Children Of Men (4.5/5)
He’s been making movies for nearly two decades, but no one in America noticed Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron until his critically acclaimed 2001 road trip, sex movie Y Tu Mama Tambien.
Unafraid to take on new challenges, Cuaron followed a low-budget indie film filled with adult subject matter with a big-budget kids movie, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The result was the best Potter film to date. In Children of Men he takes on a completely new challenge: the science fiction story of a dystopian and doomed future where the human race is headed for an early extinction. As always, Cuaron hits it out of the park.
Some time in the early 21st century, women stopped having babies. No one knows why, they just stopped. It’s now 2027, science is powerless, governments are in shambles, and society has dissolved into complete anarchy. None of it matters. The suddenly wholly infertile human race will die out in the next sixty or seventy years.
While the rest of the world has collapsed, Britain soldiers on. As the world’s only remaining government, the UK is a last bastion of civilization. Or is it? The British government maintains order at great cost. The hordes of refugees struggling to escape the flames engulfing the rest of the world by running to Britain are caged, imprisoned, and killed. The country has become a police state; terrorist bombings are constant and common. Britain soldiers on, but nobody seems all that happy about it.
Not that it matters. Cuaron’s film takes a depressed and somber tone right from the outset. The human race has no hope, and mankind lumbers through the streets engaged in the business of daily living knowing that soon it’ll all be dust. Theodore Faron (Clive Owen) gets his coffee and goes to work, but like everyone else he’s dead inside. The world is only going through the motions of living, and he right along with it until he stumbles on hope.
One of the country’s terrorist groups discovers a pregnant woman. She’s the first in more than 18 years, and both the government and the terrorists want to control her. Theodore’s ex-wife (Julianne Moore) runs the rebels, and turns to him as the only person she knows she can trust, for help in getting the most important person in the world to safety. Their goal is a secret organization called The Human Project, and the rot of Great Britain is in their way.
Read the full review at CinemaBlend.com
Miss Potter (4/5)
Unlike the abominable movie Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, which also revolves around an acclaimed and misunderstood artist, Miss Potter provides a glimpse of an eccentric woman with a perfect balance of whimsy and heart-tugging.
Where the former had pretension and an air of holier-than-thou freaky smugness, the latter celebrates the world of creativity and the fun that comes with being an imaginative outcast. In short, it’s like a slimmer version of Finding Neverland with less heft and more joy.
Miss Potter is based on the true story of Beatrix Potter (Renee Zellweger), a writer/painter who lives in London during the early 1900s with a family ranking high on the financial totem pole.
Since she despises her snippy, buttoned-up society, she uses her watercolor illustrations and stories as a helpful escape device, creating a series of popular children books about Peter Rabbit, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle-Duck and the rest of her “friends.”
While some might call her batty—she speaks to these animations as though they are real, and the movie shows them come to life through her eyes—others might acknowledge that the Victorian Era isn’t exactly the cuddliest of times, and fun should be grabbed wherever it pops up.
Nonetheless, her disapproving mother (Barbara Flynn) ridicules her art and tries to pawn her off on rich “acceptable” gentleman, but she finds herself more drawn to the “unacceptable” Norman Warne (Ewan McGregor), a kindred spirit who loves her work and helps publish her books.
Post a Comment