Jay Kelly: A sublime character study

Jay Kelly (2025) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.14.25

The opening Sylvia Plath quote says it all:

 

“It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else, or nobody at all.”

 

Flanked by publicist Liz (Laura Dern, center left) and best friend/handler Ron (Adam
Sandler, center right), Jay Kelly (George Clooney) cheerful interrupts his morning to
sign autographs for adoring fans.

Jay Kelly (George Clooney) has it all: a long and successful film career; a devoted entourage, including best friend and handler Ron Sukenick (Adam Sandler); and the admiration and respect of fans, friends and professional colleagues.

 

He is one with Gary Cooper, Cary Grant and Robert De Niro: shapeshifters and chameleons of identity, with faces that represent something personal to millions.

 

But.

 

Jay’s nature, even when the cameras are off, remains a pose; he has no sense of self. His relationship with daughters Jessica (Riley Keough) and Daisy (Grace Edwards) is strained at best, estranged at worst. They’ve grown up seeing him repeatedly forsake them for the work: another movie, another months-long absence. Their mother and Jay’s other exes are distant memories.

 

He takes Ron for granted, failing to recognize the strain this keeps putting on his family.

 

Jay is selfish … and he’s so far gone, he’s incapable of recognizing this.

 

To be sure, he’s affable, suave and generous with the public; he’s also wheedling and persuasive, and knows how to get his way. After all, he has been doing it for decades. (This is George Clooney, after all; the man exudes charm and savoir faire the way the rest of us breathe.)

 

And yet …

 

Of late, Jay has begun to relive past choices: confronted by ghosts from his past, awakened to the shallowness of his present. And with this rising awareness comes a feeling he can’t quite identify:

 

Regret.

 

This plays out in director Noah Baumbach’s masterfully composed film, which enchants from its initial scene: cinematographer Linus Sandgren’s stunning, single-take tracking shot that follows the set-up and shooting of Jay’s final scene in his new movie, Eight Men from Now. Baumbach’s script, co-written with Emily Mortimer, is a masterful blend of drama, gentle humor, angst and character dynamics, brought to life by richly nuanced performances from Clooney and Sandler. Both are sure bets for Academy Award nominations.

 

(I understand the eyebrow lift. Adam Sandler, in a subtly shaded straight role? Hey, watch this film, then get back to me.)

The Duke: Larceny with a twist

The Duke (2020) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and brief sexuality

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.29.22

This is another great one for the Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction file.

 

On the very early morning of August 21, 1961, somebody broke into London’s National Gallery and stole Francisco Goya’s painting, “Portrait of the Duke of Wellington.” The carefully calculated crime baffled police, who assumed that the caper must have been masterminded by a professional gang of experienced Italian art thieves.

 

Kempton (Jim Broadbent) promises, after one final attempt, that he'll stop fighting the
BBC over its television license fees. Alas, his wife Dorothy (Helen Mirren) isn't
sure that she believes him...

Four years later, the painting was returned by 61-year-old Kempton Bunton, a disabled pensioner who subsequently confessed to the crime.

That was wild enough … but what happened at Bunton’s subsequent trial was so audacious, that it prompted an amendment of British law.

 

Director Roger Michell’s delightful depiction of these astonishing events, a cheeky slice of gentle British whimsy, is fueled by endearing performances from Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, as Kempton and his wife, Dorothy. Michell, cinematographer Mike Eley and editor Kristina Hetherington deliberately emphasize a retro look, atmosphere and pacing, strongly evoking a sense that their film could have been made during the 1960s.

 

Screenwriters Richard Bean and Clive Coleman compress the time frame, but otherwise present the saga pretty much as it actually went down; they were blessed, during production, with hitherto unrevealed details supplied by Bunton’s grandson.

 

Kempton is introduced as a taxi driver and frustrated playwright — his latest opus is a reimagining of the scriptures with Jesus as a woman (!) — who has long been annoyed by the BBC’s television license fee. His sad efforts to stoke public awareness with a home-grown campaign — “Free TV for the OAP (Old Age Pensioners)” — has gone nowhere; he also has been imprisoned several times, for non-payment of the license fee.

 

(Tossed into Durham Prison for two weeks, for refusing to pay a television fee? Seriously?)

