Mila Kunis in Jupiter AscendingJUPITER ASCENDING

After months of previews in the wake of its delayed release, the big-budget sci-fi spectacle Jupiter Ascending - originally scheduled for summer 2014 - finally landed this past weekend. And with its opening, a question can now be asked: Was there any point at which Warner Bros. executives seriously considered pulling the plug on writers/directors/siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski's epic stinker? Maybe when Channing Tatum was cast as a human/wolf hybrid with a blond goatee and pointy ears? Or when an incensed Russian beat the hell out of his son with a throw pillow? Or when, for the performer's first scene, the Wachowskis handed Mila Kunis an all-too-symbolic toilet brush?

Tom Hanks and Halle Berry in Cloud AtlasCLOUD ATLAS

I've seen plenty of movies in which a number of excellent passages can't seem to blend into a satisfying whole. But prior to the release of Cloud Atlas, the film version of David Mitchell's sprawling 2004 novel, I don't think I'd ever seen a movie in which so many merely adequate sequences combine to form a whole that's not only satisfying but downright exhilarating. Directed by Tom Tykwer and siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski and running just shy of three hours, this genre fantasia should be a mess, and it oftentimes is. It's also, however, a hypnotic, glorious, grandly entertaining mess, one that's probably far more enjoyable than a more presentationally faithful adaptation would've been.