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

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Oh, and I was totally having Half-Life 2 flashbacks the whole way through. Enhanced the experience for me.

― Andrew (enneff), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 22:17 (seventeen years ago) link

The entire time watching the movie I thought it was "fuji" instead of "fugee," and I was scratching my head, like "she doesn't look Japanese."

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 22:20 (seventeen years ago) link

My take on it is pretty similar to Tombot's in that I watched it intently but the end left me in a state where I can't fully recommend it. Though less offensively than most Soderbergh (the director I most associate this with), it felt like Cuaron often used taste and craft to CONCEAL Hollywood bullshit, rather than make a film without it. Anybody looking for a good dystopian sci-fi film should see it, but it definitely feels overrated in some circles.

― Zwan (miccio), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:39 (seventeen years ago) link

Actually I can recommend it, I just can't say its A+ or anything.

― Zwan (miccio), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:42 (seventeen years ago) link

What, precisely, do you mean by "Hollywood bullshit"?

― The Android Cat (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:44 (seventeen years ago) link

A lot of little contrivances as to who-dies-when, pointless moments of exposition (I really wanted Owen to say "um, yeah, I was there" when the midwife brought up how "that's when the despair started"), all the stuff people have brought up about the ending, minor details that you could argue the film HAD to have in order to work (I'm not really looking for an argument here - if I'm a nitpicker I'm a nitpicker), but I would have been fine without.

― Zwan (miccio), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:50 (seventeen years ago) link

Er, so basic conventions of storytelling = "Hollywood bullshit"?

I think you're being a nitpicker.

― The Android Cat (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:52 (seventeen years ago) link

I would have liked it to be a little less conventional, yeah. Sorry!

― Zwan (miccio), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:54 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't think you have to apologize for anything except maybe inappropriate use of hyperbole (15-yard penalty, repeat 2nd down).

― The Android Cat (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:57 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm not gonna apologize until I stop seeing the phrase "From the visionary director Alfonso Cuaron" in print ads, dude.

― Zwan (miccio), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:59 (seventeen years ago) link

for hyperbole, I mean.

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:00 (seventeen years ago) link

The only point I'll agree on is the midwife speech, that was unnecessary.

I still can't find fault with the ending. Seems like it's lose-lose for Cuaron - every possible ending would have annoyed someone.

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:01 (seventeen years ago) link

That's not hyperbole, that's redundancy.

― The Android Cat (Dan Perry), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:01 (seventeen years ago) link

That's valid about the ending, though I was hoping the movie would just end with the two of them adrift in the fog. His death and the boat's arrival both felt really unnecessary.

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:02 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, that's one that I would have thought about going with - but isn't it just as much of a cliché (albeit indie/art-film) as the hero's death?

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:03 (seventeen years ago) link

have you read Rosenbaum's long review, Anthony? He seems to have the same view as you.

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Which is why I said your point is valid, though I think that's really the end of the story (them getting to their destination, not whether the destination is what they hoped for).

x-post who's Rosenbaum? Is it linked here? I didn't read the entire thread.

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:05 (seventeen years ago) link

Jonathan Rosenbaum
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/moviereviews/2007/070105/

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:07 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, I'm pretty much in agreement, though complaints like his and mine are in large part a reaction to the hype - if this was a relatively ignored genre piece we'd be big-uppin' it (and I think it is a top quality genre piece - having a hard time thinking of dystopian sci-fi films that were better, unless in a Zardoz-esque way).

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:10 (seventeen years ago) link

i think if it had ended with them in the fog I would have screamed in annoyance. at least this way there is some kind of ending that you can leave open to interpretation. leaving them in the fog would be a cop out.

― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:17 (seventeen years ago) link

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 (Steve Shasta), Thursday, 18 January 2007 00:33 (seventeen years ago) link

i think if it had ended with them in the fog I would have screamed in annoyance. at least this way there is some kind of ending that you can leave open to interpretation

For a couple of minutes after the film ended I was disappointed with the ending. The pair lost in the fog would have been a suitably modernist ending: despairing and symbolic at once. Then I realized that getting picked up by this crew Owen knows nothing about, whom we never see, whose motives we never know, is more legitimately creepy.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 18 January 2007 01:02 (seventeen years ago) link

ok i guess someone said this upthread but yeah, leaving them alone would be just as much a cliche as the way it ends. and what alfred said.

and i don't see how cuaron goes to any lengths to "conceal" anything, and frankly i think whatever gets you to that conclusion is a really fucking weird way to watch a movie.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 18 January 2007 02:58 (seventeen years ago) link

By contrast, del Toro's adherence to a single genre in Pan's Labyrinth, for which he wrote the screenplay, makes the film impressively personal and original

This sentence in Rosenbaum's review had me reaching for the smelling salts.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 18 January 2007 03:05 (seventeen years ago) link

It's a bit of a stretch to say that del Toro's done nothing but horror - or at least I don't think of Hellboy and Blade II that way.

Honestly, I don't even look out for his columns and reviews anymore. Dude has lost the plot.

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 18 January 2007 03:24 (seventeen years ago) link

The only way I think of 'Hellboy' is a movie I was really pissed off I did a paid on-demand for, while I've never watched a 'Blade' movie or TV show and see very little reason to. I'm just not into CGI superhero films; I almost forget it's the same director...

