Oh, the various ups and downs I’ve experienced during the making of Cloud Atlas.

Up: they’re adapting one of my favourite novels!

Down: Oh shit, the Wachowskis are involved. I still haven’t forgiven them for The Matrix Reloaded and V For Vendetta.

Up: Tom Twyker is also involved. Brilliant! Perfume: The Story of a Murderer was one of the great unsung films of the last decade and it vastly improved upon the source material.

Up even further: A five minute trailer is released and it’s amazing. The music, visuals and the feeling behind it are perfect. This could be a really special film.

Down: I actually go and see the film.

Looks like my Wachowski-related fears were well-founded. A subtle, playful, philosophical book is turned into a gimmicky hodgepodge with too much action. There’s a lot to admire in the movie but there’s also a lot that is wrong.

Structurally, the film is a horrible, horrible mess. In the novel, you have six stories. One begins and then halfway through, it’s interrupted. And so on and so forth until you get to the final story, which is allowed to play out in its entirety. The remaining stories are then wrapped up until we end back up where we started.

The decision here, and it’s not an unreasonable one, is to cut back and forth between the different tales. But the editing is terrible. Sometimes you get long stretches where you never rest for more than sixty seconds on any one story. This restlessness harms the movie immeasurably and ensures that you’re never particularly invested in any of the characters. It kind of reminds me of the end of The Return of the Jedi where you have three battles going on at the same time and then also The Phantom Menace where you have four - there’s just too much cutting.

Part of me wishes that this was made as a BBC mini-series, with each episode focused exclusively on each yarn (and structured like the novel). It would allow each story to breath and help the larger meaning to come slowly into focus. I feel that someone like Krzysztof Kieślowski would have been perfect for this.

Instead we have to make do with the Wachowskis and Tom Twyker, who realise that the masses are an impatient lot and need to eat all of their cake at once. And so all the stories play out simultaneously.

At the beginning of the movie I was hopeful that this strategy would succeed. Once we get past the credits, each story is slowly introduced. Wonderful. This isn’t going to be the hyperactive mess it could be. [half an hour later] Oh fuck, they’re going crazy with the editing.

One glaring instance where the editing hurts the movie is during the Luisa Rey story. She’s a reporter who kicks a hornet’s nest at a nuclear power facility and her life ends up in jeopardy. Indeed, at one point, she’s even run off the road by the killer Bill Smoke.. In the book this works perfectly. You’ve spent time getting to know the character, you like her, you’re rooting for her and then she’s rammed off the road to her presumed death. You then have to wait a couple of hundred pages to find out what happened to her. It’s a great cliffhanger.

But in the film, the attempt on Rey’s life is intercut with other stories and the power and surprise of the moment is lost. And also, because the stories are all intercut, we immediately find out what happened to her.

The film also does a poor job of conveying the short, intense relationship between Rey and Dr Sachs (played by Tom Hanks in the movie). He meets her once, for about a minute, and next thing we know he’s on a plane, confessing his love for her before he’s assassinated. We don’t feel any of the passion between the two characters and the impact of his murder is lost. (The trailer does a far better job of conveying the emotions.)

I was also disappointed with how gimmicky the make-up looked (the actors play multiple characters). I can kind of understand the point of it. The filmmakers want to show how interconnected we all are and how we as people are tied to those who came before us and those who will live after we die. I also guess it was done for practical reasons. The film cost a massive $100m and it would have required many more actors to fill the roles had they not struck upon the idea of having a repertory (a couple more big name could have easily added a few more million to the budget). But some of the make-up looks terrible. Hugo Weaving as a woman works in a ghoulish kind of way (and suits the comic nature of the Timothy Cavendish story), and Tom Hanks as an Irish thug is surprisingly enjoyable, but Doona Bae as a white woman looks weird in the extreme, as does her as an hispanic lady. Susan Sarandon’s stunt nose in the first story is also glaringly horrible - there was absolutely no need for it and it only served to take me out of the movie.

