Children of Men - Page 5

I'm sorry, but this just drives me insane when people say this isn't science fiction. I know this comment prompted a large discussion between Flave and Shaded Dogfood, but I have a little bit more to add. This is a result of people expecting Sci Fi to be exploding space ships or prancing robots or laser guns, but the defintion of Science Fiction is speculative fiction based on science. This movie defines science fiction.

Josh Z, I disagree with your spoiler comment, there is no indication anything would be a hallucination.

As for my view on the movie: It was a stunning achievement in modern filmmaking. It has some of the most skillfully shot action scenes in the history of film. Cuaron has always had these super long, everything happening, takes in his films (even Prizoner of Azkaban) and it just shows that the man has balls. Many of the special effects during the scenes were practical and most of them are actual continious takes. I loved it.

To those of you not reading the spoiler comments, don't assume anything about this movie or what happens. It's brutal and atypical.

I just saw this the other night. It does sit on the border of sci fi and not wholly in the catagory but what really matters if it is a good movie or not. I enjoyed it.

Karener and Hmurchison trying to drive me insane! Sigh. Oh well. Maybe we can pretend one of the characters was secretly an alien so that it can "push" it into official Sci Fi. LOL.

Tom your thoughts on what is or isn't Sci fi are duly noted here man. Excellent definition btw.

Don't go insane on us just yet.

Can't wait for this one to come out in HD.

I go temporily insane with little provocation, so it's no biggie.

Saw this one over the weekend, great stuff. The combat scenes in the "fugee" camp were among the most realistic I've ever seen. That one take, that everyone has commented on, went on for [it seemed like] five minutes! Bravura filmmaking. Kind of glad about the ambiguous ending; it seemed entirely appropriate. I don't go to the theater much anymore since I've set up my HT, but I'm glad I went to this one. It's likely to stay with me for awhile.

I think it's time to abandon the term "science fiction".
That's a wore out term which has a good amount of baggage attached to it.
What we're describing is more accurately movie stories which are set in a future time.
Somebody needs to coin a new term which reflects that and dump "science fiction".

Kurt beat you it Bob, 42 years ago. At least I found this essay amusing:

http://www.vonnegutweb.com/archives/arc_scifi.html

I got to hear Vonnegut interviewed on Imus in the Morning last week. He's 84 and his mind is as sharp as a tack. He's a hoot to listen to.
A while back a dude posted in another message board I read about how his father was a friend of Vonnegut's when they were in high school.
He related how one time he was present when Vonnegut gave a talk to a church somewhere. And when he started talking he told them "My only relationship to your town (wherever it was) is that my former son-in-law is from here. But I don't hold that against you".
He was talking about Geraldo.

Fun. I never knew that. I wonder if his daughter got tired of him calling up and asking when she was going to divorce that loser?

Anyway, I had some thoughts on the topic at hand and wondered if anyone had some insight:



On another note, I thought that was about the most interesting performance from Michael Caine I've ever seen. He's usually kinda creepy and wooden.

I saw this one this week, and was very impressed. All the actors did a great job, especially Chiwetel Ejiofor as Luke the Fish. When he confessed that he that was one of the highlights of the movie.

Some other observations:

I saw this about a month ago....

Man... lemme just say that I was absolutely floored with the way this film was shot. I have to say that there were several parts where I felt I was actually "IN" the movie. I think the Director was aiming for that feel... there are times when the camera pans a certain way and you are taken from spectating POV to almost like a 1st Person POV.... It's amazing.

I haven't been watching the Box Office but I dont think this movie will do very well in terms of popularity in the U.S. My honest feeling is that the vast majority of our society is just not "ready" for a movie with subject matter this compelling. It's a very dark film with brutality that just crawls under your skin at times.

Performances where very strong.... definently the best movie I saw in '2006. My pick for Best Picture as well.

I saw this yesterday and I keep thinking about it today (a sign of a good movie to me). This movie really immersed me and gave me a feeling of the tension and desperation of the story. This movie did not have a massive "return of the jedi multi planet celebration" at its conclusion, and I liked that.



This movie really stands out to me as being different from all the sequels (Spider man 3, Shrek 3, Pirates 3, etc. etc.). I sure hope it makes enough $$$ so that we get more non-sequel movies. Rotten tomatoes reports earnings of 30e6 and has this to say:

Thumbs up

"Children of Men" "officially" this month, and yesterday where I'm located.

I'll be buying the DVD when it comes out. Superior action film with excellent audio track and good (loud) special effects. I viewed it in a theater which had a very good sound system.

(The title and advertising seem a bit deceptive. This is a dystopian fiction, action film. I'll let others cry about the movie not being closely adapted from the book.)


http://www.childrenofmen.net/

And the good reports just keep on coming...

QUESTION: In your opinion, should this have been nominated as Best Picture by the Academy this year?

Absolutely should have been.
Although it did receive nominations for screenplay, editing and cinematography.

i looked at the box office: poor $35M in the US and about the same worldwide (budget $76M)
shows the BO is really about teenagers and adult movies have hard time scoring big
i hope the Oscars and dvd give this must-see movie a second chance

probably also this movie is "embarassing"

How so?

the movie opened to $10 million in 800 or so theaters..the interest was there, but for some reason, universal automatically assumed it would tank in the states and cut the marketing.

I thought of this movie as a decent B quality budget movie...with a boring ending.

I think its way overrated...and definitley not a movie I would buy.

Good point...

well it raises many themes of our modern societies, some finger pointing, some truths.
who knows in 20years or so....

Dystopian movies/novels are speculative by definition (no one can predict the future).

They give an opportunity to the viewer/reader to contemplate the direction the future will take.
We can't help but wonder about tomorrow...it's our nature.

IMO we never get enough of these at the theater.

Once I'd read this page all the way to the end...

http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news....ry=Environment

... it got me to thinking about why the premise and the message of "Children of Men" is so compelling.

Lets' not drift from the movie. Thanks.

larry

Does anyone else think this movie was robbed of the Best Cinematography award? I actually saw all 5 movies in the category and thought CoM was a lock. All of the other movies looked great, but a lot of that was set design and art direction. When dealing strictly with the cinematography, none of those movies had anything that surpassed the extended tracking shot in the car. And that is only one of many examples of wonderfully shot scenes.

As much as I enjoyed it, Pan's Labyrinth was the least deserving in this particular category.

I didn't see PL and problaby won't. To me, the thing that made Children of Men standout was the cinematography. The acting and story were good but not exceptional. Here's a link to a article that shares the same opinion as you: http://www.firstshowing.net/2007/02/...of-men-robbed/

larry