Children of Men transfixed me from its beautiful opening shot and never let me down from that point on. The use of long tracking shots throughout the entire movie gave it a gritty, raw realism that made it incredibly powerful. The beauty of the piece is not just in the shot compositions and precise attention to detail, but also the manner in which such cinematic techniques are all put into practice. Everything about this dystopic future is the background because it is the setting of the story and not the story itself. That is perhaps why an explanation for mankind's infertility is never even attempted. Much of the movie is seen through windows, often barred, trapped in cars or buses. Sometimes the background is so richly textured that it is impossible to focus on the events taking place, and we drown in the abundance of information, requiring multiple viewings.
With a single event about thirty minutes into the movie a la Hitchcock's Psycho, Cuarón totally threw out the conventions of modern cinema and had me on the edge of my seat for the rest of the movie. There was no way to predict what was going to come next; anything was possible. And that made this movie truly terrifying. But the heart of this movie is the setting, the sad world our future becomes, where not even the cure to our disease can stop the bloodshed and anarchy.
The dialogue was brilliant, the acting phenomenal. Clive Owen is a magician, but he never steals the show because every other actor was awesome as well. There is one scene I can still see, in which Michael Caine is talking about Clive Owen's baby while Owen is listening in just around the corner. There is so much emotion and heartfelt sadness in that one scene that I would've been satisfied if all of the movie built up to just that one moment. And that is only halfway in; it just gets better from there. There wasn't much wrong with this movie, except that the camerawork was a bit shakier than I would've liked (although nothing so bad as in The Bourne Supremacy).IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0206634/