Movie Review: Atonement

Gains: +3
I have to talk about the musical score of this movie. Un-freaking-believable. The composer wove sounds from the story, like a typewriter or someone beating on the hood of a car, into his music. For example, check it out here [Update: Embed failed, so here's a link.]:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXoFtTZTJAw

The young actress Saoirse Ronan, who played the equally young Briony Tallis, was great. She really outshined James McAvoy and Keira Knightly in her portion of the movie. I really got into the first half of this movie, though Hanna didn't. It was fast paced and different from most movies in its conceptual filming style.

Losses: -4
Then the young Briony Tallis character grows up and the movie grows stale. World War 2 never looked so boring. The characters were disjointed and never really connected to each other again. By the end of the movie, when I anticipate at least the feelings of "Great! At least it's over!" there was a surprise twist ending. A movie that was sinking fast found one last way to inspire contempt.

Aside from that, there was one extended annoying sex scene in the first half of the movie. Now, I'm more okay with these kind of scenes if they are plot-based ("more okay" like "hey, at least this disgusting black licorice at least has a satisfying chewable quality"), this scene would have been much more palpable if, as I expected, the movie turned out to be pretty good. Nope. It was lame. The scene turned out to be nothing more than irresponsible junk.

Final Judgement: -1

This movie would have flopped horribly if not for the awesome soundtrack. The first half was great, so if you want to watch just that part, I will clue you in to how it ends - badly. This movie further solidified my view that from here on out, I will mostly only watch movies that have been recommended to me in some form or fashion. On a different topic, it makes me sad to see how skinny and curveless Keira Knightly has gotten.