Worth watching for the atmosphere alone.

I am also reading the book as we speak… I suppose I should have finished it before watching the movie. The differences are quite significant. I won’t spoil anything but I do reccomend if anyone liked the movie the should most definitely read the book. Still – an amazing movie and an amazing book. Staggering.

i almost didn’t see this movie because i’m a wuss when it comes to watching violent and intense movies…but i’m SO glad i did.

the movie is terribly realistic and plays with your attention span a lot. there are headlines and clips about what happened to humanity in order for it to get to the point where people had ceased being able to breed (nuclear war, bird flu, chemical spills, etc.)

i enjoy the vagueries (is that a word??) of this movie and how by the end of the movie you are gripping your seat for almost 20 minutes. the directing is AWESOME…there’s one shot in the movie that follows clive owen running his ass off as a wave of bullets and mortars explode all around him for almost 10 minutes straight…fantastic editing and shooting.

my only complaint is that they could have developed clive owen’s character a leeeetle bit more and the not so subtle metaphor of the main female character’s name (Kee) kinda hit you over the head…

all in all a realllly good movie

although it was good film, and an interesting look into what some people think is a possibility for humanity, and I loved the cinematography, I don’t know but it wasn’t quite as good as I thought it would be.

Glad I watched it, but not one I would go out of my way to see again. Clive Owen was good though, he should have been Bond.

Have any of you read the book? How do the book and movie compare? Does the book go into more detail?

I ask because my partner and I agree that it feels like the movie was missing some important pieces of the story that perhaps were included in the book? For example, if humanity can’t have any children, then why the xenophobia? Why the complete disregard for life? Why all the killing? One would assume that a catastrophic event such as humanity not being able to procreate would make people (and governments) value life more. So, perhaps I am missing the point. I get that the movie explores the current actions of the U. S. and British governments taken to dystopian extremes. I get the message that all of us should be willing to sacrifice everything for the life of a child. I get that all of the parties in the film – the government, the activists, the proletariat, the work-a-day drones – continue to do what they do without question because, well, that is what they do. I just don’t get why human life isn’t valued more by all of the aforementioned parties. So, does anyone have any thoughts about this?

By the way, I think one of the most effective little scenes in the movie is in the abandoned train station (or whatever it is) when the Julianne Moore character mentions the high frequency sound and says something along the lines of, “Hear that sound? Well, enjoy it while you can because eventually you will become deaf to it and then you won’t be able to hear that frequency at all anymore.” Theo is one of the few who can still perceive that something is terribly wrong with the status quo. He hasn’t been totally assimilated yet and so Julian is able to pull him out of the greyness of his life, to convince him to risk everything, to try to make a difference.

Going into the theatre to see it is quite the experience. It’s like getting softly punched in the face for two hours straight- not necessarily a bad thing. This film was amazing, a spectacle! This movie reminds us all what good films can do- it has the power to make you think and question your moral values and to transform your life. The bar has been raised and now a new standard has been set. Go watch it now while its still in theatres.

I don’t regret having watched this film at all, which I guess sounds like pretty weak praise, but I’m still not having any strong feelings about it either way. I’m not sure if tense moments and chase scenes make up for lazy acting and sub-par storytelling. Nonetheless, I was entertained, and if that had been the only alleged point of the film then I guess it would have gotten another star or so from me.

I want to hang out at Jasper’s house for a little while.

delightfully vague, bracing & immediate, bleak but still hopeful.

This is not a good movie. It certainly appears like it’s a good movie. It’s got good direction, a good cast and crew, excellent cinematography, and plenty of drama…but it’s missing one huge piece: a story that’s interesting.

This review contains spoilers, which doesn’t really matter, since the plot summaries you read pretty much sum up the entire story, so don’t worry about being spoiled here.

The plot is that women have become infertile (and no one knows why). This terrorist group known as the “Fish” have found a pregnant girl and they’re trying to transport her to a safe place. Enter Clive Owen, who is apparently the ex-husband of the terrorist group, who is asked to help out, and ends up having to do all the work by himself.

I don’t really mind that we don’t know why women have become infertile. That’s not the problem. The problem with this movie is that I just don’t give a damn about the girl carrying the baby or that they’re trying to save her (and not just because she’s a bad actor).

A lot of movies use humor to get you to care about the characters. This movie does the same, but the jokes are bad. Seriously…a “pull my finger” joke? The fart jokes in Y Tu Mama Tambien were much better. Yes, lets have this lovable character with bad jokes and then kill him so you feel sorry for him. And make sure he doesn’t leave his house…doesn’t even try to hide. Where’s the fun in that? Oh, and did anyone notice how the road changed from the start of the movie when Clive Owen went to visit him to how suddenly there was this perfect lookout point later in the movie where he can see him die? Jesus Christ that’s forced.

And did you notice that they killed off Julliane Moore right when she was doing the “yuck it up in front of the camera to make the people love you” act? Yes…of course. Even at the end when Clive Owen died they had to actually take 15 seconds to give him a bit of personality so you liked him. What a pattern.

This movie just has no direction. It’s going nowhere. So what if they found a girl with a baby? Does that “save” mankind? We don’t even really know what’s going on because none of it is explained. If you’re going to try to make me believe this kid is going to make the world a better place then don’t just tell me. It’s like trying to sell me on the bible. Prove it happened. Prove anything in that book happened…and when you can, I’ll believe in Children of Men, too.

Full of hope (without being sappy), believably futuristic, and, like life, surprisingly funny.

The direction and photography never get in the way, but it is possible to see how each contributed to the overall wonderfulness. This is the first movie that made me want to sit in the theater again to watch for how it was done.