My wife was also annoyed with the actors playing multiple roles for the broader philosophical implications. Do the characters played by each actor represent a reincarnated soul? And if so, why do some of the characters the actors play differ so wildly? Hugo Weaving seems to play nothing but pricks while Tom Hanks is all over the map (psycho, thief, lovestruck scientist, psycho, actor, hero). Personally, that aspect didn’t really bother me. I didn’t see each character played by each actor as a reincarnated soul - I just saw it as a technique; a visual way of illustrating that all of the stories (and the grander human story) are linked.

But it is a little annoying that the filmmakers decided to make more out of this element. In the novel it’s very subtle - the only suggestion is that each of the main characters has a birthmark in the shape of a comet. How does this link these people? After all, each one is connected in action - each one commits an act of rebellion or rails against an oppressive system. But does it mean that they’re the same spirit? It’s up to you.

But the movie is a lot more overt in this theme. But at the same time, it also serves to make things more confusing.

To offer a positive for the movie, I loved the story about Robert Frobisher. Rather bizarrely, the action is moved from Belgium in the novel to Edinburgh in the film (to tenuously link the story to the Timothy Cavendish one - in the movie they take part in the same building), but it’s the only tale that packs an emotional punch. The best scene in the film by a country mile is the one where the doomed composer hides from his lover while atop a spire in Cambridge. The sun is setting and Frobisher is ruined - he refuses to let his lover see him this way but spies on him for as long as he can. It’s one of the best scenes I’ve seen in a film for ages and Frobisher’s final suicide is just as powerful.

I also really enjoyed the Timothy Cavendish story. Here we get a few well-needed laughs. The highlight being the ‘injury by pussy’ scene. And although it felt a little rushed, the Luisa Rey story was also enjoyable. The murder of Sixsmith, in particular, was as strong, surprising and brutal as I hoped it would be. I just wish it would have packed more of an emotional wallop. In the book you really get the feeling of love that existed between Sixsmith and Frobisher and it has a poignancy that Sixsmith is reading these letters right before he’s killed. The movie manages to get the brutality across but misses out on the sadness.

A massive, major success for the film is the movie’s main musical theme. Having heard it in the trailer, it was somewhat annoying that it only appeared about two thirds of the way through the movie but it was amazing how significantly the film improved whenever it was used. It may be the best theme I’ve heard in a movie this decade.

It certainly ensures that the film ends on a high. Adam Ewing’s assertion that an ocean is a multitude of drops and that therefore each person has an importance and significance in the world, wouldn’t resonate as strongly without this musical theme playing.

But such moments only make the sense of disappointment harder to swallow. The Somni story, for instance, is a travesty - it’s turned into a Star Wars-esque action spectacle. And Tom Hanks as Henry Goose, trying to poison Adam Ewing, is unsubtle in the extreme. When I read the book, Goose’s malice wasn’t apparent to me at all but here it’s signposted from the beginning. And Hanks really needs to be pelted with several large hams for his acting at the end of this story.

I also found, on film, that the Sloosha’s Crossin’ story was almost completely incomprehensible. I found it really hard going in places. And the depiction of ‘Old Georgie’ was heavy-handed in the extreme.

I guess this kind of means that I give a thumbs up to the stories directed by Tom Twyker and a thumbs down to the ones directed by the Wachowskis. A couple of years ago this would have validated my smug belief that the Wachowskis are talentless hacks but they won me over with their passion for Mitchell’s book - there’s a YouTube video where they display an infectious enthusiasm for the novel. Therefore it brings me nothing but sadness to say that they failed the book - their segments are easily the weakest. I only wish now that Twyker would have got to make the whole thing.

The Lovely Bones sees Peter Jackson returning to Heavenly Creatures territory. His latest film deals with adolescence and murder, and once again it allows his imagination to cut loose. But while Heavenly Creatures featured a fantasy world that was the creation of the characters, The Lovely Bones spends a lot of time in purgatory and heaven.

