The Good Shepherd and United 93 are more likely candidates for Universal IMO.

Agreed, especially the latter.



Yup, the first one is I guess is more of a teaser, its good, the real trailer reveals the whole film, the whole plot, everything.

Why must Hollywood always do that, drives me nuts.

That movie is so great and so underrated.

Weird, there must be some sort of edited down trailer in theaters that isn't online, because Universal has definitely only had one trailer on the web. It wouldn't really surprise me though, they cut down the trailers for Accepted and The Bourne Supremacy by like a minute each so it's nothing new for them.

Just seen it at me local cinema.

And it's good. Very, very good, in fact. Actually, it's one of the best films I've seen in a long time. More importantly, it's completely Oscar-worthy.

Nothing's set in stone, of course, but I can certainly see it as being the sci-fi film to break the curse. It is to sci-fi what Lord of the Rings was to fantasy. Except while Lord of the Rings was a fantasy story made like an historical epic, Children of Men is a sci-fi story made like Saving Private Ryan. Only much, much better.

God I'm so angry that they delayed it four months in JUST the USA.

It needs amazing reviews and incredible box office to get a BP nomination.

And I don´t know about money, but It is not getting outstanding reviews (at least at the Venice Film festival) so... I am looking forward to see it myself, though.

Bumping to add more kindling to the Children Of Men for BP/BD Club fire (population: me).

It seems to me that those early Film Festivals means very, very little. Babel rocked at the Cannes Film Festival and is now unfortunately doing so-so on RT, struggling even to remain fresh in COTC as well as Metacritic.

PEACE, Mike.

Well its a good film. Very good in fact. But how often would the academy honour a sci-thriller? Because thats what it is. All the perfomances are good - but nobody stands out other than another delightful turn from Caine as usual and the pregnant young lady who's name alludes me at the moment.

If a film was to break the sci-fi curse - this would be it. But I just cant see it doing it. This may get an oscar push if The Good Shephard totally fails though. It has the release date for it. Box Office numbers will be solid but not spectacular judging by grosses in the rest of the world.

There's no way this wins any oscars. It's a really good film (and I will probably rate this over at least a couple of this years best pic noms) but it's just not the groundbreaking film it would need to be to make the oscar break through.

If The Good Sheppard stumbles like I feel it will, then I think with such a weak slate this could still possibly get some nominations. Lack of acting standout other then Caine will hurt a bit, but it should have all the technicals completely on it's side. I can't see anyone whose seen this saying this isn't a lock for Best Cinematography. Other films will need to fail and this will need to be a big hit at the box office, but if Universal tries this is very much still a potential canidate.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

Jeffrey Wells reflects.

He is right in the sense of the movie being technically awesome. It is. and it has some great moments.

Sadly, story-wise is a bit of a mess and It fails to be emotionally enganging at all, IMO. And I don´t see how this is going to hit it big at the domestic BO when It has done lukewarm to ok-ish bussiness in evey country where there has been released so far. It has zero chances for BP or any major oscars, methinks.

Some of the bits I agree with.

Great review by Wells, and this despite him being someone I'm not usually a fan of. He hits the nail pretty hard on the head here. The people who moan about the lack of explanation or background miss the point completely (IMO), and the camera work really is the stuff of legend.



Personally I found myself emotionally engaged from beginning to end. I was stung by all the deaths when they happened, cried at the ceasefire bit, and felt attached to every single character I was supposed to along the way. If you weren't sucked in by the characters, then that's fine - everyone's different. But being a mess story-wise - in what way?

I agree it has to hit big at the domestic BO to really stand a chance at Oscar glory, and in all likelihood it probably won't. Still a part of me hopes it'll connect with the yanks as much as it did with me, which should send it well over $400 million!

Ok, spoilers ahead:

Of course, emotionally enganging is a very personal thing (That´s why I put IMO there ) but yeah, the movie did never get me cause I never quite believed it. And that was because story-wise I found it a total mess. It failed to properly explain what was really going on, what every group in the movie wanted, dodgy plot points started acumulating half way. In short, It was a badly told story, in which everything went the way the script wanted (from the awfully tired resource of "I happen to wake up in the middle of the night cause the bad guy is an asshole and screams his evil plan although he doesn´t want anyone to know) including the "our jaws drop when we see the baby but we hear a shot in the second floor and everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, turns to it and conveniently forgets about the biggest thing for humanity in the last 20 years, only so they can escape (also conveniently with Marika, who was not only not dead, but almost waiting for them)

There were lots os those, but mostly the problem was with the story itself. I didn´t understand it, and I think It wasn´t propely explained. Why the world doesn´t turn to hedonism instead of despair? What did the "fishes" want exactly and what difference would it make if the goverment knows or not about the baby? Who were the guys in the ship at the end? How does Michael Caine knows where to find them? The movie failed to propely explain all these points and make me care about them, but It wasnt for the lack of expository and frankly boring dialogue on many scenes.