 

Not much later, a wealthy American art collector purchases Goya’s painting for £140,000, with the intention of taking it to the United States. Scandalized by the thought of losing this precious artwork, the British government buys it back for the same sum. Kempton becomes outraged, while watching the resulting press conference on (his illegal) TV, grousing the such a sum could have provided free television to thousands of OAPs.

 

Kempton obsesses over the painting — much to Dorothy’s long-suffering dismay — visits it often, and views it as a tangible example of everything wrong with government spending. He learns that the gallery’s sophisticated alarm system is deactivated during early mornings, so the cleaning crew can work; access can be made via a window in an upstairs bathroom.

 

And — hey, presto! — the painting winds up in the Bunton’s Newcastle flat. He and younger son Jackie (Fionn Whitehead) cleverly conceal it by constructing a false back to a bedroom wardrobe.

 

But now what?

Mary and the Witch's Flower: A disappointing bloom

Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.15.20

Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli clearly has inspired the look and narrative approach of Japanese animated cinema.

When encouraged to look around an office laden with all manner of strange artifacts
and colorful treasures, Mary discovers a mirror with a concealed compartment
behind it, which contains a book of powerful magic spells.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower comes by this influence honestly, since director/co-scripter Hiromasa Yonebayashi helmed 2010’s The Secret World of Arrietty and 2014’s When Marnie Was There for Ghibli, earning an Academy Award nomination for the latter.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower marks Yonebayashi’s directorial debut for his own recently founded Studio Ponoc. Although it has the gorgeous, hand-drawn lushness of a Ghibli production, Yonebayashi didn’t pay sufficient attention to the story and its characters; too much of the action feels random and unfocused, as if we’re watching the abbreviation of a much richer miniseries.

This is also one of those aggravating fantasies that fails to remain consistent to its own rules, and where characters, good and bad, are only as strong — or weak — as a given moment demands.

Which is sad, given that the film is adapted from Mary Stewart’s popular 1971 children’s book, The Little Broomstick. Yonebayashi and co-scripter Riko Sakaguchi have done it no favors; they’ve overloaded Stewart’s gently rural fable with a slice of steampunk that feels quite out of place.

(Yonebayashi clearly has a fondness for British children’s novels; The Secret World of Arrietty was based on Mary Norton’s The Borrowers.)

Matters aren’t helped by the fact that Netflix limits us to the dubbed British voice cast, robbing us of the more story-appropriate Japanese actors.

Mary opens with a cataclysmic prologue, as a young girl attempts to escape from a conflagration that destroys some sort of immense structure; she’s pursued by slithery, gelatinous creatures out of nightmare, their grasping tentacles attempting to absorb her. She seems to get away, but then a final blast of wind knocks her and the flying broom to ground in a forest, where tiny glowing blue spheres — which she has carefully sheltered — burst and have a most unusual effect on nearby trees and animals.

Dolittle: Animal crackers

Dolittle (2020) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.17.20

Hollywood had a distressing habit, in the 1960s and early ’70s, of turning classic children’s books into musicals.

Having joined the unlikely crew of a ship heading for an island that never has been found,
young Tommy Stubbins (Harry Collett) is befriended by a frigophobic polar bear (named
Yoshi) and an uncharacteristically meek mountain gorilla (Chee-Chee).

This lamentable trend started with 1964’s Mary Poppins, which — by becoming that year’s third most popular film — lit the fuse on what followed. Subsequent entries, most with positively dire songs, included 1968’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (as 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and — I positively shudder — 1973’s Tom Sawyer.

Not to be left out, animated examples included 1966’s Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, 1970’s The Phantom Tollbooth and 1973’s Charlotte’s Web.

Every one of which, without exception, destroyed the gentle tone so carefully wrought by the authors of the respective books. A few of these films may have been popular — most were just this side of awful — but many loyal young readers felt utterly betrayed, with ample justification. Hollywood didn’t “get” children’s literature any better than it understood the decade’s counter-culture revolution.

All of which brings us to 1967’s Doctor Dolittle, arguably one of the worst offenders. Rex Harrison may have been suitably refined and British in the title role — albeit much too old — but the film is a bloated, over-produced train wreck that pleased nobody, but nonetheless pulled nine Academy Award nominations (including, the mind doth boggle, Best Picture) … only because 20th Century Fox bought votes by serving fancy buffet dinners, cocktails and bottomless champagne at all pre-nomination screenings.

