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This past weekend I watched two films currently in theatres, but in the comfort of my living room. Here are some comments on each of them:

Children of Men (2006, written by Alfonso Cuarón and Timonthy J. Sexton with David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, based on the novel by P.D. James; directed by Alfonso Cuarón) was a grand film, and by grand, I mean BIG. The live sets, huge number of extras and extensive setpieces made it a pleasure to watch, especially combined with Emmanuel Lubezki’s striking cinematography. Unfortunately, films cannot be based upon extras and camera work alone; this film had little heart and generally unconvincing performances (a few scenes by Clive Owen aside). This might be the point, though: to set the bleak tone.

I tend to enjoy post-Apocalyptic films so I was in no way tempted to press the stop button on my DivX player. Children Of Men had an interesting premise, some great jump moments and even great war action (the really long single-shot going up the stairs in the apartment building was especially fun).

The Good Shepherd (2006, written by Eric Roth; directed by Robert DeNiro) was equally underwhelming. There were some good moments from Matt Damon, but the 168 minutes had you jumping back and forth between times, sometimes with flashbacks-within-flashbacks, and all the while Damon looked EXACTLY THE SAME. The topic (the birth of the CIA) was interesting, as was the WWII stuff, but it wasn’t covert, exciting or coherent enough for me to really get into it. Angelina Jolie’s performance isn’t even worth mentioning.

There were some really cool visual transitions, though. It looks like they used real post-WWII (and other) black & white footage of bombed out cities and then spliced in scenes with the film’s characters in them, while turning from black & white to colour. My favourite one was the sweeping overhead shot of Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, but only because I was there a couple of months ago!