... was fucking amazing! Go see this movie in the theater, it's really good - the best movie I've seen in a really long time.
I hadn't planned on seeing this, but after seeing SO MANY good reviews online (I've literally _never_ seen a movie with so few bad review on Rotten Tomatoes), and having so many usually curmudgeonly people say it was great, I broke down and checked it out today.
While it wasn't quite as bleak or as harrowing as some of the reviews made it out to be (at least to me, I imagine those reviewers probably aren't as well versed as I am in the horror/gore cinema), it was an intense experience... with a clever and suprising script, and many great performances. Go see it in the theater.
I'm really excited about Alfonso Cuarón now. He is definitely on my "filmmakers to watch" list.
julie [email] said at 9:36 PM 01-17-2007: Agreed! Totally enjoyed it. I'm not ready to crown it the Blade Runner of our generation like some of the reviewers have said, but it is awesome.
Also has a great soundtrack for fans of prog rock. There's a scene where the background cityscape through the window is a replica of a Pink Floyd album cover.
evan [email] said at 11:24 AM 01-18-2007: the guy collects art and thus collected the pig used on the PF cover and in their live shows. it's part of his collection, and he lives in the building that was shown on the album cover. it fits with what he does and isn't just some pointless visual allusion.
josh [email] said at 11:55 AM 01-18-2007: but it is _also_ a visual allusion. i assumed it was part of his collection, but also there to reference the whole "the wall" dystopia thing. if i didn't hate pink floyd i might be less annoyed by it.
mary [email] said at 9:41 PM 01-17-2007: Also agreed. I was so psyched that they showed this movie last week as the Movie Moms showing. Amazing. Clive Owen, midwife.
myriam [email] said at 10:35 PM 01-17-2007: His Harry Potter was the only watchable one. He took a series whose movies SUCK and managed to make one that somehow fit in but completely transcended the rest, while still sticking to the story of the book. Amazing. I loved it.
evan [email] said at 11:20 AM 01-18-2007: just curious: what did you think was clever and surprising about the script? i liked the movie, but thought it was rather straight forward.
josh [email] said at 11:52 AM 01-18-2007: it had that same feel as 28 days later in that i had no clue when or if characters were gonna die, and it addresses a lot of weird little snippets of what the world would be like, for example they are burning cattle because they don't need them. there are 100s of little details like that, which they don't address even, they are just onscreen and if you think about them you are like "oh damn"...the actual story progression is pretty straightforward though, that's true.
marcia [email] said at 1:12 PM 01-18-2007: I agree with Evan. I thought it was a very straight forward story. It was a good movie--beautifully (and incredibly filmed, particularly with certain moments so well timed), wonderfully acted, etc. And I liked the overall sense of constant uncertainty, all the way up to the end. The ending reminded me a lot of in the Bedroom.
But the whole movie in general seemed not just uncertain, but also vague, which was an element I didn't like. Granted, we're given the same amount of information the characters are given--the human project is as mysterious to us as it is to them.
All we're left with is hope--perhaps even faith--at the end of the movie. And that was an interesting way to end a movie filled with so much uncertainty.
This also seemed like a modern, futuristic christian movie about the birth of christ. That was impossible to ignore. Though him walking with the girl and child out of the war zone was probably one of the best scenes of the movies, and how, in the end, it did not change the war.
I'm not sure how I feel about all the war zones/refugee camps seeming very middle eastern, though. I'm unsure of the implications of that...
josh [email] said at 1:51 PM 01-18-2007: i love that it was vague, and that it felt like we were really in this world... so many little things that they didn't explain, just hinted at, and thus that let your imagination run wild.
i think the story progression was definitely straightforward, i mean it was basically a chase movie... but like i said, the way it was done was really interesting and i never knew what was going to happen next, exactly. or if a certain character would make it through. the ping pong ball scene, and what happens after it is one in particular that i'm thinking about.
brad [email] said at 4:29 PM 01-22-2007: Ping-pong ball scene? I don't even remember that. I must have seen this movie on a bad day. Also, the sound at the Loew's Dupont cinema is HORRIBLE, not to mention the small screens (last time I choose a theater out of sheer convenience). I had to really concentrate to follow what was happening, because I had that much trouble hearing what was being said. Despite that, I enjoyed it, but it didn't really blow me away. Maybe if I'd seen it in a different theater...
josh [email] said at 5:27 PM 01-22-2007: in the car... they are passing the ping pong ball back and forth then there is an exciting event. trying to avoid spoilers, sorry.
mary [email] said at 3:19 PM 01-18-2007: Newborns spend pretty much all their time on your boob. So it seemed weird to me that he NEVER showed the baby nursing. Almost like he was deliberately avoiding such an obvious image, if he were in fact making Christ allusions.
marcia [email] said at 3:45 PM 01-18-2007: It seemed to me that the baby and the mother's relationship (physical or otherwise) was secondary to the baby's relationship to the entire world. When I think of a mother and child I think of a bubble surrounding them. I never once got that feeling in this film.
