modern cinema

I've been very resistant to seeing Atonement, which is I think based upon a novel by Ian McEwan (the book, that is). Here are the reasons.1. The leads are Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, or so it seems, and frankly I'm tired of actors being promoted for looking like models. Upon reflection, it occurs to me that this is if anything a flaw in the system of film-making, a structural problem rather than a quality unique to this film. I'm not interested in the implications of that truth, however.2. As an American, I'm congenitally uninterested in the byzantine hierarchies endemic to British culture, and the inevitable havoc wrought unmercifully on the lives of those whose fate is mangled in the violent congress of circumstance and fortune in those milieux. Unless it's done well.3. Movies set during world war two: clearly, there are too many of them. Far too many. It's a threat to everything we hold dear! Soon these movies will start taking away all of our capital and talent, robbing all other genres of even the chance of honest competition, hording the material riches, as well as the vital purity of this nation, in the strangulating grasp of a nefarious cabal. There must be some final solution to this terrifying conspiracy. Maybe more films that focus on the Holocaust? I mean, people have barely even heard of that.3b. There will never be enough anachronisms to satisfy me. Maybe James McAvoy could be riding his father's stallion through a Panzer division, a lock of Keira Knightley's hair his only talisman against ruin, and he could get hit by an arrow? And then, later, he could be recovering from his world-inflicted wounds, and his hand gets caught in a microwave?4. The title leads me to suspect that there is some kind of atonement in this movie. In general, I prefer observing things that lead one to atone than the expiation of sin itself. Come on. In actuality, finding forgiveness is a long, difficult process of personal revelation and growth that nobody else cares about. It's a kind of vanity to glamourise it. Yes, I realize that I have no idea what happens in this movie. 5. Speaking of anachronisms, can the Germans finish the job that Idi Amin started and finally kill James McAvoy?6. Does anybody have James McAvoy's address?Regardless of the foregoing, I'm probably going to see it.