If you're lucky, sometimes the beauty just blows you away

With all the actors and actresses we know, there are roles in which we can envision them and others we can never imagine them playing.

A perfect example:

Hugh Grant, cannibal

Hugh Grant as the chieftain of a tribe of cannibals in what used to be Hawaii.

Now that's entertainment.

To be fair, the cannibal is only one of six roles Grant plays in the amazing "Cloud Atlas," the Wachowski's 2012 film that didn't really find an audience but may end up being better remembered than any of the popular films of the same time.

"Cloud Atlas" is based on a novel by David Mitchell and it tells six stories in six different settings over a period of nearly 500 years.

All the stories relate to the others, and one simple act of kindness in the first story resonates down through the centuries. Grant isn't the star. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving all play a variety of roles, and others including Susan Sarandon are all over the narrative as well.

Hanks has a marvelous time of it, playing the heavy in the first story, an amazingly lowbrow writer with a unique way of treating critics in another and a confused everyman in the final, dystopian story.

South Korean actress Doona Bae is transcendent as a clone who dares to be an individual and winds up as the focus of a new religion. When she says, "Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future," she basically gives us the point of Mitchell's story.

Then there is the dark side of life, and something that passes for a philosophy among the predators of the world.

"There is only one rule that binds all people, one governing principle that define's every relationship on God's green earth: The meek are meat, and the strong do eat."

As much as some people want to believe that's how the world works, it doesn't have to be. When the protagonist in the first story tells his angry father-in-law that he will devote his life to good works, the angry response is that he will never be more than a single drop in a limitless ocean. His response is to ask "What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?"

I have been watching movies for more than 50 years, and there are very few anymore that really surprise me. So many of today's films are remakes, sequels or rehashes of stories told time and again that all you can really do is appreciate good craftsmanship.

But once in a long while, something really unique comes along, something that takes you to a place you've never been before. I watched "Cloud Atlas" for the first time Saturday and watched it again today. It absolutely blows me away; I can't remember the last time I saw something so wonderful.

I was very happy to see that my favorite of all film critics, Roger Ebert, had the opportunity to view and review "Cloud Atlas" before he died. It wasn't that I needed him to help me understand the film, but I certainly was happy to see that he thought it was every bit as wonderful as I did."

From Ebert:

"But, oh, what a film this is! And what a demonstration of the magical, dreamlike qualities of the cinema. And what an opportunity for the actors. And what a leap by the directors, who free themselves from the chains of narrative continuity. And then the wisdom of the old man staring into the flames makes perfect sense."