― Michael J McGonigal (mike mcgonigal), Thursday, 18 January 2007 08:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Anthony, I think the thing I'm having trouble with isn't your "be less conventional" take, but wanting to separate "Hollywood bullshit" from "conventions of storytelling." I see lots of straightforward, conventional storytelling in this, yeah, and often using a pretty straightforward visual grammar. I can't think of anything in it that strikes me as Hollywood bullshitty, though -- bullshitty meaning extravagant, artificial, or beholden to conventions of films rather than conventions of the real world or the basics of storytelling. I'd read "Hollywood bullshit" more as "Clive Owen does bullet-time crane-kick in hand-to-hand combat with enemy," or any of the other action-movie stuff this one seemed to deliberately steer clear of.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 18 January 2007 17:38 (seventeen years ago) link

I already said I don't want to quibble on whether the pace at which certain characters die and have emotional breaktdowns are part of "the basics of storytelling" or just cliches. If the problem is that I called it "hollywood" bullshit when you think its bullshit that predates film, or that "bullshit" is too harsh a term, fine. My point earlier was that Alfonso CONCEALS these commonplaces - he knows better than to show a fucking crane-kick, but the movie still relies on him doing something at point A to get to point B in a way I found slightly too conventional for the film to be as exceptional as some people are making it to sound.

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 17:47 (seventeen years ago) link

Huh. Interesting. I dunno -- I seem to hate like 90% of non-frivolous films I see mostly because films are fucking terrible at conventional storytelling, so seeing one that has any basic competence in moving a story from A to B actually does rate as "exceptional" in my book!

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 18 January 2007 17:54 (seventeen years ago) link

In a World With McG, I really can't get too sick over studio hype labeling Cuaron "visionary."

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 18 January 2007 17:57 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean, I did like it, and I totally understand if you think I expected too much, but a lot of the reviews got me hoping that Cuaron was doing something more than the Soderberghy application of film technique to make a story's obviousness less offensive. Cuz when the restraint falters, like in the ending, it becomes doubly annoying. A more flagrant and painful example would be Erin Brokovich, where the opening '70s-style character study turned out to be a prelude smokescreen for "A Civil Action for women."

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:00 (seventeen years ago) link

how can a dude who listens exclusively to generic rock music demand that 'good' films be some kinda avant garde pomo cut-up instead of something with basic narrative stuff thats been around since the iliad?

― and what (ooo), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:00 (seventeen years ago) link

eat my ass, ethan.

I'm really voicing an issue I have with a trend in praised directors rather than saying "CHILDREN OF MEN: C+" or something like that.

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:02 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm sorry if I have no right to say I was disappointed by high expections because "listen exclusively to generic rock music" (if that even has the slightest bit of truth to it).

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:03 (seventeen years ago) link

high expectations, rather.

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:04 (seventeen years ago) link

I never saw Erin Brockovich, but I did just have fun visiting our old thread for Master and Commander, still my ultimate mindblowing example of how films suck at telling stories:

"Hello, doctor, we are passing the Galapagos Islands."
"Oh! I never mentioned this before, but did you know that ~~my character~~ I am an avid naturalist, and would really like to see the Galapagos Islands?"
"I'm sorry, but we're in pursuit of a ship and can't stop."
"Well then be advised that this is a very dramatic moment, and a conflict now exists between the two of us."

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Is part of the problem that stuff happens when the only reason it happens there and then is that it'd be a shorter film if it didn't?

Exaggerated for comedy example: I mean OF COURSE the caff blows up just seconds after Clive Owen's character leaves it.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:05 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh god nabisco that's not as bad as when his keen interest in naturalism gives them the edge against the ship they're following.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:07 (seventeen years ago) link

"In a World With McG, I really can't get too sick over studio hype labeling Cuaron "visionary.""

Yeah me neither.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:09 (seventeen years ago) link

i'm having trouble sorting out how this is a soderbergh movie...

― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:10 (seventeen years ago) link

(Andrew, I'd say the worst M&C moment is at the end when he says "and now I will pass command of the ship off onto ... you" and picks the one guy and the music swells and you're like "umm, the extra? did that guy even have a line?")

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:15 (seventeen years ago) link

In what way was this story obvious?? I got fooled at least twice and seldom had any idea what to expect. I am very credulous, though. I also had no idea the movie even existed until about five minutes before I walked in and saw it.

― Euai Kapaui (tracerhand), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:16 (seventeen years ago) link

Yancey, it's in the sense that I found the use of film technique to conceal a story's obviousness transparent in a fashion that I associate more aggressively with Soderbergh's more populist films. In case that wasn't clear.

I should point out that (including in the works of Soderbergh, comparing Traffic to Ocean's Eleven, say), I tend to feel less of a need to acknowledge it (and risk offense by bringing it up around fans and/or trigger-happy ILXors) when the movie is less earnest.

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:18 (seventeen years ago) link

I feel the same way about my generic rock, actually!

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:22 (seventeen years ago) link

Lodging your complaints in terms of "it's getting blowjobs from everyone involved with Hollywood" is a bit odd, since it opened small (with some people like Hoberman thinking it was being dumped by the studio), isn't going to be up for any big Oscars, didn't get shit at the Golden Globes...

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:25 (seventeen years ago) link

I shouldn't even acknowledge it when somebody puts that many words in my mouth but anyhow, I've been reffering solely to positive reviews I've read (of which there are plenty of) not "blowjobs from everyone involved with hollywood."

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:28 (seventeen years ago) link

seriously, save quotation marks for when you're actually quoting someone.

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:29 (seventeen years ago) link

Aren't you a writer or something?

― milo z (mlp), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:31 (seventeen years ago) link

anthony i think the positive reviews* are because its a really good movie, not some kind of sneaky marketing attempt to pass of traditional hollywood storytelling as non-linear art film

*not like its even getting better overall press than trash like pursuit of happyness or whatever

― and what (ooo), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:33 (seventeen years ago) link

*not like its even getting better overall press than trash like pursuit of happyness or whatever

― Zwan (miccio), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:34 (seventeen years ago) link

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