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

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Oh fuck knows, I was pissed last night, disregard.

― chap (chap), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 13:05 (nineteen years ago)

i like inside man, too, slocki, i was just more interested in the spike lee stuff than the generic heist stuff.

― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 14:55 (nineteen years ago)

yeah i wonder if it would have been totally boring with another director.

but i loved the jodie foster stuff too! does that fall into the spike lee stuff category?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 15:00 (nineteen years ago)

Just saw this last night. Dragging my son to it tomorrow.
Kee gets the best line—
Owen: "How is she?"
Kee: "Annoyed."

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, 28 January 2007 04:10 (nineteen years ago)

Also, do people from Bristol talk like pirates? Please say yes.

A little bit. I saw famous son of Bristol Stephen Merchant on telly last night, and he was talking about how people, including him, find it easy to mock his sort of accent.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Sunday, 28 January 2007 08:43 (nineteen years ago)

i don't know if this is mentioned in this whale of a thread, but i really liked the part where they are in the housing project war zone and baby Bazooka starts crying, and everyone starts realizing it, from the refugees to the soldiers, and they walk out the front door and all the soldiers are gawking/marveling/paying respects, etc. and all is totally quiet and still (save the baby crying) and then BOOOOOOMMMM!! a Fish/refugee launches a RPG at the soldiers, and the battle continues right where it left off, chaos ensues, etc.

good stuff.

― tk (tk), Sunday, 28 January 2007 19:58 (nineteen years ago)

Watched it last night. We were all interested in the violence used by the Fishers. Real ends justifying the means stuff! Sid was great as well. The long cuts were great, really gripping and the shoot out was very atmospheric. Will never watch it again probably but will definitely try to check out 12 monkeys on the back of comments on this thread.

― Kv_nol (Kv_nol), Monday, 29 January 2007 13:52 (nineteen years ago)

this is at the prince charles from saturday, londoners.

― emsk ( emsk), Wednesday, 31 January 2007 16:59 (nineteen years ago)

Even better second time, esp for slow-on-the-uptake people like me. You get much more. And good to see after reading this thread. So many animals, yes. And my son loved it, too, which is always a plus. He's a big 12 Monkeys fan, like me. Nature or nurture...???
I was still minorly bothered that Theo didn't tie up to the buoy before dying, but the ship came, so it's all good. But really, ilxors, if you're ever in that situation, TIE UP TO THE BUOY.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, 31 January 2007 19:08 (nineteen years ago)

wtf this is so much better than 12 Monkeys

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 January 2007 19:13 (nineteen years ago)

I liked the fact that one of the big suspense set-pieces, the getaway from the Fish house, basically involved two non-functional cars and some guys on foot who were afraid to shoot. Best low-speed chase ever.

― Stephen X (Stephen X), Wednesday, 31 January 2007 19:23 (nineteen years ago)

That was so good. Of course, many cars in the dystopian future would be fucked.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, 31 January 2007 23:57 (nineteen years ago)

From way upthread:

Nothing really to add here, I just thought the escape from the Phish Pharm was one of the greatest non-powered car chases I'd seen in a while.
-- Steve Shasta (steveshast...), January 17th, 2007 4:33 PM. (Steve Shasta)

― Steve Shasta (Steve Shasta), Thursday, 1 February 2007 00:00 (nineteen years ago)

mayhap i should see this again...

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Thursday, 1 February 2007 00:04 (nineteen years ago)

It IS even better the second time. I realised quite how economical the script is, such a dense film for one that comes in at under two hours. It's now in the running for my favourite film of the noughties.

― chap (chap), Thursday, 1 February 2007 00:16 (nineteen years ago)

Now I'm thinking maybe The Straight Story has some pretty good low-speed chase scenes but I don't remember for sure.

― Stephen X (Stephen X), Thursday, 1 February 2007 01:55 (nineteen years ago)

this is at the prince charles from saturday, londoners.

Specifically: Saturday at 9pm, Monday at 6.20, Wednesday at 3.30, then next week Sunday at 9pm, Thursday at 6.15.

Go see it! It's great!

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 1 February 2007 12:43 (nineteen years ago)

best use of flip flops in an action movie?

― Pandas At War (pandas at war), Thursday, 1 February 2007 14:12 (nineteen years ago)

Yes. There is no subtext here I think - Clive Owen in flipflops is just empirically hilarious.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 1 February 2007 14:33 (nineteen years ago)

its the way he has to do all the running about, all the while cursing the fact that he's hurting his feet.

― Pandas At War (pandas at war), Thursday, 1 February 2007 14:42 (nineteen years ago)

And the way that they don't turn the injured foot into a plot device. It just is.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, 1 February 2007 15:37 (nineteen years ago)

well i guess it's a character thing.. he's the type of chap who would grudgingly do all this stuff, and swear about it under his breath

― Pandas At War (pandas at war), Thursday, 1 February 2007 15:43 (nineteen years ago)

do i have anything to add to this?

maybe three or four things

1) more than a day later i'm still thinking about this movie every few minutes. harrowing!

