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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

"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."

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

Yeah me neither.

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.

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

UH

b. if that's your beef with me saying I had high expectations based on critical hype that weren't met, I still don't know why you brought up marketing ploys and Oprah and all this other horseshit.

-- Zwan (anthonyisrigh...), January 18th, 2007 6:18 PM. (miccio) (link)

What I found to be so amazing is just how natural and tactile the movie was. I don't see how the film technique concealed or was an attempt to conceal the story's obviousness. First, I thought the narrative was pretty transparent, not on the micro-level, but on the macro. Second, I thought the film technique served the story in that instead of concealing or distracting or overshadowing it enhanced the immediacy and the sensual, personal aspects of the story.

For example, contrast the long uncut scenes in Children of Men with The Player. Both are used, intentionally, to do completely opposite things, in The Player, you're supposed to notice the un-cut shot--Altman is being purposefully self-conscious, but in Children of Men, the long shots are meant to draw you into the film, and I think they succeeded, because so many people, even looking for it going in, didn't realize, technically, what was going on at the time.

The movie is more ernest than you think it is, and you are totally wrong that in Children of Men, Cuaron employs "the use of film technique to conceal a story's obviousness".

Anthony, do you think it's possible that it's people praise of this movie as "visionary" that's making you feel like the film itself was pretending to be "visionary," etc? (Or could you point to specific moments where you felt like it was gussying up conventions, or trying to pretend to be greater than them?)

A lot of the reviews acknowledged the creaks in the plot in hindsight, so it was pretty definitely the use of words like "visionary" that made me think this would be more than a great genre piece. I think people are missing that I'm not claiming the film itself is self-impressed, just less ambitious in form and atypical in convention than I expected.

X-post - how was Moore's death sentimental?

x-post I dare you to say that to a fan of it, Alfred.

I also got annoyed, reading certain US reviews especially, how they were all disappointed about the lack of explanation, which I thought was one of its better features.