Eleventh hour final Oscar movie review.

This is the first year in a long time that I've actually seen a lot of the nominated movies. If only I'd had the energy to watch Jesus Camp Friday night, then go to the Volver and Babel double-feature at the Parkway yesterday, the total count would've been twelve - a personal record, I think - but alas, it's only nine.

I haven't yet mentioned Children of Men. This is partly because I am still stunned and partly because I am still completely unsure about whether I liked it.

The attention to detail, editing and cinematography were utterly amazing, and how they pulled off some of the longer shots is fascinating. I thought the violence was well-crafted, well-choreographed, suspenseful, oh and also, did not make me want to vomit (unlike with Pan's Labyrinth). But the story...?

I saw it with my Seattle friend who is very big into the "what if" type of sci-fi plotline... so of course, he thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps I am too much of a realist. Perhaps I read too much into it, and got annoyed with some of the biblical references and the idea that it was the WOMEN who became infertile, not the MEN (especially since the next day, I read something about men's sperm counts declining 50% over the last 50 years). Perhaps I don't know enough about the immigration issues outside of the US to really grasp the relevance of the story. Perhaps the line from Julianne Moore to Clive Owen, "You hear that ringing in your ears? That 'eeeee'? That's your ear cells dying. You'll never be able to hear that frequency again. Enjoy it while you can." freaked me out because of all the EXTREMELY LOUD CONCERTS and subseqent 'eeeee's I have heard in my lifetime.

Eh. Perhaps I just need to watch it again?