2) is it a sign of my age that i sympathized strongly w/ the government / soldiers / police instead of the leftwing militia?

3) it's much more of a war movie than a scifi movie, all the kosovo comments dead on. closer to "saving private ryan" than "blade runner".

4) i liked all of the lovely textures in the movie. so many incredible fabrics, corduroys and plaids and military cottons, gorgeous knits and rugs, amazing woodgrains, peeling paint, rust, old porcelain etc etc. interior designer types will probably flip their lid!

5) i agree w/ whoever upthread said it's annoying to be afraid of someone getting shot in the face every few minutes. i walked out of the theatre thinking i should invest in body armor, bulletproof windows on my car, stronger locks on my doors and a handgun, which ideally wouldn't happen in a movie w/ an anti-violence message.

― vahid (vahid), Sunday, 4 February 2007 00:59 (nineteen years ago)

also i agree w/ the comments about the movie having a strong videogame feeling. the scenes in bexhill running around trying to avoid soldiers + militia in particular reminded me of cutscenes from xbox or playstation games. but those have to draw on some sort of existing cinema language, right? what films do you trace those back to? i don't remember that sort of thing from any 80s movies but maybe i'm not thinking right.

― vahid (vahid), Sunday, 4 February 2007 01:14 (nineteen years ago)

the thing that seemed videogamey to me (besides the obvious POV bits) was how the movie was divided into chunks - missions, really, i.e. "get the papers" "transport the girl", "escape from the fishes", "break into bexhill" .. interspliced with ruminative cutscenes (and i agree with most on this thread about the midwife's speech: i probably woulda hit "x" on the controller about halfway through it)

― Elsa Svitborg (tracerhand), Sunday, 4 February 2007 01:27 (nineteen years ago)

Pretty much all action movies have that structure! (Star Wars: Find Obi Wan, find a ship, rescue the princess, destroy the pursuing ships, blow up the Death Star)

― chap (chap), Sunday, 4 February 2007 04:53 (nineteen years ago)

three weeks pass...

Saw for the second time; fuck the Oscars.

Owen has rather womanly feet.

― Dr Morbius, Monday, 26 February 2007 15:27 (nineteen years ago)

I wish I could see it again in the theater, for big-screen-sized tension and dizziness.

― kenan, Monday, 26 February 2007 15:54 (nineteen years ago)

So I finally saw this, and appropriate enough in London on a big screen. Which I think is good; seeing something like this in situ, as it were, helps when you can walk outside and see what the set design readily grows out of all around you.

I don't know if I have anything to add beyond what's already been hashed out, though I admit this left less of a 'can't stop thinking about it' impact on me than Pan's Labyrinth; that said, I went into that movie cold where I had been hearing about Children of Men for months, and inevitably there's less surprise. But the one thing I came away with the most was how excellently shot and paced this was as an action/thriller movie in the grand vein. Certainly I see why there'd be complaints re: the cinematographer not getting an Oscar!

Amazing satiric touches too. The Ministry of Art sequence is one of many things straight out of Brazil.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 8 March 2007 11:49 (nineteen years ago)

Certainly I see why there'd be complaints re: the cinematographer not getting an Oscar!

Worse is the art direction not even getting a nod.

― chap, Thursday, 8 March 2007 14:18 (nineteen years ago)

This was amazing. I particularly enjoyed:

- The use of simple images to shed light on the characters, like that short pan of Caine's character's old cartoons and his wife's photographs, or the old pictures and things that litter the apartment in Bexhill.

- Kee was great! I expected her to be whiny and annoying but she had all the best lines. "I'm a virgin..."; "Fuck knows."

- [Spoiler! Spoiler!]

I admired how they denied you even the basest elements of cheeriness at the end by not having Theo get to see the boat before he croaks, and then cutting to black before we get confirnmation that they're even the right people (obviously it's implied that it is since it would be too evil if they weren't, but...).

― Simon H., Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:15 (nineteen years ago)

bizarro CoM thread:

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=59&threadid=147#unread

― Jordan, Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:19 (nineteen years ago)

I do like Peter Chung's comment on the bizarro thread -- "the film's greatest value was in the act of viewing it." I'm not as dismissive or ambivalent as he is; rather it captures my state of enjoying the film as a well-made and well-acted movie, as I muttered a couple of posts back. Capturing chaotic disorientation in a formal narrative structure plus putting the Joe Bob Briggs rule of 'anybody can die at any time' into play is hard to pull off and Cuaron and company did it. (Weren't there five screenwriters or something?)

Having reread this whole thread in full now I'm a touch surprised at some of the intensity around it but only just. Its success beyond being a great action film -- something neither Blade Runner nor Brazil is, say -- is how well it articulates and recombines all the current big fears in one place at one time (aside from environmental collapse/global warming as such, though it's deftly suggested a bit, contrasting with how the landscape would creep back in following civilization's end -- there's a feeling of increasingly abandoned roads and byways, a greenness resurgent). As Slocki and others said that's part of the way of sf in general -- projecting current moods forward -- and it'll be interesting to see as a period piece some time down the road.

