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Hugh Grant
'Cloud Atlas'? Shrug ★★ 1/2
'Cloud Atlas'? Shrug ★★ 1/2

A big-budget film's marketing mission is simple: Eliminate the idea of an unsuspecting audience. Did people know what they were getting when they got "Transformers: Dark of the Moon"? Yes. They got what they were shown in the 30-second ads, over and over and over. Now and then, though, a movie comes along defying shorthand description. Adapted from David Mitchell's spinning top of a novel, "Cloud Atlas" exists to vex, intrigue and discombobulate unsuspecting audiences six ways to Sunday. It tackles nothing less than the oppressors and the oppressed throughout centuries of humanity; the reverberations of karmic payback across the oceans; the dangers of...