One of the most original and fascinating films of 2012 was Cloud Atlas co-written from David Mitchell’s award winning 2004 novel and co-directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer.

From 1996-2008 the Wachowskis were billed as the The Wachowski Brothers, Larry and Andy, during which period they gave us such films as The Matrix and its sequels and V for Vendetta. Since then Larry has undergone a sex change and is now known as Lana, which may be part of the motivation for their interest in this project which follows numerous souls through various incarnations, some of whom change sex as well as race from reincarnation to reincarnation. Co-writer and co-director Tykwer’s kinetic style as exhibited in Run Lola Run and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer blends well with the Wachowski’s audacious style. Of the film’s six segments, the Wachowskis directed three and Tykwer three, but unless you know that you would think all six were directed by the same person or persons.

The moving back and forth between time periods can be confusing but once you get into it the nearly three hour film holds your interest as it moves from an 1849 Pacific Ocean voyage to New York in the 1930s to San Francisco in the 1970s to present day London to a future Korea to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii. Some actors are in all six segments, others are in four or five. The quality of acting varies greatly.

Top-billed Tom Hanks is way over-the-top in all six of his appearances. His hamola is pretty hard to take at times, especially in his incarnations as a sadistic ship’s doctor, a larcenous hotel clerk and a rock musician turned author who throws a book critic over the balcony at a party. His hero in the post-apocalyptic segment is better, but for some reason the dialogue he’s given is part modern English and part old yay and nay English which he tends to frequently mutter incoherently.

Halle Berry easily outshines Hanks in the post-apocalyptic segment, her dialogue clear and intonations concise in sharp contrast to Hanks’ muttering. She’s even better in the San Francisco segment in which her resourceful heroine solves a mystery.

Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant play villains throughout. Weaving’s part is larger and like Hanks, he is way over-the-top, especially in his incarnations as a modern day Nurse Ratched and a larger-than-life demon.

Jim Broadbent is over-the-top as well, but in a good way, especially as a seemingly doddering composer and as a resourceful book publisher held against his will in a nursing home.

Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw and James D’Arcy are excellent as the film’s various young heroes and villains. Doona Bae makes a marvelous runaway robotic slave in the future Korea segment. Susan Sarandon continues her latter day penchant for playing old ladies who act younger than their years.

Not all the actors are recognizable in their various incarnations. I could have sworn it was an unbilled Madonna, not Halle Berry, playing one character while the prettiest girl in the film turns out to be Ben Whishaw.

Cloud Atlas is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Ask any film buff who the greatest directors of westerns were and they’ll likely answer John Ford, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann, Nicholas Ray and/or Budd Boetticher. Add to that list, Delmer Daves, whose reputation has too long been diminished by his lackluster direction of such turgid melodramas as Parrish and Youngblood Hawke. The folks behind the esteemed Criterion Collection are trying to remedy that with the release of two of Daves’ best westerns, 1956’s Jubal and 1957’s 3:10 to Yuma on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Based on a famed sprawling novel like East of Eden, the film version of Jubal, like that of East of Eden, is based on just one part of the novel. Glenn Ford’s sensitive portrayal of lone cowhand Jubal Troop is like James Dean’s portrayal of Cal Trask, a multilayered portrayal of a man whose torment is informed by his mother’s hatred and abandonment. Like Kazan’s film of the year before, it also plays off of a beautiful landscape, in this case the Grand Teton mountains which Daves would revisit in his now more famous Spencer’s Mountain eight years later.

Another fascinating film reference to another work in Jubal is the casting of Ernest Borgnine as the benevolent rancher who hires a down on his luck Ford and Rod Steiger as Borgnine’s resentful top hand. Steiger had famously created the part of Marty for TV in 1954 only to lose the film version to Borgnine who won an Oscar for his performance. Watching the two in scenes together it is clear that Borgnine is the better actor in the western genre. Steiger’s method acting, particularly his drawn out phrasing, is completely out of sync with the rest of the cast which includes Valerie French as Bognine’s faithless wife; Felicia Farr as a young innocent; Noah Beery, Jr. and Charles Bronson as other cowpokes.

The original version of 3:10 to Yuma, based on an Elmore Leonard story, was cited by Howard Hawkes, along with Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon as being the antithesis of the western and his motivation for making his 1959 film, Rio Bravo in which all the heroes are brave and all the villains nasty with no in-between nuances. Townsmen in Hawkes’ westerns didn’t leave a sole hero to fight alone as they did Cooper’s marshal in High Noon and Van Heflin’s homesteader in 3:10 to Yuma and his heroic characters, usually played by John Wayne, had no inner conflicts as did Cooper and Heflin.

Glenn Ford’s bad guy in 3:10 to Yuma, like Heflin’s hero, is also a man of contradictions. Felicia Farr and Leora Dana co-star.

An interesting side note is that while Hawkes’ morally righteous Rio Braveo may have been the big western hit of 1959, Daves’ morally ambivalent The Hanging Tree, released a month earlier in March of that year, is the better film and has consistently been at the top of the Warner Archive’s best-seller list since its release last year.

Among the new Olive Film releases is 1948’s The Miracle of the Bells, a notoriously bad movie that is nevertheless historically important as one of the first major releases sold to television in 1953 where it was a perennial holiday film for more than a decade.

The film centers on a Hollywood press agent, played by Fred MacMurray, who comes to a small Pennsylvania coal town to bury a one-film movie star played in flashbacks of Alida Valli. Frank Sinatra, in one of the screen’s most infamous displays of miscasting, plays the local priest. MacMurray, always at his best in cynical roles, is fine as the press agent and Valli is decent enough in her film within the film portrayal of Joan of Arc, but the overall film, directed by Irving Pichel, is less than satisfying.

The Miracle of the Bells is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This week’s new releases include Blu-ray upgrades of the Ultimate Gangster Collection: Classics featuring Little Caesar; The Public Enemy; The Petrified Forest and White Heat as well as several Hayao Miyazaki classics including Howl’s Moving Castle.