Are there any images of baby jesus nursing? Anywhere?
evan [email] said at 4:08 AM 01-19-2007: why would you assume that they are burning cattle because they don't need them. if they simply don't need them, why not let them roam aimlessly? the only reasons that make sense for burning are a) the cattle died of starvation b) some sort of outbreak. burning em cause they don't need em doesn't make sense.
josh [email] said at 8:55 AM 01-19-2007: why would they die of starvation? plenty of grass in that field. maybe there was an outbreak.... but the UK is a MAJOR beef exporter. if the rest of the world has collapsed, what do they need with all that cattle?
the movie didn't explicitly say that, but it certainly made me muse on why they were getting rid of their cattle, and since i know that the UK today exports millions of cows every year to the rest of the world... its a logical conclusion. if there is no "rest of teh world", no need for those cows.
josh [email] said at 10:09 AM 01-19-2007: actually now that i think about it, it's probbaly only about a million cows, not millions... still a lot of cows.
evan [email] said at 11:57 AM 01-19-2007: you're right that there is no need for the cows, but there is also no reason to burn them. just let em go. i think they did it simply cause it looked apocalyptic. "yo, there'll be piles of burning cows everywhere" "why?" "ummm, i don't know, cause it'll look fucked up and awesome!"
josh [email] said at 12:15 PM 01-19-2007: well cattle ranchers generally do get rid of their cows if they cant afford to feed them/cant sell them. in north dakota a few months ago (and probably now), cattle ranchers were getting rid of their cows because they couldnt afford to keep them fed. of course, they were just selling them at bargain prices (taking a big loss) to be slaughtered, but if they couldn't have sold them they probably would just shoot them all. having 1000+ starving huge animals roaming your property is probably a bummer, as well as a safety hazard.
josh [email] said at 2:03 PM 01-19-2007: "only ENGLAND remains!"
nah, they'd have guidelines on what to do with your excess livestock. the book apparently has long passages about stuff like that, every citizen under a certain age in the book has to take classes on how to ensure that england is laid to rest in an appropriate way, in the assumption that they might be one of the last people left alive.
art [email] said at 1:42 PM 01-19-2007: You would burn them to cut down on disease after they die and rot. In medieval times attackers would catapult rotten cows into enemy castles to spread pestilence.
Cows are not self-sufficient and not winter hardy. All you would need is a few of them wandering off and dying near lakes, ponds and streams and fouling those so that anyone that drank out of them had a good chance of getting cholera or some other nasty disease.
It's the same reason human corpses are burned during wartime or a mass outbreak and there is no time to bury the dead.
julie [email] said at 12:26 PM 01-19-2007: I thought the baby looked pretty realistic... As opposed to when movie people use a big old 3-month old in a birth scene. At least this baby was tiny. The jerky arm movements are realistic- that's how babies move. But I can't really remember the face. Was the face obviously fake?
reggie [email] said at 12:16 PM 01-21-2007: Spike Lee has this fascination with actually showing babies coming out of the womb. He did it in Mo Better Blues and another one of his movies (She Hate Me maybe?)
julie [email] said at 2:40 PM 01-19-2007: 've literally _never_ seen a movie with so few bad review on Rotten Tomatoes
Speaking of that, Pan's Labyrinth's rating on Rotten Tomatoes was 99% for several weeks when it first opened. I'd never seen a 99 before. I think now it's down to a paltry 97.
loren [email] said at 3:10 AM 01-21-2007: I was surprised they didn't mention the rampant STD scourge that would happen after humans realized they could screw all they wanted and not get pregnant. That'd take down a few countries right there.
josh [email] said at 10:32 AM 01-21-2007: kee did mention it in passing... she said she thought she'd get the "blight" or the "pest" or something.. but yeah more people would get the AIDS
rick [email] said at 3:26 PM 01-21-2007: Condoms, both male and female, help prevent that kind of thing. And I imagine an advanced civilization like the one they were in would have more advanced prophylactic creams, salves, balms, gels, and the like that could also prevent that kind of thing.
That being said, people seemed more suicidal and less mindful of their health so maybe the "I-wanna-die-rutting" mindset would be more widespread.
loren [email] said at 12:59 PM 01-22-2007: http://www.fxguide.com/article390.html
http://www.framestore-cfc.com/feature/childrenofmen/index.html
Two good articles about the effects. The amazing thing about the baby was that it was shot with an animatronic and later decided that it would be replaced with CG, so they had to do some insane match moving and painting to get the CG in there.
neilbert [ url ] said at 7:34 PM 01-22-2007: I chose Pan's Labyrinth over Children of Men and enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth, although I wish it had spent more time in the fantasy world, but then again, it was a low budget movie. They actually had to partner with the effects house (CAFEFX, my former neighbors) to pull off the movie under budget.
As for Children of Men. I avoided it mainly because of the "Blade Runner of this generation" quotes and that some reviews of the movie said the movie goes down pretty much like this:
No people born in 27 years, no explanation given. Women gives birth to first baby in 27 years, no explanation given. British government last civilized place on the planet sends said preggy woman and Clive owen on Wild Goose chase, hunting the preggy woman like public enemy number one. Lots of unecessary battle scenes. The end. No explanation is given for anything.
Now, I am not a person who needs explanation for every detail, but I can't stand movies that don't give explanations of outstanding plot points that scream for it.
I also can't stand pretentious movies like "The Fountain" where the director muddles his movie down in ambiguity where nobody knows what the fuck is going on, only to have people who think that they know the REAL meaning of the movie to proselytize their interpretation as the only true way.
josh [email] said at 8:28 PM 01-22-2007: 1. Why does their need to be an explaination of why women aren't fertile, or why this one is? The two main characters are in no place to know, and the movie ends before anyone would have been able to find out - since the whole reason people are looking for her is to find out what makes her different.
beyond that... who cares? its not a needed fact to appreciate the film.
2. No spoilers, but the British government doesn't even know about her until close to the end of the movie (like, 8 minutes before it's over), so the movie ISN'T about the government chasing her.
3. there is really only 1 major battle sequence, and it's fucking incredible. there are some tense/violent sequences earlier in the movie, but they aren't battle sequences.
4. it's 18 years.
i like that clive owen never picks up a gun in this.
