives go, there's outside the box, and then there's pioneering another dimension entirely, and this massive, independently financed collaboration among Tom Tykwer and Wachowski siblings Lana and Andy courageously attempts the latter.
• 67 IndieWire Eric Kohn IndieWire Eric Kohn Tom Hanks' appearances come across like scene changes between unfunny sketches on 'Saturday Night Live.'
• 63 Slant Magazine Ed Gonzalez Slant Magazine Ed Gonzalez Its ideas are paralleled, its themes twinned, sometimes breathlessly, sometimes fatuously, into what may be described as a 164-minute pop song of seemingly infinite verses, choruses, and bridges. Perhaps expectedly, it soars as often as it thuds.
• 60 Boxoffice Magazine Mark Keizer Boxoffice Magazine Mark Keizer The movie version has the exciting and challenging parts down but the moral awakening it so strenuously wants us to experience remains beyond its reach.
• 50 The Hollywood Reporter The Hollywood Reporter Not quite soaring into the heavens, but not exactly crash-landing either, Cloud Atlas is an impressively mounted, emotionally stilted adaptation of British author David Mitchell's bestselling novel.
• 50 Time Richard Corliss Time Richard Corliss Most viewers are likely to be impressed more by the magnitude of the effort than the magnificence of the effect. Cloud Atlas is a Terry Gilliam movie without the kinks, a Wong Kar-wai film without the smoky dreamscape, a time-and-Space Oddity that remains frustratingly earthbound. Put it another way: this is no "Speed Racer."
• 42 The Playlist Kevin Jagernauth The Playlist Kevin Jagernauth Too long by at least a half hour, and both dull and repetitive as it goes on, Cloud Atlas reaches for envelope-pushing storytelling but never delivers on its promise.
• 40 The Guardian Henry Barnes The Guardian Henry Barnes Tykwer and the Wachowskis' other twist on this karmic hokum - to cast each of their actors in multiple roles across the stories, regardless of age or race - is less successful.
• 40 New York Magazine (Vulture) David Edelstein New York Magazine (Vulture) David Edelstein The cast comes off like a third-rate stock company on the matinee after the night on which everyone got bombed on mescal (and possibly mescaline).
• 10 L.A. Weekly L.A. Weekly A manifesto in the form of an enormously budgeted quasi-sci-fi epic, Cloud Atlas is evidently personal, defiantly sincere, totally lacking in self-awareness, and borderline offensive in its gleeful endorsement of revenge violence against anyone who gets in the way of a good person's self-actualization. The rest of the time, it's just insipid, TV-esque in its limited visual imagination, and dramatically incoherent.
• See all 45 reviews on Metacritic.com
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These 4 drama movies with over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes are coming to Netflix in June 2024

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Netflix has proved time and time again that it's a safe bet for movie nights, and this month is no different, with there being plenty of choice in everything new on Netflix in June . Out of this month's list, we wouldn't miss these four powerful dramas joining its mix of movies – all with scores above 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Whether you're more drawn to romance dramas, coming-of-age movies, or revenge stories, this list has you covered. And since all four of our picks have attained critical acclaim on Rotten Tomatoes, each has a chance of making it to our list of best Netflix movies . But for now, here are our four dramas coming to Netflix you don't want to miss in June 2024.

Tangerine (2015)

RT score:  96% Director:  Sean Baker Runtime:  88 minutes Age rating:  R Arriving on:  June 1

A24 movies tend to be very well received on Rotten Tomatoes, and Tangerine's score of 96% sits nicely alongside Sean Baker's other successes The Florida Project (2017), also at 96%, and Red Rocket (2021) at 90%. In Tangerine , the movie follows trans sex worker Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) who learns that her boyfriend and pimp cheated on her when she was in prison. She bands together with best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor), and they set out to teach him a lesson.

La La Land (2016)

RT score:  91% Director:  Damien Chazelle Runtime:  128 minutes Age rating:  PG-13 Arriving on:  June 1

Chazelle's musical drama combines colorful cinematography and a lively soundtrack to create a powerful love story set with the backdrop of Hollywood, earning Emma Stone the Best Actress Oscar in 2017. Mia (Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) both long for successful careers in showbiz, and their shared ambitions is what brings them together. When their individual careers take off, the high-demand nature of their jobs begin to tarnish their romance, forcing them to question the sustainability of their relationship.

Aftersun (2022)

RT score:  96% Director:  Charlotte Wells Runtime:  101 minutes Age rating:  R Arriving on:  June 21

The most recently released entry in our list is the debut feature from director Charlotte Wells, scoring a respectable 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. Well's emotive coming-of-age story follows father and daughter duo Calum (Paul Mescal) and Sophie (Frankie Corio) while on a vacation they took together 20-years ago. Between Sophie's memories and imagined 'what ifs?', she puts the pieces of their relationship together to make peace with the father she always knew, but also the man she never got to know.

Carol (2015)

RT score:  94% Director:  Todd Haynes Runtime:  118 minutes Age rating:  R Arriving on:  June 17

Todd Haynes' romance drama is carried by the acting talents of lead actresses Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Set in 1950s New York, budding photographer Therese (Mara) meets Carol (Blanchett) at a department store, and a spark is immediately ignited between the two. As their feelings towards each other grow stronger, they must keep their love quiet or face the consequences that so many same-sex relationships suffered in 1950s society.

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