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2. Cloud Atlas I really struggled with the decision of placing this movie, one of my personal guilty pleasure favorites, at the top of the list. The book on which it is based touched me like no other piece of literature ever has or likely could. So, going into it, I was hopelessly biased in its favor.

The book is narrated like a Russian Doll - it proceeds from one story to the next, skipping forward in time from the 19th Century, touching the 22nd at some point, and then reverting back to complete each vignette one at a time. Each story is connected to the other thematically, physically, and through the spirituality that is the “atlas of clouds” that is the principal motif for the story. To adapt this into a movie is, to say the least, a gargantuan task.

I think the Wachowskis did as good a job as you would expect - they realized that movie audiences would not understand the significance of the stories as they relate to each other with the Russian Doll structure, so they instead jumped around the stories. This works well on the big screen, as does the trick of using the same group of actors to depict different characters in the different stories. It is a simple but clever way to convey the interconnectedness that the book portrays.

On top of all of this, the soundtrack, the solid performances by Tom Hanks and even Halle Barry, and the aesthetics of the difference pieces all unite to make a beautiful, touching, and inspiring movie. Perhaps one needs to understand the entire message that is inherent in the book - good can triumph through time and is worthy as a pursuit in and of itself - to appreciate the beauty of this film, but that message is one that is not to be missed.

The whole point is that the 22nd Century is this century, and the last, and all of them.

1. Avatar Like with James Cameron’s other phenomenal box office success, Titanic, Avatar has its fair share of detractors. But, in my view, people love to hate what is popular.

There are many measures of what makes a movie great. But consider this one: after James Cameron’s two films, the closest pursuer, this year’s Jurassic World, is one billion dollars behind it at the worldwide box office (without even adjusting for inflation). Think about it. Jurassic World made a billion overseas (and over $650 million here)—it was, without mincing words, spectacular, unequaled success. It would have to make another billion dollars, however, to get close to Avatar.

If you have made a piece of art that attracts people over and over and over again to pay money to repeatedly experience it, that is a great movie, in my view. You or I may not like the movie, we may point to “plot” originality issues, or nitpick this or that piece of dialogue. But the movie, as a piece of entertainment, worked. Period.

And I happen to be a huge fan of Avatar. Technological breakthroughs aside, the filming is, in true Cameron style, exquisite, detailed, and flawless. The Pocahontas-like story is, to be sure, not the strongest link in the chain, but it is an action movie and the romance is believable enough. Issues that create anxiety for today’s humans - war, scarcity, hunger, survival - permeate the story, and thereby depict a respectable view of what the 22nd Century could be like.

Cameron is working on two sequels, neither of which has a prayer of reaching the glory of this movie (the real question is “does Star Wars?” but that is for other people who know about that stuff to tell you). The challenge is to make them good enough to still be successful. May the odds be, of course, ever in his favor.

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