Chil'ren O' Mane

Official Post Number One
"Children of Men"
-Sam Leishman


Rarely do I shout for no reason whatsoever. But in one particular scene of Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men", involving a motorcycle flung onto the hood of a car, I find myself doing just that. I can't help but utter a "Ho-oh!" as the two motorcycle passengers are flung into the road and their crunched chopper skids down the street towards another car, this one already on fire.

What people said this movie was about: Clive Owen's living in this futuristic society, and women are infertile. So the world has basically gone to hell and there's no hope. Oh! Wait! There might be! If Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and their ragtag team of terrorists can save a pregnant girl, we might be able to go on.

What this movie is really about: Most of what I just wrote. But there's a lot of bitchin' political commmentary thrown in here too, as well as some great action-and-chase sequences that don't come across in the trailer.

Things that are good about this movie:
-The realism. Cuaron keeps the melodrama down, and the shock value high. I like this.
-CGI is kept to a minimum. It would have been easy to bog this down with computer-generated crap, but it would have taken away from the story. I like when I don't notice stuff has been enhanced.
-Clive Owen, who's never quite wowed me before. He was definitely my least favorite character in "Sin City", and I'm not too big on "Closer", but I suppose he was alright in that. He's awesome at playing depressed here.
-The Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday" and Radiohead's "Black Star."
-Michael Caine
-Michael Caine
-Michael Caine. Seriously. He's this old pothead, and he's got this really great wig on. And his performance is incredible.
-The cinematography. There are these long, sweeping shots of cars driving down the road, and it lets the audience see what's happening on every side of the car, and what every passenger is doing, etc. And when the shots are dark, the lighting around the characters' outlines is perfect. I never had to strain to see who was who.
-We weren't told why women couldn't get pregnant. With all the political stuff going on, I don't want to hear about the science of it all.
-How I couldn't stop thinking about it for at least three hours afterwards.

See it now.