I wish I could say that the sequences with the dead Susie Salmon are engaging and well realized, but they get submerged in an avalanche of CGI. Landscapes continually change and Susie waltzes through her new world but at no time does the environment feel tangible. It never feels like you could reach out and touch it. But at the same time it doesn’t feel otherworldly. It’s a bunch of poorly rendered, idyllic locations on earth that are supposed to resemble heaven because of their perfection. But rather than go to the real places and film, Jackson instead uses lots and lots of greenscreen – and bad greenscreen at that.

Some of the imagery is also trite. There’s a bit where Susie and her friend come to grips with their new reality and begin enjoying themselves. They prance through fields, pretend they’re famous and even play on a floating planet that is about as big as a wrecking ball. The last image in particular looked ridiculous. All of a sudden it was like I was playing Super Mario Galaxy – the visuals are exactly the same.

The purgatory/heaven scenes also aren’t helped by Susie’s friend – a comedic Asian girl. Her performance resembles a titmouse that’s inhaled helium – she jitters back and forth while squeaking in a baby voice. It’s cringe-worthy.

Another risible character is that of Susie’s grandmother. Again she’s meant to provide some light relief, but she just made me roll my eyes. She’s a shallow drunkard with a heart of gold – the kind of woman who makes her grandchildren do chores for her while she naps with a glass of bourbon in her hand. People like this aren’t secretly wise and they’re not endearing. They’re losers and they’re windbags. They don’t have golden nuggets of information to share with you in your darkest hours – they just want to raid the liquor cabinet. And there’s even a scene where the grandmother does just that – while giving advice she searches the cabinets for booze. It’s meant to be endearing but the character is far too shallow and glib to generate any warmth.

Going back to Susie, though, the film is more successful when the dead girl interacts with the real world. There’s a nice scene where her father sees a candle and the reflection in the window differs from the reality he sees before his eyes. He senses that it’s Susie’s spirit trying to communicate with him. And there’s another scene where a dead rose blooms in his hand and he suddenly knows who the killer is. It’s in these scenes where the fantastic feels like an organic part of the story, rather than an excuse to indulge in dodgy CGI.

Another moment I enjoyed was when a local girl sees the spirit of Susie running through the street at the point that she’s murdered. It’s one of the few really good visuals in the film. Compare this with the moment where the dead Susie sees the reflection of her lost love in the lake. Hackneyed and schmaltzy, it kind of reminded me of a moment in Bitter Moon – however, in that film, I think the moment was played for laughs.

But while Susie’s interactions with the real world mostly work, there’s a truly execrable scene near the end. You see, Susie was in love with a guy called Ray and this Ray bloke is now friends with the girl who saw Susie’s ghost as she was being murdered. So they’re hanging out and then Susie’s spirit possesses the other girl and Ray and Susie kiss. It’s incredibly silly – Ray suddenly sees Susie in the other girl’s clothes and then she lays on the bed and asks him to kiss her. Even though she’s meant to be about fourteen she looks about twelve (he looks much older). Thankfully it’s not as icky as the equivalent scene in the novel but it still doesn’t work. I mean, how fucked up is it that a girl gets possessed by another girl and then gets boned? Couldn’t that be considered rape? It’s certainly not romantic.

Speaking of the adaptation, the murder here pales in comparison to the scene in the novel. What makes the murder so jarring in the book is how brutal it is. I mean, most of the book is pretty awful but the murder scene is superbly written. It doesn’t hold back and the murderer even rapes the poor girl. But the worst detail of all is the fact that the killer, to shut her up, shoves the girl’s hat in her mouth – a hat that has a jangle bell in it. The equivalent scene here, though, is sanitized – in order to get a PG-13 rating they’ve taken away the rape and taken away the jangle bell. They’ve made it far less shocking and thusly reduced its impact – the sense of outrage and injustice isn’t as intense as it was.

