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

Ok Anthony this is where you and I are in different lands, because that transition is the thing I've been thinking about most since seeing this. (1) Setting up a whimsical bonding moment before AMBUSH is a staple move, and works here, but what keeps getting me is that it's done with this bizarre CGI ping-pong ball trick -- as if to intentionally focus you on that action, to totally distract you, so that you're already off-kilter when the ambush registers. (2) Which it doesn't, not immediately: there's this great couple seconds where everyone is freaking out and a flaming car is rolling somewhat innocently down the hill, and the viewer is still back with the ping-pong ball and thinking "wait, does that mean ..." (3) And then boom, the people emerge, and that extended shot is just terrific -- we've been startled by the switch from ping-pong bonding to freakout, and now the shot just will not end, will not resituate us, so we're trapped in that moment of OMG AMBUSH for like a good two and a half minutes or whatever -- it looks in one direction and it's kinda "holy crap" and then it revolves in the other direction and it's even more "holy crap, that's what was happening behind me when I was looking in the other direction?" and it just gets worse and worse: point being it's just a really well-done way of immersing you in the sensory detail and panic of OMG AMBUSH, and the way she gets shot right "next" to your POV, just in passing in a very long shot, works really well for me. (It gives bullets a real sense of their risk and reality, rather than those Hollywood bullets that are always ricocheting off things and acting like cartoons.)

We're not even sure Owen will survive his wound!

Lots of X.

also i LOVE erin brockovich. outside of out of sight, it's my favorite soderbergh movie, mainly for finney + roberts + eckhart being pretty much the most stand-up dude ever + those fucking kid actors who were INCREDIBLE. i'd say i watch that movie once every four to six months. and yes i own it.

going way back to the soderbergh comparison, i see what yr getting at generally, but i don't think a real comparison between the two is apt. i think of soderbergh as approaching films with a technique in mind -- the technique is the point more than the film itself. witness the good german or schizopolis or full frontal or even traffic. to some extent it's a technological (and this can also mean antiquated technology) exercise, and there have been points where he has had a mainstream script to do this (his best films, honestly) and others where it's genuinely art house. i think what yr getting at, anthony, is that this is a very stylized, "arty" film while taking on -- in a macro view -- a pretty standard plot: end of the world, man must survive. but i think that discredits the script to some extent, which i saw as being so effortless and tight. it def has that videogame feel of a to b as eli noted on the sandbox, but it's also a marvel in efficiency -- there's little fat. and part of that is the overall view/approach that cuaron took to this film. i felt like his techniques -- the long shots with the best cgi i have ever seen -- were meant for immersion, not as a demonstration in technique. that we all marvel at it afterwards is not the point.

the critiques of the ending i can understand, but i was so immersed and sold on this world presented to me that i would have accepted the love boat picking key up.

also also morbs you bringing up bogart's rick is SO right on. i was thinking that midway through the movie, and rewatching casablanca again i agree even moreso.

P.S. Anthony you said above that you didn't think the film had any kind of intent to gussy things up or pretend it was above its mechanics, but the use of terms like "conceal" conventions -- as opposed to, I dunno, "handle conventions effectively" -- is continually suggesting the opposite, that you think it's hiding or papering over these things.

I have an actual non-snarky answer to the "killing people as bedrock narrative task" question, but I have to go for a second, during which there will be 80 news posts.

these aren't opposites, though! They're emotional effective while attempting to hide its transparency!

this is otm - i wonder if ppl who didnt like this movie were just getting up too many times to pee or something

x-post I liked the movie, never got up once.

I'd have gone with Bazooka.

Setting up a whimsical bonding moment before AMBUSH is a staple move

This really got started with Bonnie and Clyde, at least in America, didn't it? or just after any lightness & laughs.

If Soderbergh's upcoming Che movie with Benicio del Toro had some sequences like these, I wouldn't object.

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At this point, what storyteller does that not pertain to. Because I'm trying to discern how dude is using it as a point of differentiation.