return to the trailer park

call me an old softy.  i watched bits of steven spielberg's saving private ryan [1998] while doing chores yesterday, and granted its schmaltz filmmaking, it is very good schmaltz filmmaking, so that at the last moment of the movie when an elderly ryan is facing the grave of captain miller [played with aplomb by tom hanks] and asks his wife if he's been a good man i fucking lost it.  i mean i broke down too.  by bookending the movie with the retun of ryan to france is a cinematic conceit but it worked marvelously.  like how bill knott wrote in a footnote to a poem about eugenio montale hating montale but being obsessed by the italian poet i feel the same way about steven speilberg.

then i read tonight in the new yorker about a new film directed by the wachowski siblings and german director tom tykwer [who directed the excellent run lola run [1998]] called cloud atlas and starring tom hanks my interest is piqued.  i'm not crazy about the matrix trilogy.  in fact i think they are rather precious hollywood blockbusters that thinks it invented a new cinematic language and action sequences but for the hong kong kung fu filmmakers of the 1970s and 1980s were already doing that stuff on limited budgets that the wachowskis spent over a hundred million. 

nevertheless tykwer is on board and the magazine piece about the film is glowing.  much in the piece emphasized abundant human goodness and kindness in the movie.  i'm getting mushy in my old age.  the film looks epic.  see for yourself.  below is an extended trailer and when you here the music to match the images and narration your eyes may get just a tad moist too.