I understand that the movie wanted to show the chaos of this apocaliptic future, but honestly methinks It was much more concerned with atmosphere and less with story, dialogue and characters. I have read that there is a 3 -hour cut out there and would love to see if some of these issues have feen fixed with it or not.

And in any case, intersting or unisteresting character or dialogue is a completely personal thing, but It´s true that so far where It has been released It hasn´t really been a huge critical or economical hit at all. And for a sci-fi movie, It needs that to even be considered for awards (which is very unfair, but that is another story)

Ok, spoilers ahead:

Of course, emotionally enganging is a very personal thing (That´s why I put IMO there ) but yeah, the movie did never get me cause I never quite believed it. And that was because story-wise I found it a total mess. It failed to properly explain what was really going on, what every group in the movie wanted, dodgy plot points started acumulating half way. In short, It was a badly told story, in which everything went the way the script wanted (from the awfully tired resource of "I happen to wake up in the middle of the night cause the bad guy is an asshole and screams his evil plan although he doesn´t want anyone to know) including the "our jaws drop when we see the baby but we hear a shot in the second floor and everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, turns to it and conveniently forgets about the biggest thing for humanity in the last 20 years, only so they can escape (also conveniently with Marika, who was not only not dead, but almost waiting for them)

There were lots os those, but mostly the problem was with the story itself. I didn´t understand it, and I think It wasn´t propely explained. Why the world doesn´t turn to hedonism instead of despair? What did the "fishes" want exactly and what difference would it make if the goverment knows or not about the baby? Who were the guys in the ship at the end? How does Michael Caine knows where to find them? The movie failed to propely explain all these points and make me care about them, but It wasnt for the lack of expository and frankly boring dialogue on many scenes.

I understand that the movie wanted to show the chaos of this apocaliptic future, but honestly methinks It was much more concerned with atmosphere and less with story, dialogue and characters. I have read that there is a 3 -hour cut out there and would love to see if some of these issues have feen fixed with it or not.

And in any case, intersting or unisteresting character or dialogue is a completely personal thing, but It´s true that so far where It has been released It hasn´t really been a huge critical or economical hit at all. And for a sci-fi movie, It needs that to even be considered for awards (which is very unfair, but that is another story)

HEAVY SPOILERS!

Okey dokey... I don't like getting into these, because usually (and unfortunately) people take different things away from films - and it's unlikely I'm going to change your mind by responding to your every niggle. But from what I can see, a lot of your opinion seems to stem from your own inability to suspend disbelief or pay attention.

I'll try to tend to each of your points.

Theo didn't conveniently wake up to hear the bad guy spell out his plan. He was rudely awoken by the sound of a bike engine and the angry yells coming from the bloke he banged over the car in an earlier scene. He happened upon the bad guy's evil plan, as you put it, because he recognised the bike, and became suspicious. Said guy returned to the house because it was the only sanctuary he had, and his friend (who was also on the bike) was in desperate need of medical attention. Theo threw a spanner into their works when he fought back.

As people starting up fighting again because of a shot from the second floor. Well, it wasn't a shot from the second floor. It was a rocket that caused a rather large explosion in close proximity.



FISH are a human rights group. From what I could tell, their main beef was with the government being oppressive and fascist - particularly to refugees and immigrants. The revolution they intended to start was to give the power back to the people and free the imprisoned immigrants. Had the government known about the baby, as is explained when Theo says "make it public" in the FISH meeting, Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor) quite rightly explains that the government would never let the world know an immigrant was the first human to have a baby. They would've taken it from Kee, given it to a British mother, and used it for their own political and propaganda needs.

The guys in the ship at the end were The Human project. They're a secret, scientific outfit devoted to finding the cure for infertility. That's explained in dribs and drabs throughout.

Michael Caine didn't know how to find them. He'd heard of them but, like many in the film, but didn't know whether they existed or not. Clive Owen, on the other hand, had been told where the meeting place was (in the ocean), and Michael Caine knew a good way of getting there (through the prison camp). That was pretty well explained, I thought.

