Bayside resident Mark Metcalf is an actor who has worked in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."

In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects.

He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com. This week, Metcalf weighs in on "Atonement," "Cloverfield" and "Charlie Wilson's War."

"ATONEMENT" (2007)

I do not ordinarily like films that trick you at the end by changing the reality. Usually, it is done in an arbitrary way and feels like it was done just to manipulate the audience. Ever since "The Sixth Sense," films from Hollywood do it all the time. I am very much over that.

It doesn't bother me so much in "Atonement" because it is a choice made by the character representing the author in the story, and it is a choice that allows the author to acknowledge her own betrayal and in some small way to atone for it. It is a literary trick. Maybe that's why I forgive it.

The moment of betrayal is very clear and all the action ripples out from that moment the way water flows away from the point of entry of a rock dropped into it. The rock floats gently to rest on the bottom but the ripples move on, endlessly one's vision through the crystal clear surface, throughout the lives of the characters.

In this film, that moment has everything to do with class. The class system in period English movies and literature is almost a cliché. The gardener or the son of the housekeeper, that the children of the manor have grown up and played with, turns out to be handsome, smart and ambitious, but he is forever kept from taking his rightful place next to his playmates when they are all grown because of the circumstances of his birth. He is lower class.

In this country, we profess to have no class system. The very nature of our democracy and the country's origins fights against a class system. Yet, if you see beneath the surface of "John Adams," you see that the freedom won by the working people was determined and defined by the owners of slaves and the masters of wealth and land. They were not aristocracy in England, the land from which they had come, but they were establishing a new aristocracy, one determined by wealth and education, not by birth, and our lives are still described by it. They were trying to do the right thing, but they were hampered by their need to preserve and protect their own well-being.

I have not read the book from which "Atonement" is adapted, but Alice tells me it is one her all time favorites. She is quite a good writer in her own right, so I trust her. The film is very good. It is quite a bit more than a typical post-Victorian tale of the English class system betraying the individual. There is a wonderful erotic love story at the heart of it.

The truly damaging betrayal, which is the central theme and is begat by a false feeling of betrayal in an adolescent, informs and motivates the long and creative life of the author, which is where the trick that I usually do not like comes in. The one flaw is that the main character has to be played by three actresses. It is necessary because she ages from twelve to eighty. There is some similarity in appearance between the three but because there cannot be a perfect replication of look and manner, your attention is taken out of the story for a moment and something is lost. It is minor and easy to live with, but it is a problem.

"CLOVERFIELD" (2008)

I really did not want to like this movie. I do not like "scary" movies or monster movies, unless they are so cartoon-ish that I can watch them with Julius, my son. We keep each other from being too scared.

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