Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Atonement

Atonement. This movie arrives with a lot of hype. It has a lot to live up to, and in general that is not a good thing.

A slow English WWII period piece, it is not without its merits. Beautiful scenery, gritty war-time footage, and some gruesome injuries. The movie is original in its composition, often showing a scene, then showing the same events from another point of view. The war scenes are well researched and well done, and the characters are fairly successful at making us care about them.

Not a lot of big names here. People liked James McAvoy in Last King of Scotland, but he was kind of annoying in Atonement. Keira Knightly shines visually, but her performance was physically painful. She was in such a hurry to spit out lines too fast that she rarely waited for other people to finish speaking. This is a common occurrence in poor acting. Lines just don't sound natural when there's been no time for someone to formulate what they're saying. This happened a bit in Juno, tho the lines sounded natural.

Overall, watch it for the visuals, and be ready to sit around a bit.

1 comment:

Marissa + Scott said...

Amen! Like I needed another reason NOT to see this movie. Thanks for solidifying my position.