Children of Men

[JLTorres]

So, it didn't suck. It was very well made (and acted), in fact.

That said, it seemed like it was a small part in the middle of a larger and better story. I heard it's better if you've read the book (and it might be a worthwhile read) but that's no excuse for making a movie that seems less than complete to the casual viewer.

Essentially, go see Pan's Labyrinth first.

Then rent Y Tu Mama Tambien and that third Harry Potter Movie.

When this comes out on video it'll be well worth your while, but it's not worth seeing in the theater.

Also, the explosions and shooting are excellent in this movie. If you like tanks, this is the one for you.

If you want a complete narrative out of a movie, not so much.

[blobomotob]

So, it didn't suck. It was very well made (and acted), in fact.

When this comes out on video it'll be well worth your while, but it's not worth seeing in the theater.

Also, the explosions and shooting are excellent in this movie. If you like tanks, this is the one for you.

If you want a complete narrative out of a movie, not so much.


I agree, well-made-looking, alright acting.
But man, was this a cliched, predictable, trite, superficial story. I thought it had potential, but it was formulaic, and uninteresting to me for the most part. I kept predicting each "turning point" without even trying, threrefore making me lose interest from early on.

A couple of nice surprises:
SPOILER TEXT ON:
I really began to care about Julliane Moore's character, then BAM! she's gone! barely 20 or so minutes in to the movie, I was really surprised, yet at the same time felt jipped (such a good actress out of the movie so early, and the preview makes her seem like a main character)... Also, the scenes where the car won't start, even after many many tries, then it is too much, and of course, at the very last possible moment, of course it starts, and they get away. So overall, rent it later for a good looking movie, but with a superficial narrative.

[Jono]

Pull my finger!

I thought it was excellent. My only issue was the cheesy-ness of the whole being allowed to walk out of the building at the end because everyone saw/heard the baby

Oh wait, I had one more problem; The girl I saw it with felt the need to remind me every ten minutes that Clive Owen is really hot. Yeah, thanks for that...

[Andrew j]

I thought Children of Men was fucking amazing and one of the best movies I've seen in a long long time.

It was Lord of the Flies only the exact opposite happened! Grownups have to rule themselves without children and the world goes batshit. And the scene Jono found cheesy was beautiful; instead of the kids reverting back into kids when they see the sailors at the end the grownups grew the fuck up! Absolutely perfect.

Saw Pan's Labyrinthe yesterday. Nowhere near as good as this movie.

[Mikie]

What are you talking about?! Children of Men was an amazing movie. It put the audience in a believable future without the need to explain everything. The story was solid and the direction and cinematography were both great. The actors did a wonderful job with their parts (the casting director deserves a raise). The beatles covers were brilliant as well.

I think this film is of a rare quality and is absolutly worth seeing on the big screen.

[Mikie]

Pull my finger!

I thought it was excellent. My only issue was the cheesy-ness of the whole being allowed to walk out of the building at the end because everyone saw/heard the baby

Oh wait, I had one more problem; The girl I saw it with felt the need to remind me every ten minutes that Clive Owen is really hot. Yeah, thanks for that...

Did you try telling her your penis looks just like his? Worth a shot.

[Seth]

BLUEBALL movie-- I kept waiting for "the surprising part" but then it ended ubruptly after I forcasted every event. The only 100% big-screen-worthy part to me was the continuous shot that lasted for something like 30 minutes, ending with the aforementioned [spoiler].
My wife cried for half the flick, & also reminded me that she finds Clive Owen hot(now I know why she bought me that steaming pile called King Arthur).
Personally, I have no idea what Clive Owen's penis looks like, nor would I admit it if I did.

[Mikie]

Personally, I have no idea what Clive Owen's penis looks like, nor would I admit it if I did.

I think you may have missed the point.

[JLTorres]

I'm not saying it was poorly acted or directed. I just think they failed to build a real narrative. The ideas were, for the most part, underdeveloped and too much of the character building was done with straight up expository dialogue.

I will gladly agree that it's better than most of what's been coming out these days. It also has some very original visuals, but ask yourself if the transitions or straight up shooting were THAT much better than Cuaron's work on the Harry Potter film or if the storytelling was any better than Y Tu Mama Tambien.

Maybe I expected more from this director and set myself up to be let down.

I just think there's no reason for a movie as rich as this one (with regards to the amazing talent pool involved) should be given the bye on its glaring weaknesses (i.e. the failure to balance and/or develop the personal and political issues raised into a complete story).

P.S. The sustained shot everyone is talking about is actually 5 shots that were put together using CGI. The producers of the film knew it was the big money sequence that people would be talking about, so they kept the fact it was strung together using CGI a secret until after the US release. It was awesome, but more a testament to crafty editing and good organization than inhuman directing.

Once again, I dug the movie and recommend it to most people. It just has a bunch of flaws.

[JLTorres]

It was Lord of the Flies only the exact opposite happened! Grownups have to rule themselves without children and the world goes batshit. And the scene Jono found cheesy was beautiful; instead of the kids reverting back into kids when they see the sailors at the end the grownups grew the fuck up! Absolutely perfect.

But before Owen was even out of the way, the shooting resumed so it seemed that the miracle had no real effect on the people who were supposedly astounded by the appearance of the child. That might be a statement unto itself, but it negates the whole point of the movie (not to mention the main motivator for all of the principle characters) if that is what they were trying to say. Not to mention that Lord of the Flies has well thought out characters who can be analyzed so that, from the differing personalities, larger truths can be gleaned regarding humanity as a whole.

