Children of Men

The performances are crucial, because all of these characters have so completely internalized their world that they make it palpable, and themselves utterly convincing.

Children of Men may be something of a bummer, but it’s the kind of glorious bummer that lifts you to the rafters, transporting you with the greatness of its filmmaking.

It's a measure of Cuarón's directorial chops that Children of Men functions equally well as fantasy and thriller. Like Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" and the Wachowski Brothers' "V for Vendetta" (and more consistently than either), the movie attempts to fuse contemporary life with pulp mythology.

A visually stunning Swiftian satire, Children Of Men may appear clumsy, but its message is simple, heartfelt and ultimately rather moving.

As all his films have shown, Cuarón is clearly one of the most original filmmakers working today, and Children of Men should solidify his place at the top of those ranks. With a great script, there should be no stopping him.

The problem with the film, despite the genius of craftmanship and cinematography, is that the film doesn't really have anything new to say.

Bloated adaptation of P.D. James's thoughtful, compact novel.

One of the, if not the greatest, dystopia ever put onto film. Alfonso Cuarón's mastery of scenery and timing gives enough information for the average viewer but allows the attentive a treasure trove of details that makes this film worth many re-watches. Despite all the detail, this film builds its style around showing just enough, never more and definitely never less. Perhaps the greatest feat of this film is its ability to take an improbable world and making it alive and believable (the other dystopia to master such is The Handmaid's Tale, but Atwood nonetheless remains sadly more in the probable and not improbable), with the audience able to feel the desperation and despair of the people and the end of times they are facing. Children of Men is an experience, and like all experience, must be seen to be truly comprehended.

I loved this film as a teenager and decided to show it to my girlfriend last night. I hadn't seen it in at least 10 years. Did it hold up? Yes and no. It is objectively a great film. The acting, the story, the writing, and the effects are really great. However, there is this undercurrent of messaging about illegal migration that is really frustrating. Apparently you either have to be extremely pro immigrant or extremely anti immigrant. There is nobody in the middle saying, "Sorry, the world has gone to trash and sorry that people are in poverty and pain throughout the Earth, but the UK is a tiny island and we can't allow the entire planet to flood here." Because that's pretty much the only realistic and grounded way to view the situation. Instead, you have the government behaving as if though the refugees/illegal immigrants aren't human and obviously that is just terrible. But the film often feels like it is emotionally manipulating the situation to try to get the viewer to be completely pro refugee. When, all it takes is one minute of thought to realize that there are billions of people on the planet and even if you are pro refugee, you can't fit all of these people into the tiny British island. At some point, they would have to start turning people away. And what would that look like? Does it have to look like a dystopian nightmare, such as depicted in this film? Maybe it does. But, there is a reason that the UK in this fictional universe is still a functioning nation. Whereas the rest of the world has been destroyed. Instead of fighting against the only government that survived the apocalypse, I would be pretty grateful to them instead. None of these narratives come through though. Like I said, you are either pro massive migration or not in the world of "Children of Men". And it did kind of seem like they picked a side when it came to telling this story. Why was the government putting people in giant camps? Why not just deport them immediately? Or are places like Bexhill just staging areas for that to be done? If they are so oppressive, why not just kill them? People would stop trying to get in if they knew that they would be killed on sight. I read the book because I enjoyed the film so much but I simply can't remember any details. Anyhow, it is very much worth watching but being aware of some of the messages being pushed is important. Oh, I also have to mention that the actress that plays "Kee" is annoying and really not that good of an actress. She is definitely one of the weaker parts of the film.

Really impressive technically but it just worked intermittently for me, failed to have me consistently engaged with the story.

This one was a major disappointment for me. I will start off with the few positives before moving into the negatives. Firstly, the acting was good, especially from Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and then Chiwetel Ejiofor and Charlie Hunnam is smaller roles. In addition, the cinematography here is great, especially during action sequences. The whole film has this really cool video game esque feel to what unfolds that is just missing the prompts for what you are supposed to do next. In addition, the colors here are great, as the gray everywhere really sums up the despair. Now, for the negatives. There are not a ton, but they are big enough to really hamper this one. Firstly, the story ****. In premise, it sounds good, but in practice it is boring and uninteresting. In addition, there needs to be some kind of introduction to this world. Many things are occuring in this film and it never really explains why. I know that Cuaron hates backstory, but it is needed in this type of film to allow the audience to understand this futuristic setting. Without it, the audience is left guessing as to why the events are happening. Another major issue surrounds one of the deaths in this film, as it is hinted that it was a specific reason, but the reason is murky at best and really needed better explaining. It is a very important sequence, yet the reasoning behind is left largely unanswered. The script is also pretty bad in most parts as the dialogue had me cringing quite frequently. It all felt very unnatural and poorly worded. Finally, Clara-Hope **** is quite annoying and since she had a large role, it really subtracted from the overall film. Many find this film to be thought-provoking and cautionary. I cannot help but agree, as it left me wondering how it got so much praise and a warning to not trust the general consensus all the time.

What a load of rubish. Camera is terribly shakey for the duration of the movie. The story is illogical mess almost no characters are likable. The apocalyptic scenario is a mixed bag. On one hand they did good job showing UK that is not maintained for a weekened. On the other there are random sheep pack going down destroyed metropolitan area. WTF they eat? People shoting at each other because ... unclear. fasism? Very strange reasoning. But all sides of conflits are supposed to be fasists. It's using some real-world problems to make it look like prophecy.