Cloud Atlas is easily the most ambitious and unconventional film of 2012. Adapted from David Mitchell’s plethora-of-awards-winning novel of the same name by the Wachowskis (the Matrix trilogy) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), Cloud Atlas is unique and existentially stirring. An odyssey that branches across genre, gender and time, Cloud Atlas presents a series of stories, fundamentally connected by characters and patterns, from the South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a post-apocalyptic distant future.

The film is carried by the brilliant cast, featuring the likes of Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving and Ben Wishaw, who reappear throughout the various epochs of time, switching gender and race, binding the stories together.

Cloud Atlas sits comfortably on the ‘artistic’ side of the film spectrum and, for that reason, will prove to be more of a cult hit than a widely popular movie. Completely polarising – in the same, unavoidably dichotomous way that certain films separate the likes of mere fans and cinephiles. If you’re more of a casual moviegoer, you may find the film pretentious and confusing, but if you love film, you will appreciate Cloud Atlas’s unique perspective and thrilling style.