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

actually who cares what morons would have rather seen! haha zap! take that, retards!

a. I don't particularly want to see it again.
b. I don't particularly want to talk about it to anyone who hasn't already seen it.
--> C. This is because instead of thinking about the awesome parts of this film, I am stuck pondering relatively tiresome metaphysical bullshit, because (I think!) the ending was so open-ended as to be a poorly thought out cock-up.

-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...), January 16th, 2007 4:20 PM. (Dr Morbius) (later)

agreed. this was one of the weaker points in the movie and it's an easy-out for a redemptive arc.

I did go see it again, and while I noticed a lot of things I hadn't before, once you know what's going to happen it's not nearly as good.

There was a text crawl at the beginning! (on the tv screen at the coffee shop)

While the unknown wound, like the naming of the child, was a little distracting and cliche, two aspects of his death were important: 1) how Kee and Theo each handled his dying, and 2) Kee left alone with the child in a little boat in the fog on the ocean.

i liked the ending in a self-frustrating way, like a john fowles novel or something. enough tenuous information is out there in the film (that the tomorrow is a hospital ship, that the ship will take them to experts on the azores) that the ship actually showing up makes all that stuff true enough. maybe the ship patches theo up, maybe they take care of kee and the baby, maybe not. but why wouldn't it all be true?

They're fucked, but they have to hope in something. Theo has one pretty decent excuse to go to the Human Project: Julian. He can trust her the way she ultimately trusted him. That seems to be one of the major points of the movie that the most elevated human ideas of love and hope and trust and empathy are personal and not political.

http://www.cswu.cz/music/characters/medals.jpg

http://www.phillyist.com/attachments/philly_nicole/mission-accomplished.jpg

Didn't get the feeling of determined completion from that ending that you did. Not at all. The ship looked like a mirage. It didn't look real, and I don't think it was supposed to look real. The men on deck were posed in way-too-obviously-cartoonish poses of "brave discovery" and didn't seem to be pointing towards the girl and baby, a scant 100 feet away. They seemed to be gesturing towards an indefinable something off on the very distant horizon. Towards "tomorrow" or something similarly abstract?

I don't think we were meant to take the final shots as literally as all that.

(That could also be used on people confused after watching Inland Empire. Actually, never mind, the Lynch rabbits and Nastasja Kinski were on the boat.)

Yeah, see, I'm definitely on the side of appreciating this. The goal is to get her to the boat, and that gets accomplished, as much as tasks are accomplished in any contemporary setting. I have not seen that movie where Bruce Willis has to guide Mos Def across fourteen blocks, or whatever, but I'm guessing that their safe arrival doesn't end criminal behavior forever, which seems analogous to what some people in my audience expected from this one: that the unpleasant future would somehow be corrected at the end?

Theo dies in part because every single person who helps them dies. (The airstrikes obviously help with that, but it seems to be underlined when the Russians get shot.) Also: I really liked Sid's death, the sense of hesitance and repulsion on Theo's part as he bashes him. I appreciate seeing a film this suspenseful where the hero doesn't engage in any more action than knocking people with car doors, jump-starting a vehicle, and then showing great distaste in finally actually having to brain someone.

Yeah, out of the heroes in the movie, who actually carries a weapon? Do we ever see Julian with a weapon? Theo uses a car door and a battery, but carries nothing. Kee: nothing. Jasper: nothing. Miriam: nothing. Merickha: carries nothing, but brandishes a piece of wood in an emergency (poor Sid brings out the worst in everybody). The only unsullied "good-guy" who carries a weapon in the movie is the Georgian(?) refugee who leads them to the boat.

-- Sick Mouthy (sickmouth...), January 17th, 2007 11:59 AM. (Nick Southall) (later)

i dunno, this seemed a little out of place to me.