(The ploy succeeded, if only partially. The film won two Oscars — Special Effects and Song — the latter robbing Bacharach/David’s vastly superior “The Look of Love” from its rightful statuette.)

Harrison turned British author Hugh Lofting’s quiet bachelor veterinarian, who operates a clinic in the small village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, into a creaky song-and-dance man. Eddie Murphy made him a wise-cracking animal rights advocate in a 1998 comedy that borrowed little but the title and premise of Lofting’s books.

Robert Downey Jr., in turn, has turned Dolittle into a superhero.

Bridget Jones's Baby: A droll delivery

Bridget Jones's Baby (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for frequent profanity and sexual candor, and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang 

There’s much to enjoy about Bridget Jones’s Baby, starting with the welcome return of both Britain’s favorite “singleton,” and the irrepressible Renée Zellweger, who continues to portray her with such ditzy panache.

Two very concerned guys — Mark (Colin Firth, left) and Jack (Patrick Dempsey) — a very
pregnant Bridget (Renée Zellweger) about to pop, and a revolving door: a guaranteed
recipe for falling-down hilarity.

We’ve not seen Bridget on the big screen since 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason — a disappointing film based on, let’s face it, creator Helen Fielding’s weakest novel — and we’ve not glimpsed Zellweger since her self-imposed exile in 2010, after a string of flops in quite rapid succession.

It’s nice to visit both again, particularly since this new film gets back to basics, with Bridget’s original director Sharon Maguire once more calling the shots. (Maguire opted out of the aforementioned first sequel. Wise move.)

Zellweger quickly wins our hearts in this film’s opening scene, as a doleful Bridget celebrates her 43rd birthday in her flat, alone, with only a cupcake, a single candle and some questionable music for company. It’s a heartbreaking moment certain to be recognized by anybody forced to mark a holiday or milestone event, while caught between constant companions.

Fortunately, the melancholy tone turns droll when Bridget defiantly clicks to another track and then pulls a Tom Cruise — his air guitar solo, to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll,” at the beginning of Risky Business — by bopping about to House of Pain’s “Jump Around.”

It must be noted that the cinematic Bridget now inhabits a parallel reality quite distinct from that of her literary counterpart; this must make Fielding’s life interesting, given that she also co-scripted this third big-screen outing, alongside Dan Mazer and Emma Thompson. Mazer is an unexpected choice, given that his other writing credits are mostly for Sacha Baron Cohen burlesques; his touch perhaps explains some of Bridget’s dumber physical pratfalls here. (Falling face-first into a mud puddle? Seriously? Isn’t that, like, 30 years out of fashion?)

Thompson, on the other hand, is well known for her wit and writing prowess, both of which are well suited to Fielding’s tone and Bridget’s sensibilities. Thompson also has a significant supporting role in this frequently arch rom-com, and — surprise — she gets all the best lines. Wait for the corker concerning guys and pubs.

Eddie the Eagle: Truly soars

Eddie the Eagle (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for mildly suggestive material and partial nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.26.16

Winning isn’t everything.

Sometimes merely participating, and doing your best, is enough. More than enough.

When Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman, left) finally, reluctantly, agrees to help train wannabe
ski-jumper Michael "Eddie" Edwards (Taron Egerton), the task proves an uphill challenge
for a young man with no athletic grace whatsoever.

We tend to forget, after the increasingly overblown sequels, that in his 1976 film debut, Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa merely wanted to “go the distance.” And that’s all he did, which is — in great part — what makes that film such an endearing classic.

British director Dexter Fletcher’s charming Eddie the Eagle is cut from the same cloth. This whimsical underdog saga is fueled by an engaging performance from Taron Egerton, superbly cast as Michael “Eddie” Edwards, the wannabe British ski-jumper who made such an improbable — and improbably triumphant — showing at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.

An opening statement is careful to note that this big-screen account of Edwards’ exploits is “inspired” by actual events, which allows scripters Simon Kelton and Sean Macaulay to play fast and loose with a few details. They’re careful to retain the essential broad strokes that brought Edwards to Calgary, and of course his performance at the Olympics is a matter of record (and can be viewed in any number of YouTube videos).

