'Children of Men', the new Alfonso Cuaron sci-fi flick

Eyes Wide Shut would have worked a lot better if Kubrick didn't attempt to use Cruise/Kidmans' own celebrity relationship for his own ends.

Bring in unknowns / ruin their future careers. Its the Kubrick way.

Warner Bros and Kubrick both knew you needed stars for a big expensive Arthur Schnitzler adaptation

Brit mainstream authors seem to do rather well when they dip their toes in spec fic.

Does Atonement count here? The twist at the end is some sad trombone Twilight Zone shit.

Children of Men is incredibly exciting first time 'round but just too grim to rewatch.

McEwan actually did a dystopic sci-fi thing earlier in his career with The Child in Time

28 Days Later fits in here somewhere too. It gets lumped in with the latter-day zombie craze, but I think it was genuinely exciting at the time of release and had some crossover/mainstream appeal. Not high-minded, especially, but I'd argue that CoM isn't either.

you'd love to know what i've seen, but cinema convo w/ middle-aged Rogue One viewers nah

lol yeah middle-aged Rogue One viewer, you sure got me pegged. Now that I re-read your post I notice that you don't claim Eyes Wide Shut was particularly insightful about marriage just that it was one of the best films *about* marriage, although I'm not sure how it could be the latter without also being the former, maybe it's possible idk

Where's calum to settle this?

None of the paranoid classics from the 70s seem especially "high minded" either but you don't need to be a paradigm-shattering genius to guess what dumb, self-destructive tricks our species is going to get up to next

Now imagine Charleston Heston in this.

imo it got Tom Cruise's marriage to a T

the viewpoint is from his scientology handlers -- Nicole wasn't their favorite but he should stick with her because the outside world is full of creepy sex perverts and life destroyers. best to stick to the church and a mediocre marriage

that is why the scientologists killed kubrick iirc

Hey so is it true that Xenu = Darth Sidious?

"overrated (by me at first too)

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius)

Terrifying that even morbius was right, once, for a while; reassuring that all is now returned to normal

Children of Men is way better than Kubrick's indentured marriage drama.

I like both

Does Atonement count here? The twist at the end is some sad trombone Twilight Zone shit.

OTM, and thanks! I've been looking for a new dn!

everyone knows the best movies about marriage are: the shining, desperate characters, safe, don't look now, and gaslight.

i knew someone would bring up the boooooring horror movie

the UK original version of Gaslight, scott!

What do people think about Carnal Knowledge these days? Did anybody put Ballbusters On Parade in the redditor youtube canon?

Carnal Knowledge of Men

Brad and Angie and Ted and Alice

only good Chris Hardwicke joke is that the Twilight Zone should have been named "nice try, asshole"

Rewatched this and felt even slighter (and longer) than it did the first time around. Some nice camerawork/sets, a few good action sequence, sexy sexy Clive Owen and not much else to dig into.

Watched this for the first time last week. First half was very impressive, second half was a let down. All the 'commentary' and plot was in the first half, the second was just a big action packed part consisting of one premise: get to the boat alive and asap. All action, no depth. While it was really done extremely well, camera wise, I got nothing out of it and found myself thinking: yeah yeah, get to the boat already, you won't get shot anyway.

action is depteh

depth too

I didn't totally buy the justification for going to the refugee camp. Obviously it's set up as the only way to reach the boat, but that felt more like an excuse to have the sequence. But the camp is my favourite part of the movie. I love the characters we meet there like the Roma lady and the old Greek (iirc?) couple who have somehow managed to create a comfortable home sealed off from the camp.

And I would say action is plot too. Plot is everything that happens, not just everything that's easily paraphrasable.

https://newrepublic.com/article/147849/will-hollywood-ever-make-another-children-men

(also the bobby more headline in the image at the top of that piece is extremely Real England)

https://images.newrepublic.com/8bedf9706b95ec9260b21cb3e623a36ffffa0fb7.png?w=1000&q=65&dpi=1&fit=crop&crop=faces&h=667

interesting take, similar to what I read after Blade Runner 2029 'bombed'...studios aren't going to invest that kind of money on that sort of thing at this point (expensive looking heady intellectual sci fi art films).

damn, look at all that world-building in those newspaper headlines (the art department spelled 'violence' wrong tho ffs)

i need to watch this again, one of my favourite movies of the 21st century

CHARLES SHOULD BE THRONE OUT

that, along with 'fa cup cancelled', suggest that there were at least a few bright spots amongst the unremitting misery of the film's alternate future

i've seen this film more times than any film I think... it's so good

it's so good that not even charlie hunnam can sink it

did i dream it or was there talk of doing a TV series?

that rings a very vague bell, but i don't think anything ever came of it

seems like the handmaid's tale would have stolen whatever sci-fi infertility-dystopia momentum it might have had, anyway

oh yeah

Which basically points up to the real outcome here. Yes, Children of Men could get made in 2018 ... as a Netflix series.

And Cuaron arguably knows it.

10 episodes with only enough plot for four

yes, and ugh

My second viewing of COM in December 2016 confirmed my affection, but the enthusiasm baffles me a little.

this is one of my favorite movies

i have so much affection for jasper, what a great character. i wanted to watch another hour of him and theo hanging out, listening to records and talking politics

love that he had Test Dept as his alarm sound

the enthusiasm baffles me a little

one of the things i love most about it is that it's such a great example of sci-fi not really being about the future but a reflection of the present - it shows a dying society which has entirely given up on maintaining a sustainable environment, where immigrants face utterly horrifying everyday hardships, where bombs in the street are so commonplace that an explosion in a coffee-shop you were just in can barely raise a shrug

it just feels like a really lived-in world, way more than a casual read of a plot summary would suggest, and it feels like it's just around the corner

the relative subtlety of the whole enterprise makes it something that's not wearying to be enthusiastic about, imo

xp More that everything is already long set in motion and there's no reversing it now.

yeah, that long slow defeated slump into oblivion just hangs over the film like smog

Also, the least happy "happy" ending since A.I.

have to admit i was nonplussed the first time i watched it. i was expecting something else. it really clicked the second time round