Cloud Atlas (Blu-ray/DVD + UltraViolet Digital Copy Combo Pack)

Future. Present. Past. Everything is connected. An exploration of how the actions of individual lives impact one another in the past, present and future, as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and an act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution.The story is a time-shifting weave of six interlinking narratives, with diverse settings from the savagery of a Pacific Island in the 1850s to a dystopian Korea of the near future. Based on the New York Times best-selling novel "Cloud Atlas" written by David Mitchell.

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