[Ryan Stegman]

I saw this flick, and I thought it was pretty interesting AND worth the money.

My reasoning...Basically I thought that it was amazing how they did the exact opposite of spoon feed you information. Most of it was unexplained and they didn't do that Patch Adams thing where they sort of lead you by the hand and say, "feel this now". I suppose that a lot of films are pretty good about that, but I felt like this one was especially strong at it. It just showed you people getting blown up and people getting shot and what not, and totally let you derive your own feelings about it. There was even one part where I sort of went through the emotions of, "Man, I hate that fucking guy, I hope somebody shoots that fucker" and then two seconds later he was shot and I was then thinking, "I sort of feel bad now. He probably didn't deserve to die". And it's thoughts like these that I was free to have throughout the whole thing. And it made me think about that shit afterwards even. Crazy!

I once wrote a paper in college about the Dogme vow of chastity and how it gives you that opportunity to think for yourself. And while this film did not follow all of those rules, it still managed to give that same effect.

In the end, I left the theatre kind of feeling lost, like I didn't know how to feel about what happened. But then I realized, that's perfect. And now I want to see it again knowing that I am free to draw my own conclusions because I think that that will change the experience entirely.

Jose, in your post you mentioned that the characters and political intrigue could have been developed better, but I think that this would have damaged the overall movie. Crafty dialogue and more explanation of the events would have made it just another movie. I understood completely what was going on in it, I was just never given a side to take. And I liked that. We will talk about this in person. Maybe on one of my five days in New York next month we'll watch it again (by illegally downloading it of course) and discuss it! And fist fight!!!!!

Anyway, I digs it, and I have a mega man-crush on Cuaron. Good lord is he ever brilliant.

[JLTorres]

I look forward to watching it again.

Perhaps I'll catch some more of the magic the second time around.


Jose, in your post you mentioned that the characters and political intrigue could have been developed better, but I think that this would have damaged the overall movie. Crafty dialogue and more explanation of the events would have made it just another movie. I understood completely what was going on in it, I was just never given a side to take. And I liked that. We will talk about this in person. Maybe on one of my five days in New York next month we'll watch it again (by illegally downloading it of course) and discuss it! And fist fight!!!!!

Anyway, I digs it, and I have a mega man-crush on Cuaron. Good lord is he ever brilliant.

Let me be a jerk and bring up Chinatown. At the start of this movie you have a hardened private eye who seems like a bit of an asshole. All you ever learn about his past is that he was a cop and something went wrong. That's it, but through his actions and the development of the plot we get a full sense of who he is and what the larger story is about. Same with Sexy Beast. Kingsley just shows up and through great acting and very good writing, we instantly get a feel for what's going on without anyone blurting out some monologue regarding the bad old days in England's seedy underbelly.

Compare that to Children of Men, where the whole setting is set up with 30 seconds of straight up newsreel and clive owen's entire back story is just tossed out there when we "accidentally" walk in on the complete retelling. Even his motivations are bared. I thought Moore was going to be a great springboard from which to develop his character, but we know how that turned out.

As for developing the politics, I thought it was pretty clear that pollution caused the infertility. Mainly, this was portrayed viasually and confirmed by the fact that the pregnant woman was from a "underdeveloped" country. That said, why was it never even kind of addressed? The main political sticking point seemed to be immigration, but then the force fighting on the side of immigrants showed itself to be a unworthy of our trust as the fascists who were doing the oppressing.

Maybe the point was that we shouldn't try to politicize something like childbirth. That's, IMO, a strong enough argument for a movie to make.

I guess what all this blabbing means is that I wanted to see Clive Owen's character to moving through a working narrative and growing as a character and felt that they dictated a setting and then ran Owen through a beautiful obstacle course only to have him never grow as an individual.

Cuaron is brilliant. He is one of what I consider to be the most exciting group of filmmakers presently making movies. I just think that this is his Mimic (and that ain't bad).

[JLTorres]

oops

[SKAtoons]

I really enjoyed this movie, it was very similar to "Y: The Last Man on Earth", just a little different....Though the only compliants would be that it was slow then it it picked up and then was slow again and then picked up...

I thought it was pretty odd how it ended so suddenly.

[Adrian B AWESOME]

I really enjoyed this movie, it was very similar to "Y: The Last Man on Earth", just a little different....Though the only compliants would be that it was slow then it it picked up and then was slow again and then picked up...

I thought it was pretty odd how it ended so suddenly.

Suddenly?

They reached the end of the journey. How was it supposed to end? With some hokey reveal or the end of infertility?

[SKAtoons]

Suddenly?

They reached the end of the journey. How was it supposed to end? With some hokey reveal or the end of infertility?

well she's in the boat and then BAM! the end...that was what I meant by suddenly...

[JLTorres]

well she's in the boat and then BAM! the end...that was what I meant by suddenly...

I think the ending was meant to make us sit down and string together the loose allegories.

Dylan, the baby that shares the name of the Welsh God of the sea makes it to the Tomorrow (a boat), escaping a totalitarian government and the fishes (get it? get it?) who wanted only to exploit her.

Theo, "the gift from God" gives his life trying to save Kee, the baby and, ultimately, humanity (aaaah! I thought the baby was Jesus!), thereby bringing meaning back to an existence made hollow by the loss of his own child. He dies his way. Bringing to mind the movie's suicide drug Quietus ("You Decide When"), which is an allusion to Hamlet and the idea that killing yourself might be better than suffering through a cursed life. Like Hamlet, he passes on the suicide and "goes like a man."