Children of Men (2006)
★★★★ — Children of Men (2006)
Alfonso Cuarón made Children of Men between Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) and Gravity (2013), a period in which he was cementing himself as one of the more technically ambitious directors working in mainstream cinema. The film is adapted from P. D. James's 1992 novel of the same name, though Cuarón and his co-writers (including Timothy J. Sexton) pushed the political texture of the source material considerably further, grounding it in the anxieties of post-9/11 Britain, the war on terror, and the immigration debates that were already sharpening across Europe in the mid-2000s. Shot largely on location in London and the English countryside, it was a Universal-backed production with a reported budget of $76 million, modest by the scale of its ambition, and it recovered only a fraction of that theatrically, making it something of a commercial disappointment despite substantial critical recognition.
Weirdly realistic dystopian beauty. There's something about this film that hits different now, especially after living through COVID. The way the world falls apart under crisis, the hopelessness, the fear, the quiet brutality, it all feels eerily grounded. Visually, it’s stunning. Those long, chaotic single takes are masterclasses in tension. Clive Owen gives such a grounded, worn-down performance and the film never leans into melodrama, it just lets the bleakness speak for itself. It’s a haunting vision of the future, but also oddly hopeful. Still hits hard nearly two decades later. Also shout out to the same house as where 28 Weeks Later was filmed
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2006 | Watched: 2025-04-15
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Alfonso Cuarón: Gravity (2013) · Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
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