I also did like that somebody who passed me in the foyer after the film commented that I looked 'very Jaspery.' Less grey and no beard, though.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 9 March 2007 08:51 (nineteen years ago)

I liked how the curator cousin sez he couldn't save the Pieta, and then we see a Pieta-posed mother in Bexhill about an hour later.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 9 March 2007 14:44 (nineteen years ago)

2-disc DVD version due in the UK a week tomorrow, featuring "Comments by Slavoj Zizek", wtf?!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000NJM27M/ref=pd_ys_cs_all_21/203-7551083-9947945

I'm pissed that I bought the first release of it now. I shall give that away and get this.

― Scik Mouthy, Sunday, 11 March 2007 18:22 (nineteen years ago)

I'm gonna try to catch this in the theatre, it's still playing at the local second-run.

― Edward III, Sunday, 11 March 2007 18:56 (nineteen years ago)

Definitely worth seeing in the theatre, preferably a burning one for the decay and to make Supreme Court first ammendment readers antsy and all.

― Abbott, Sunday, 11 March 2007 19:39 (nineteen years ago)

Also got huge laughs from only the WOMEN in the audience at one point you will see, an experience I appreciated. Also the palpable tenseness and fear from the whole audience...plus hello big screen.

― Abbott, Sunday, 11 March 2007 19:42 (nineteen years ago)

i just saw this and am still at 'fuuuuuuuuuck SO SO GOOD'

i got the new two-disc dvd. zizek doesn't mention biopolitics or other zizeky things, whatever they are, or what i thought was most important about the midwife character: new agey bullshit coming in. and her description of how people realize that the birth rate has dropped off was real. loved the idea of london's "sinner-winner" mentalist street preachers being taken seriously.

re the ending, which people find contentious: how else could they do it?

my suggestions:

-the rosemary's baby ending
-dawn of the dead ending (have only seen the 2004 version)
-the truman show ending

― That one guy that quit, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:19 (nineteen years ago)

-the Happy Gilmore ending
-the Boogie Nights ending

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:22 (nineteen years ago)

loved owen moving through london -- horseguards on the mall and everything, a kind of inner-london zone which is deaf to everything outside it.

― That one guy that quit, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:25 (nineteen years ago)

I saw this myself last week, and I'd broadly side with the consensus, i.e. great. The Bexhill battle is one of the most terrifying, visceral, apocalyptic sequences in film (up there with the Bourne Supremacy car-chase). :-D

the Open Water ending, anyone?

― unfished business, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:27 (nineteen years ago)

oh, xpost: the bit with King Crimson? Yeah, that ruled.

― unfished business, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:28 (nineteen years ago)

zizek points out the link between this and 'and your mama too' -- cuaron's niftiness with foreground/background relations. the background of this one is something you look out for more, i guess -- reminded me most of 'the manchurian candidate '04' though this was much better -- but something similar was going on in 'and your mama'. iirc the v/o prompts us to think about the wider world round these two rich guys or whatever.

― That one guy that quit, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:37 (nineteen years ago)

Watched it again last night. The amount of obviously expository dialogue stuck out seemed even more flagrant, but now that I knew what would happen I could focus on just how OMG the long takes are. There's some stuff about the doggicam et al on the US DVD but I wish there was more.

Something else that really stuck out the second time was how ridiculously long it takes Clive to show any sign of having a bullet in his gut. I know he's trying to be chivalrous, but if he was shot by Chiwetel Ejiofor (which is when I assumed he got hit), I think he would have started making a mess long before he was sitting in the boat. How could he get down all those stairs without some serious wincing and a scream or three? I've never been shot in the gut, though. Maybe you can play it cool, take long walks, etc.

I wish it had ended with Clive showing her how to hold the baby while they were sitting in the boat. I think it provides enough thematic closure, without the obviousness of him getting an extended death sequence and greenpeace arriving.

― da croupier, Sunday, 25 March 2007 16:45 (nineteen years ago)

but Clive Owen does the extended death sequences so well!

"D'you ever get the headaches?"

― unfished business, Sunday, 25 March 2007 16:51 (nineteen years ago)

I know. He could have at least stressed the importance of supporting the baby's head before kicking off.

― Beth Parker, Sunday, 25 March 2007 19:49 (nineteen years ago)

Maybe I'm misreading you, but it sounds like you think I'm saying they should have added Clive giving babyhandling advice. The advice is already in the scene, I'm just saying they should have stopped right after.

― da croupier, Sunday, 25 March 2007 20:24 (nineteen years ago)

The foot thing would have done more for me if I hadn't already seen it in Die Hard.

― da croupier, Sunday, 25 March 2007 20:25 (nineteen years ago)

Oh sorry. The Alzheimer's.

― Beth Parker, Sunday, 25 March 2007 21:35 (nineteen years ago)

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