Atonement

The best of Hollywood studio product, and what's wrong with that? Atonement knows all the postmodern tricks: how to play with time, cinema within cinema, how to toy with narrative conventions and audience expectations, etc. These techniques aren't so new anymore, but here they click together well. The mixed ending, screenplay based on a book, and tricky camera work taste a little like watered down Stanley Kubrick, but Joe Wright's Atonement never has the bite of a Kubrick film, and it's never as good as good Kubrick. We can hope for more. People almost always gain money very easily in most Hollywood cinema, but Atonement departs from this in its extreme consciousness of class. James McAvoy looks good as the poor boy Robbie Turner, especially when he wears a little makeup, but I think I preferred him as the more scrappy Dr. Nicholas Garrigan in The Last King of Scotland. Kiera Knightly has never been better, nor more boyish. Surprisingly so-so as a date movie, though my girlfriend did hold my hand when I teared up.