The filmmakers have also reduced the complexity of the relationship between mother and father. In the novel the mother has an affair with the police detective who leads the investigation. Here she just goes off because she can’t cope with her daughter’s death. To be fair, the affair didn’t really work and was terribly written but at least it was an attempt at adding some complexity to the story. Here, though, the filmmakers keep everything as simple as possible. I guess they thought it was a better idea to focus on Susie prancing about in a crappy CGI environment than to show how complicated grief is.

But it’s amazing how the film can be so long and yet the story can be so incredibly thin. Once Susie is killed, very little happens. There’s only one real suspense sequence – Susie’s sister suspects Mr Harvey of being the murderer and breaks into his place in order to find some incriminating evidence. Would you believe it, he comes back while she’s in the house and chases her. In order to escape, she jumps out of a window and seemingly badly injures herself. Oh no, he’s going to catch her as she writhes about on the floor! But when he closes to about a foot away from her, she jumps up and manages to outrun him. It’s incredibly badly choreographed.

I also think that the ending is incredibly anti-climatic. Just like in the novel, Mr Harvey is trying to pick up a girl so that he can kill her and an icicle falls and kills him. It’s divine justice and it’s supposed to show that what goes around comes around, but it’s an unsatisfying way of dispatching the main villain. Firstly it seems far too offhand and secondly, it’s dishonest – there’s no karmic justice in the world; shitty people get away with things and if they’re brought to justice it’s because they either fucked up or people worked hard to apprehend them. You can’t count on icicles falling from the sky.

Poor Drew. There he is working for a successful sports manufacturer, making lots of money and living the American dream. Then he has the misfortune of losing the company close to $1 billion by creating a disgusting sports shoe. Needless to say his boss isn’t terribly impressed. He’s going to lose his basketball team and his ‘global environmental project’. Therefore it’s quite understandable that Drew would be feeling rather low. And it’s not that surprising that he’s suicidal. But then his father croaks. Oh sweet fucking hell, here comes the pain. We’re going to be taken on a journey. We’re going to find out what makes life so fucking precious.

But just when you begin to baulk at the prospect of yet another twee, quirky, self-indulgent, life-affirming piece of shit, you meet Claire (Kirsten Dunst). And the way it’s filmed makes her role in the film immediately clear. Drew, by rigging a knife to an exercise bike in a hil-arious attempt at suicide, says that nothing is going to stop him from killing himself. Cut to Claire. Oh, so she’s his saviour? Okay. Too bad then that she’s a boring, narcissistic, egotistical puddle of monkey piss that would make any right-thinking individual want to shove a grenade in her huge fucking gob. Or at the very least she should tip a suicidal man over the edge and finally prove to him that there is no god and that life is futile and that the only solution is a warm knife implanted in one’s chest. What a worthless human being she is.

However, like a hungry dog begging for treats, the film asks us to love her. It wants us to fall for her. Too bad, then, that this dog has mange and needs putting down. For fuck’s sake, in her opening scene she not only makes a point of correcting Drew’s pronunciation, but she harasses him as he tries to get some sleep on the flight he’s on - she even switches his light back on as he tries to get some kip and draws a map for him so that he can find Elizabethtown. Oh how sweet. Oh how quirky. Yes, I just love colossal bores who just wont shut their mouths and who only care about stroking their own egos.

But it gets worse. In the same scene she then goes on to say that she’s a student of names. Apparently Bens are strangely delightful and intuitive. They’re even almost too complex to be around. Hey, I know a Ben quite well and that’s complete arse. He’s a simple-minded, miserable wanker. In your face you scary, teeny-toothed twat from hell!

But the pain hasn’t ended yet. When the flight lands, and as Drew is making his way through the airport, Claire chases after him. She shouts and repeats the name of the road he needs to take. But she doesn’t do it once. She doesn’t even do it twice. She does it three times. And then she takes a fake photo of the frightened man with her fingers as he almost runs away. Fuck me. This final action almost makes her look psychotic. Here’s this person I’ve just met and I’m already obsessing about him. What’s next? Is she going to kidnap him and fuck him brutally in the arse with a strap-on and then take a fake snap as blood seeps out of his distended anus and as he yelps in pain? Or is she going to saw off his testicles and feed them to him with a nice orange sauce and take another pic? With this girl anything is possible.