But various supporting characters have been conflated or invented outright, in the manner we’d expect from a crowd-pleasing, feel-good movie. That’s less of an issue in this particular case, as such liberties merely augment the myth-making that put Edwards in the history books. Somehow, it feels appropriate.

Besides which, when the result is this enjoyable, it’s hard to complain.

We meet young Eddie as the bespectacled only child of working-class Cheltenham parents Janette (Jo Hartley) and Terry (Keith Allen), the latter a construction plasterer by trade. Despite poor vision, worse knees — the boy is shackled into a leg brace — and an utter lack of coordination, Eddie lives and breathes a foolish notion of growing up to become an Olympian.

Fletcher brings us through Eddie’s childhood with a brief prologue that highlights the boy’s stubborn pluck, much to the delight of his doting mother, and the exasperation of his aggrieved father. Hartley and Allen are delightful: She’s the mum we’d all love to have, while Allen — all bluster and bluff — makes ample use of his busy background as a popular character actor.

And how can we not adore a child who believes that holding his breath underwater for not quite a minute will qualify for some obscure Olympic event?

The Lady in the Van: Driven to delightful distraction

The Lady in the Van (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for a fleeting unsettling image
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.19.16

Some plays make awkward films, the very nature of their enclosed stage universe rendered claustrophobic on the big screen.

When Alan (Alex Jennings) cautiously worries about his new "permanent interloper's"
ability to drive — let alone whether she even possesses a license — the feisty Miss
Shepherd (Maggie Smith) shrugs him off with one of her imperious displays of
dignified entitlement.

That absolutely isn’t the case with The Lady in the Van, which opens up quite cleverly under the guidance of director Nicholas Hytner and scripter Alan Bennett. The latter has adapted this charming little drama from his own play, which debuted in 1999 in London’s West End, and which in turn was based on actual events recorded in his exhaustive memoirs.

Maggie Smith starred in the stage production, and also played the same role in a BBC Radio adaptation. No surprise, then, that she delivers a crisp, saucy and richly memorable performance in this cinematic version.

She plays Mary Shepherd, an elderly homeless woman who lives in a dilapidated van that she has trundled about a bucolic North London street called Gloucester Crescent, a neighborhood which — in this late 1960s setting — hosts various British stage and literary luminaries. As introduced in Hytner’s film, we get the vague sense that “Miss Shepherd” has made a habit of parking in front of a given house until her sloppy ways prove too distressing, at which point she fires up the van and moves elsewhere along the lane.

Her eccentric behavior comes to the attention of playwright, screenwriter, actor and author Alan Bennett (Alex Jennings) when he moves into the neighborhood, taking the house at No. 23. She’s rather hard to miss — given the combination of street rubbish and feisty imprecations that trail in her wake — and Bennett’s new neighbors are only too happy to supply details and rumors.

They’ve all kinda/sorta tolerated Miss Shepherd, out of a sense of liberal guilt that prompts them into occasional deliveries of food, reading material and any other small items they assume she might find useful. Parents cluck when their children, passing too close to Miss Shepherd, wrinkle their noses and complain that “she smells bad.”

Here, too, Bennett’s descriptive prose paints marvelous word pictures, when (for example) his running commentary describes her aromatic miasma as an “odoriferous concerto ... with urine only a minor component.”

Brooklyn: Endearing coming-of-age drama

Brooklyn (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for brief sensuality
By Derrick Bang

There’s a moment in this film when Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) pauses at the top of the stairs in her home in tiny Enniscorthy, Ireland.

Director John Crowley holds on this hushed and wordless tableau, as Eilis thoroughly scans her bedroom, and the room immediately adjoining. Ronan’s expression is intent and focused, her carefully composed gaze a blend of determination and regret.

Eilis (Saoirse Ronan, second from right) listens warily as Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters, center
rear) responds to some thinly veiled gibes from Patty (Emily Bett Rickards, far left) and
Diana (Eve Macklin, second from left). Given half a chance, Eilis knows, Patty and Diana
will make fun of her.

And we understand that she’s memorizing these rooms — this childhood haven where she grew up — certain in the knowledge that she’ll never return. The realization is heartbreaking: one of the most poignant leave-takings I’ve ever seen on the big screen.

