I saw this last week and it was amazing. The director, Alfonso Cuaron, is the guy who did Y Tu Mama Tambien (the first movie with subtitles I really liked) and Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban (the first really good Harry Potter movie).
Slate calls it the movie of the millennium, because…it’s about our millennium:
Though it’s set in the London of 2027, Cuarón’s film isn’t some high-tech, futuristic fantasy. It takes place in a grimly familiar location: the hell we are currently making for ourselves.
The scariest thing about the movie was its plausibility. That, and the amazing camera angles and scenes shot like the cinematic clips interspersed throughout video games (specifically Half Life 2) that completely reset your expectations of how action flows:
The sound and production design lay the groundwork for a convincing dystopia, but it’s Cuarón’s daring, fluid camera that brings this terrible world to life.
But it’s emotionally powerful too. We take for granted the hope for the future that children provide, especially when you’re not around them for months on end, but this film reminds us how important they are to our nature. There’s one scene where raw humanity momentarily overcomes the din of battle that will stir anyone alive. I agree that Christmas day was an appropriate release date:
Children of Men is a modern-day nativity story that’s far more moving and even, in its way, reverent than the current film by that name.
This is definitely one of those movies that leaves you wanting an epilogue, and maybe also a prequel and sequel, but while Cuaron creates such rich worlds he also respects the audience enough to leave things open-ended.
I clearly can’t write movie reviews, so go see it.
Oh, and bonus points for using one of the most tragically beautiful songs I have ever heard, Sigur Ros’ Hoppipolla, in the trailer:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=cwsgkurfCjE