Children Of Men

Everyone kept telling me that this film was amazing, Oscar nominated, directed by Alfonso Cuarón who did a pretty good job of HP3 and apparently some other good films. I was told it's technically brilliant, some revolutionary techniques used for filming certain sequences, lots of nice long takes, blah blah blah.

Well I was intrigued at least, even if it did have Clive Owen in it, which is rarely a good sign. Picked it up on DVD (see how good a movie at home can be) for £8 I think it was, 2 disc, cheers.

The car scene that everyone raves about, justly so, very clever, very well done and dramatically a very good scene. The Bexhill fight near the end, very Saving Private Ryan (as most war-esque scenes are now), but pretty good, could've been a little more tense tho. But overall, a pretty dull film. I was more engaged by the special features telling me how they did the car and cafe shots (ok I'm a geek for special features), but even so, what does that say about the film. Within the first 5 minutes my mind was crying out for them do go hire a Steadicam, ok handheld's the new black but handheld in a scene that's pretty flat, just don't work, it just serves to distract even more, the camera can't add energy to the performance.

Clive Owen wasn't that bad, but then nothing else really rose to much of a level, Chiwetel Ejiofor was better in Serenity and Michael Caine was just Michael Caine...again...amigo.

The rest of the film was technically ok, Cuaron has a pretty good vision, as he's already demonstrated, the production design was pretty much spot on for a dystopian near future I think and there were some nice visual touches in it.

Apart from that, as I say, it was just a bit dull, not as mind-numbingly dull as Wolf Creek mind, but still, the bottom of their school report echoes mine... Could do better.

To console myself, I'm gonna get a sandwich and watch the special features for John Carpenter's The Thing. Cheers.

Children Of Men - 5/10