Brooklyn is filled with emotionally powerful moments, most given additional heft by Ronan’s exquisitely sensitive performance. She has the added benefit of excellent material; Colm Tóibín’s acclaimed 2009 novel of the same title has been deftly adapted by Nick Hornby, an excellent novelist and screenwriter (About a Boy, An Education) with a strong sense of dialogue and interpersonal dynamics.

This is a gentle, simple tale: also an ironically timely one, given the current national — and international — furor regarding immigrants. Crowley and Hornby couldn’t have anticipated such real-world turbulence during production, and therefore cannot be credited (or blamed) for deliberately creating subtle advocacy cinema.

At the same time, it’s nice to be reminded of the American values that have made our “land of the free, home of the brave” such a cherished destination for so many people from throughout the world, and for so long.

Occasional cultural references pinpoint this story in 1952 and ’53. Eilis has spent her entire life in Enniscorthy; we meet her during a final shift at a local all-purpose shop run by Miss “Nettles” Kelly (Brid Brennan), a condescending harridan who clearly enjoys embarrassing her less refined customers.

Work is scarce throughout Ireland, and under ordinary circumstances Eilis’ prospects would be extremely limited. But she’s lucky; her older sister Rose (Fiona Glascott), with assistance from Catholic priests on both sides of the Atlantic, has arranged for Eilis to emigrate to Brooklyn, New York.

Departure is bittersweet at best; although Eilis is excited, the bond with her sister is strong, as is a shared concern for their somewhat frail and lonely mother (Jane Brennan), who never fully recovered from her husband’s death.

The ocean journey, though not without incident, is cleverly condensed by Hornby; it also sets up a “passing it forward” encounter that comes to fruition, quite poignantly, toward the end of the film.

The 2014 Oscar Shorts: Petite delights

The 2014 Oscar Shorts (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.6.15

Much as I anticipate this annual opportunity to focus on big-screen “short stories,” the 2014 Academy Award nominees — as a group — are a bit disappointing.

To be sure, both the live-action and animated categories offer several strong nominees. But others are unsatisfying, even puzzling. The respective nominating committees sometimes focus more on form than content — chiefly with animated shorts — and that’s particularly true this year.

As a result, you’re unlikely to greet the entire road-show package with the same delight and enthusiasm generated by those from previous years; the 2014 nominees are noteworthy more for isolated pockets of excellence, rather than overall superiority.

To cases, then, starting with the live-action nominees:

Irish director Michael Lennox’s Boogaloo and Graham is charming, thanks to Ronan Blaney’s droll script and fine performances by the film’s two young stars. Riley Hamilton and Aaron Lynch play Jamesy and Malachy, the sons of working-class parents (Martin McCann and Charlene McKenna) who maintain an uneasy co-existence with occupational British soldiers in 1978 Belfast.

The boys have little to call their own, and therefore are thrilled when their soft-hearted father surprises them with two baby chicks. The boys name their new pets Boogaloo and Graham, and soon amuse their neighbors by “leashing” the birds and taking them for walks. But as the chicks grow into chickens, their mother becomes increasingly annoyed by the bother, and eventually issues an ultimatum.

The result of which leads to a particularly ingenious conclusion.

The British actually have a tendency to stand out in this category, with A-list stars often lending their talents; I still remember how much I enjoyed Martin Freeman and Tom Hollander, in last year’s The Voorman Problem. They’re matched this year by Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent, both sensational in director Mat Kirby’s The Phone Call.

Hawkins, Oscar-nominated for 2013’s Blue Jasmine, stars as Heather, a shy young woman employed at a telephone crisis center, where she can’t work up the nerve to chat with the good-looking guy (Edward Hogg) who handles one of the other phones. But such idle thoughts are forgotten when she receives a call from a distraught old man named Stan (Jim Broadbent), who can barely speak through his misery.

To Heather’s mounting terror, Stan admits to having taken an overdose of pills, but he refuses to divulge any helpful information regarding his whereabouts. We never see Broadbent: just hear his voice on the phone, or from a point within his home where he’s not quite in view ... but he’s easy to recognize, and he’s mesmerizing.

As is Hawkins. Kirby keeps her face in tight close-up, and the actress works this scenario with heart-stopping conviction. Her emotional intensity is absolutely shattering.

