Atonement
Got suckered into seeing Atonement. A fetching, brief love scene between Keira Knightly (what’s in a name?) and James McAvoy but otherwise a static British bore of a movie. Another of those Ivory-Merchant-like jobs, written and directed for Laura Ashley, about as thrilling as wallpaper. It’s not easy getting confronted with careful class crap and more of it, an animated slide-show of cliché intimacies and fine frozen manners with a plot twisting so late that by then everyone’s asleep. A cinematographic dud. Love that Estate, love those servants, nice polyester WWII. Comes close to an upscale Harlequin. Who’ll atone for it? And when will Britain produce another Betrayal, instead of committing one?
I read the e-mail feed and had to commennt. This film, from title to poster, never fooled me for a nano-second. Sorry you had to suffer the torture of a “everything you said” crummy movie. You would’ve profitted from a WGA strike that prevented this stuff from being made.