Truthfully, the film contains the answers to all of your questions. But you have to have been paying attention, because a lot of the exposition is surprisingly well done - despite your claims that it's heavy-handed.



I can't really say much to this except to say that I disagree. I think the plotting was intricate, the story was believable, fascinating, and entertaining, and the characters and their motivations were brilliantly drawn out. A 3-hour cut might be even better, but I'd personally hate it if it went into detailed explanations for all the things you mention as problems.



The only reviews I've seen here in Britain have been glowing. And I expect similar in the USA closer to release. I'm still iffy on its chances at the Oscars, but I hold out hope that it gets the recognition it deserves. Again, we'll have to agree to disagree here, Dar me old mucker. But I think you're wrong. Wrong, wrong, WRONG!

Snrub, you are the best poster ever. Truly. Although I also think you are wrong. WRONG I TELL YOU!!!

Although you are right about something: It´s useless for any of us to try to change our perception of a film. That said, It´s my turn now...

The whole "screaming my evil plan" thing was clumsy to no end, and wouldn´t be out of place in a Spy Kids bad sequel. It´s lazy screenwriting, nothing else. And so It is the exposition in the first twenty minutes of the film, in which the story never advances in any significant way. No, exposition was cheap, and although all the things you talk about were probably mentioned, they were never shown in a credible way. Take Clive Owen´s character, for example: Who was he? What was his journey during the movie? Surely, lots of things happened to him, but the guy remained uninteresting and devoid of personality throughout (And I think he is a great actor, so the fault must lay somewhere else)

The whole missile scene was ridiculous to no end, IMO. We are talking about the biggest thing to happen to humanity in 20 years, and not one of the soldiers, not a single one, cares about it for some time - enough for our guys to run away, of course. That is lazy screenwriting. Again. There are more examples of that... Of course the movie is directed brilliantly and some scenes are fantastic from an action point of view, but the script is full of holes, impausibilities and yeah, hamfisted exposition.

But I shouldn´t try to convince you, really, and in fact It´s great that you enjoyed the damn film so much. I wish I had, I wanted to.

Here in Spain It got lukewarm to good reviews, box office has been just so-so. I dont know if It´s going to be a box office hit in the US (Doubt, It wasn´t even in UK) but Variety panned it, and I agreed with that review quite a bit.

Awwww!! You too!



Screw you, dar!!!



... go on...



The "screaming my evil plan" thing you mention never happened. As I said, it was a combination of events that led to Theo hearing FISH's "evil" plan. Ones which the film had telegraphed in advance, which helped suspend disbelief - for me, at least.

As for the things I mentioned never being shown in a credible way... I think you should watch the film again and pay more attention (which is possibly the most insulting thing anyone can say in an argument like this).

As to Clive's character's journey... Theo's (Clive Owen) character was a guy who'd given up. He'd lost his child to a plague, and it hit him hard. As a result he'd spend the last 20 years doing bugger all bar drink and live... The re-introduction of Julian (Julianne Moore) to his life sparked old memories. He thought he had a chance at rekindling past romance. Her death struck him hard.

Upon discovering Kee was pregnant, he took it upon himself to finish Julian's final wish. Along the way he grows, sacrifices and becomes more active than he has since his child was killed (the best signifier of his growth as a character is the point that he uses his stash of Scotch to clean his hands before birthing the child).



Okay... Now, I'm not saying a rocket launcher being fired mere metres away would be a deterrent from looking at the first baby in 20 years... but still, try to imagine exactly what it would take to take your attention away from a rocket being fired in your direction. Whatever impact the baby had (which was huge), the instinct to survive is still greater. I personally would've found it more unbelievable if a rocket had exploded nearby and everyone had continued to stare at the baby.



I truly believe it's one of the greatest films I've ever seen. And it genuinely makes me sad that someone else doesn't feel the same way.



I severely doubt it'll be a huge hit in the US. The date is all wrong, and the theme isn't the sort to bring in the masses. But part of me still hopes it catches on.

Nevertheless... I truly believe that years from now it'll be remembered as the best film of 2006 (nay, the decade). And that's enough for me.

Kris Tapley: "Cuarón has given us his masterpiece, the crowning achievement of 2006."

http://www.incontention.com/2006/11/chi ... f_men.html

The following begins to grow. . .

If this keeps up, a Best Director nom could be there. Harder battle for a BP nom. Should score several techs.

Yeah I could see it getting BD and not BP... but we'll see, the competition isn't that fierce this year.

Some of the set pieces Cuarón orchestrates are the most electrifying, living and breathing sequences ever imagined in the history of cinema.
nice