There were only two problems with this movie: 1) Julianne Moore is not good enough to act beside Clive Owen and Claire-Hope Ashitey, there is one scene in particular where she single-handedly took me out of the film and made me realize I was watching a movie; 2) the audience started laughing at the end, one woman remarking, “what did he run out of things to talk about.” This, of course, is not the movies fault, but I think that seeing this film after the acclaim it received means that you’ll be in the theater with people expecting something else. It’s just a little frustrating, as the ending is extremely powerful.

Children of Men has often been compared to Blade Runner, and I can see why; while not as futuristic as Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, it’s got a dystopian outlook and a future that seems possible. It’s a low-tech sci-fi movie that seems believable and fantastic.

To me, the most refreshing part of Children of Men is that they don’t bother to take time to explain why the human race is infertile. The writers could have bogged down the movie with pseudo-scientific explanations as to why there were no children, but they just take it as given, drop you into the world, and tell you the story. They trust the audience to be able to accept the situation as it is, and it works. There are some who will have a difficult time with the many disturbing images and scenes of violence, but they aren’t gratuitous and serve to show you the nature of the future society as well as establish and maintain tension.

The movie is technically amazing: director Alphonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki use long takes with very little cutting to create tension without drawing attention to their technical mastery. Acting-wise, Clive Owen carried the movie very well, and Michael Caine puts in another very enjoyable performance. Claire-Hope Ashitey’s performance is subtle and enjoyable as well. High praise for Children of Men; worth seeing if you can handle the disturbing scenes.

While I was in the movie theater watching this movie I cried so hard! If my b/f had not been there I would have totally lost it!! It scared, touched, motivated, saddened, lifted, and shocked me! I’m sure it did other things I just cant think to name them!!! After seeing this movie it made me want to go home and have sex so I could have a baby!

THIS IS BY FAR MY FAVORITE MOVIE OF ALL TIME!!!

I found this movie highly frightenning. I had a nightmare after I watched this movie. As I was watching I was yelling at the screen during some moments, saying this like “no, you jerk,” “NO,” or “that’s rude.” And I knew that this probably bothered the people around me but I was incensed with some scenes. Especially the part where the “retired” nurse gets a bag over her head. I keep seeing that scene over and over again in my mind.

Bound and hooded by a group of activists-turned-terrorists-trying-to-turn-activists-again, a kidnapped Clive Owen sits in a shelter papered in a decade’s worth of tabloid headlines. They scream of war, nuclear mishaps, and ecological disaster. It’s real end-of-the-world stuff, presented in the form of everyday material, much like the film around it. Children Of Men, directed and co-written by Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También), is set in 2027, but each strand of its dystopian vision comes tethered to 2006. It’s all chillingly, disgustingly plausible, and the familiarity only amplifies its power to shock.

There’s much more to Cuarón’s film, adapted from a P.D. James novel, than a tour of a world gone terribly wrong, but the story comes tightly bound to its intricately realized setting, a fascist Britain that’s also apparently the last nightmarish refuge of civilization. The parts of humanity that haven’t already been destroyed wither away due to the mysterious onset of widespread infertility, which has prevented anyone from giving birth for 18 years. The British government rounds up all non-native residents for the good of the state, shipping them off to refugee camps, and beyond doubt, even worse fates. Animal corpses litter the countryside, and people with agendas are always blowing up something or other.

As a former radical now whiling away his time drinking scotch and manning a desk in a low-level bureaucratic office, Owen seems content to watch the world go to hell, until his ex-wife (Julianne Moore), a leader of the pro-immigrant Fishes, presses him into retrieving a pair of illegal travel passes in the hopes of reaching a group of much-rumored, never-confirmed benevolent off-shore scientists called The Human Project. Their motives, tied to the well-being of a young immigrant (Claire-Hope Ashitey), will soon become clear, but only after the cost of failure has been made equally clear.

Cuarón directs Children Of Men with remarkable long takes and indelible images, but it isn’t the kind of craft that immediately calls attention to itself; Cuarón moves the story along with an intensity that makes it hard to pay attention to anything else. It’s a film of astonishing immediacy, with all the urgency of a late-night phone call, but the human element drives it. Owen begins a broken man with little to sustain him beyond his relationship with a paternal Michael Caine, whose activism has devolved into a vague hopefulness and a routine of smoking pot, listening to music, and caring for his semi-comatose wife. By the film’s end, Owen has been transformed and the possibility raised that the world might change with him. Cuarón has created a dire warning of the world that could be, but he’s also made a film about faith, love, sacrifice, and all the other hard-won virtues that keep the world alive. It’s a heartbreaking, bullet-strewn valentine to what keeps us human.

http://rasml.org/?p=715

Whether this movie is overall “good” or “bad,” the themes in “Children of Men” provokes deep thought, argument and reflection among its audience, and the fact that it manages to achieve that is enough of a reason to hold this movie in some form of positive regard.

What a terribly tragic, heartbreakingly beautiful movie. Highly recommended. Bring a hankie or five.

i went with two friends who were a little upset about the ending, but as i left the theatre i thought it was the way it had to end. a story of this scope can’t be tied up with a neat little bow and still be believable.

This was such an intense movie. I don’t normally watch any kind of war or action-type movie so I don’t remember the last time I had this kind of edge of my seat, constant worrying about the characters, closing my eyes kind of movie-going experience. It wasn’t a bad feeling, but it did leave me a little frazzled, and images from the movie made their way into my dreams. Overall, it was extremely dark and difficult to watch but well worth seeing.

4/5