However, the things that happen later are worse. Far, far worse.

One of the worst scenes occurs after Claire and Drew sleep together. He chases her and then with one of the most disgusting smug grins I’ve ever seen, she says, ‘Just tell me you love me and get it over with.’ This she says to someone she’s known for a few days. This she says to someone who is obviously in distress (well, okay, it’s not entirely obvious, as Bloom can’t emote one bit, but the intention of the scene is that he’s sad). You self-obsessed bitch. Get over yourself. And then Drew confesses that he lost his company a billion dollars and says he’s a little upset. What’s Claire’s reaction? I think the dialogue goes something like this: ‘That’s it? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I guess I just thought a small part of you might be a small bit sad to see me go. But I guess this is just mostly about a shoe.’ You fucking narcissistic cunt. Yeah, everything is about you. How do you feel? How does this affect you? If I could have reached into the screen and throttled her, I would have.

But Claire isn’t the only narcissist. There’s also Drew’s mother. When her husband dies she declares that she wants to learn how to cook, how to laugh and how to tap dance. And tap dance she does at her husband’s funeral. And she does so to her husband’s favourite song, but it’s completely tokenistic. Again, it’s look at me! Look how great I am! But that aside, the scene is excruciating in how contrived it is. I tell you, if anyone tap dances at my funeral, I’ll come back from the dead and kill them. You’ve been warned.

Earlier in the scene there’s yet more evidence of how contrived the humour in the film is. Drew’s mother, who the locals are weary of, gets up and makes a speech. How does she win them over (before the hideous tap dancing)? She tells a story about a neighbour who offered her his condolences and then got a boner when he hugged her. Oh how risqué! Oh how amusing! It’s so far-fetched it has to be true! And that’s one of the many things I hate about this shit stain of a film. There’s not one normal person. Not one normal moment. Every little scene is self-consciously quirky. Yet the film is meant to exist in the real world. We’re meant to look at these people and go, ‘Oh, it’s just like my family!’ But reality is nothing like this. If it were, I’d have killed myself long ago.

To make matters worse, after the self-conscious quirkiness of the funeral (tap-dancing, prop birds catching fire, sprinklers going off, the daughter embracing the ‘rain’), the final section attempts to make some half-arsed statement about America. Yeah Drew. You thought you were living the American dream. You had it all: money, adulation, pussy. But the real American dream lies in the small towns, in the prairies, in the forests, in the rivers. This is what matters: the small things. And love and family, too. Except the person who’s teaching you this is an obnoxious psycho. I mean, a journey with hand-drawn maps and mix CDs? Sounds kind of cute. Sounds like fun. Except the person is a control freak and is telling you how to think and how to feel. Yeah, you and Claire are going to have fun Drew. I give it a year before she has your balls in a jar. Either that or the broken remains of her skull will lie scattered on the floor as you weep senselessly about the remains of your love. Either of those scenarios could happen.

But anyway, isn't this film meant to be about grief and the sense of loss we feel when we lose someone close to us? Well, yeah, it's meant to be about that, but instead it's about pop music and a vacuous cunt-stain. We learn next to nothing about Drew's father and very little about their relationship. All we see are a few idyllic snippets. The film just doesn't give a shit about exploring genuine emotions. Instead it wants to concentrate on dickless music (there's a song virtually every ten seconds) and self-indulgent moments. Yeah, screaming children are so precious. Yeah, it's so cute when someone takes a fake photo of you as you hold your father's ashes. Damm, what a wonderful place Elizabethtown is. If only everyone could go there we'd all be better people. More kind, more loving, more generous. All we need in order to cope with grief are loveable, unrealistic neighbours, a few crushingly bland tunes and the love of an ego-maniac. Let the healing begin.