Children of Men

I don't want to spoil too much, but the film is about one generation in the future, where we have lost the ability to reproduce. The hopelessness and chaos this fact imbues into society is heartbreaking! Its mood runs through the entire dark film. Terrible things happen we as movie-goers would never suspect. We feel violated, robbed of hope, and finally numb.

But then one person shows up 8 months pregnant. Miraculously, after years of barrenness, here is the round belly and the expectation of new life!

However, don't get your hopes up just yet. If Apocalyptic films can be any more depressing than Children of Men, I don't want to see them.

However, give me a film with wonderful acting and masterful camera work like this any day, and I will happily sit through it twice in a row!

From the very first minutes, we see how disaffected Clive Owen's character is by the anarchy around him, and then the movie - basically deeply emotional chase scene, really - concentrates on his slow, powerful change back into someone who cares again. It's a painful two hours watching him emerge from some barely-breathing automaton who is numb to his world's inevitable destruction back into a humane, emotional activist who refuses to give in.

Also, the film (directed by Alfonzo Cuaron - Y Tu Mama Tambien & Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkiban) has several single-shot scenes are breathtaking. Once, blood even gets on the lense of the camera and yet the film keeps going on with hundreds of extras, tanks, explosions, squibs, fire, and chaos. I still marvel at how the director and crew even began to get this shot. The painstaking planning alone is mind-boggling! The extended single-shots late in the fim are even heartbreakingly beautiful and shiningly hopeful in the midst of all the bleak darkness.

It is a film certainly worth seeing. Just take some Prozac with you.