Kirby co-wrote this script with James Lucas, and they build their 21-minute film to a very powerful conclusion.

Closed Circuit: They're watching us!

Closed Circuit (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity and brief violence
By Derrick Bang

Nobody does an edgy, paranoid espionage thriller better than the British.

No doubt it comes from living under the unblinking eyes of all those surveillance cameras. (Big Brother, indeed!)

With their supposedly slam-dunk case having gone increasingly pear-shaped, Martin
(Eric Bana) and Claudia (Rebecca Hall) wonder about their next step. Trouble is,
they shouldn't even be a "they"; because of the nature of this terrorism trial, Martin
and Claudia aren't supposed to communicate ... even when each begins to worry
about pernicious surveillance.

Way back in the day, Closed Circuit would have been a tidy little B-entry, designated as the bottom-of-the-bill companion to some prestige A production. The irony is that many of those so-called B-films were far more entertaining than their big-budget cousins.

The same can be said for Closed Circuit, which outshines several of this summer’s disappointing blockbusters: better acting and directing, and a vastly superior script.

And yet, sadly, it probably won’t make a dime. Getting released immediately prior to the Labor Day weekend is akin to television’s Saturday evening kiss-of-death timeslot: Nobody will notice.

That’s a shame, because scripter Steven Knight definitely knows his way around this genre, having previously dazzled us with his twisty plots for 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things and 2007’s Eastern Promises. This guy can write; he has a gift for putting ordinary people into extraordinary situations, while avoiding the burst of brilliant resourcefulness that turn American action stars into invulnerable, lone wolf superheroes.

When the two protagonists in this narrative eye each other bleakly, during a calm between storms, and acknowledge that there’s no way to put this particular Humpty Dumpty together again — no successful exit to the catastrophe — we know they’re right. The situation is beyond salvation, beyond their control.

And, maddeningly, it always has been.

Closed Circuit — marvelous triple-entendre title, by the way — opens its ripped-from-the-headlines story with a terrorist attack at a busy London market. With 120 civilians dead and the British public screaming for justice, an anonymous tip leads police to one surviving member of the suspected terrorist cell: Farroukh Erdogan (Denis Moschitto).

Preparations begin for what promises to be the trial of the century.

Cloud Atlas: Fair to partly opaque

Cloud Atlas (2012) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for violence, profanity, nudity, sexuality, drug use and often disturbing dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.26.12

Shirley MacLaine will adore this film, and I’m sure she already has done her part to goose sales of David Mitchell’s source novel.

Investigative journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry), poking about behind the scenes at a
nuclear power plant, is surprised when scientist Isaac Sachs (Tom Hanks, center)
doesn't turn her in to CEO Lloyd Hooks (Hugh Grant). She soon learns that Sachs has
just as much reason to be concerned by what is taking place under Hooks' watch.

Rarely has the interconnectivity of past lives been conveyed so cleverly on screen, and certainly never before with such audacious snap. Even if you snicker at the premise and the multiple casting gimmick — about which, more later — it’s impossible to deny the skill with which these half-dozen interlinked stories unfold.

Despite an indulgent length of nearly three hours, directors Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski maintain an impressive degree of suspense and momentum, layering cliff-hanger upon cliff-hanger. We can’t help being caught up in the vastness of this sweeping fantasy, or the intimacy of its individual storylines.

And yet, when all is done and the screen fades to black, it seems like a lot of fuss and bother about very little. Just as Christopher Nolan’s Inception was an overcooked journey to discover the identity of Rosebud, Cloud Atlas builds to its climax only as a means of reflecting upon the endurance of true love, and the notion that — historically, contemporarily or in a future yet to come — individuals can make a difference, and always have.

As one character says, “What is an ocean, but a multitude of drops?”

Not exactly an earth-shattering revelation, but I suppose the thought is comforting.

The interlaced narratives are driven, to a degree, by the shared memory of a piece of music: the Cloud Atlas Sextet, a symphony written by young ne’er-do-well Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw), during his 1936 stint as amanuensis to cranky old composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Jim Broadbent), years beyond his prime. The spirit of this music — actually composed by Tykwer and score collaborators Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil — imbues these and all other characters, and the theme itself bridges events from one time period to the next.