I liked the Alec (both Sr. and Jr.) moments in EII--Eugene Hutz is wonderful as Alec Jr. EW is good in his very limited role as the cipher Jonathan, but I wish that Schrieber had developed that character more.

Also, it was very weird for Damon to be the protagonist, because he was the shortest person in every single scene

People have to be tall to be the good guy now?

Polter-Cow, I think you've hit on something I noticed with Children of Men. The characters go through a lot, although there's not really much exploration of the emotional side the characters go through. At the same time, though, I don't think that was the idea.

Personally, I thought what it attempted - showing a world which, sadly, isn't that far removed from our own (in fact, with the way things are going in the UK I'd imagine it will be dangerous close to what we saw in CoM), bringing the horror of war back home, migration fears, fear fear fear.. It's a bleak vision of the future, yet it's a future we'll walk towards, and what it tries to execute, in my opinion, it does very, very well. I do think the story is different to what people are used to, and in some respects expected because of the trailers.

And yes, the oner in the car? Changes the course of the film, technically brilliant (kicking a biker off his bike using the car door, it bouncing off the bonnet!), and was -- for me -- the highlight of the film as it has a nice mix of characters, story and a bit of actual emotion. I have it on DVD thanks to friends at the studio, and I've rewatched that scene several times in the last week to catch the details. Commentary must happen with the director on this one.

People have to be tall to be the good guy now?

Well, Peter Jackson tried to buck the trend with Lord Of The Rings, but America just wasn't ready.

The characters go through a lot, although there's not really much exploration of the emotional side the characters go through.

I didn't feel the lack, personally -- we're shown what they're going through. We don't also need to be told how they feel about it because it's right there in front of us.

technically brilliant

I know a little bit about how it was done, and all I can say is wow. I'm amazed it only took them 4 days to get that shot (in fact, I wonder if that number even includes any rehearsals).

People have to be tall to be the good guy now?

Well, he's surrounded by these towering patricians, most of them blond and unmarked and vaguely alike-looking, and he's this squat fellow with a very distinctive (and not always lovely) face. Although the character is supposed to be as patrician as everybody else in his milieu, he really does look like a sore thumb. As if his isolation as a character weer written into the genes of his bone structure!

Not as sore a thumb as the fact that Angelina Jolie never once wore a girdle between 1940 and 1961, but, pretty sore.

Did girdles of the period pad as well as cinch? I'm thinking she's pretty uncinchable unless you're working her breasts.

I think we're pasting height onto patricians ourself. There's not much about the aristocracy that seemed to require or produce height.

And yes, the oner in the car?

That was truly amazing. Even after I learned that the camera was on the roof, it's still cool.

The characters go through a lot, although there's not really much exploration of the emotional side the characters go through.

There's not much of an exploration of anything, is the thing. All that happens is they get Kee from Point A to Point B. And that's the whole movie, basically. You know, I just got a weird flashback to The Pianist, which I liked better. And I think they may have some similarities there, one about the past and one about the future, about surviving in a world where humanity has become inhumane.

Sorry to interrupt the Children of Men discussion, but I have to vent for just a second, and then I'll get out of the way. I just saw, finally, the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, and...yeesh. What a fucking mess. What a waste of an almost uniformly tremendous cast on a load of clunky, clanking dialogue (for almost every single modernized rewritten line, there already existed a line by Austen that could have said the same thing more concisely and sharply; there wasn't one single rewritten line that sped things up, clarified things, or served any plot or character purpose whatsoever), ugly clothing, pointless melodrama (so many changes to Austen's story, again to no purpose), and incredibly irritating anachronisms (Bingley visiting Jane's sickroom? Darcy and Lizzie meeting on the windswept heath in their nightclothes? The fuck?!?).

One sad example among many: the utterly shitty decision to make Charlotte Lucas being penniless and desperate to marry to save herself from the poorhouse instead of wealthy, bored and unhappy, and desperate to avoid spinsterhood in her kindly but dull parents' house. Sure, the stakes are heightened, but since the movie spends no time on Charlotte's character or circumstances before the engagement, the heightened stakes carry no emotional weight, and the complex sadness of her original compromise -- giving her vibrant, intelligent self to a repellant dullard like Collins because it's the only hope she has, plain as she is and adequate but unspectacular as her fortune is, of ever being anything but someone's spinster daughter -- is entirely lost. And the "I am not romantic, Lizzie. You know I never was" speech wouldn't have taken up any more time than that stupid, anachronistic "Don't you dare judge me, Lizzie!" screech. Artificially, completely ineffectively heightened stakes that illuminate nothing, streamline nothing, bung up the works.

And, bleah, all the other pointless changes and omissions. Wickham and Georgiana, Wickham and Lydia, the bitchy Bingley spinster, Lizzie and Jane's deep sisterly friendship.

And what the fuck happened to the funny? You can't make it a straight romance; it's a romantic comedy. Take out the funny and you're not left with love and drama, you're left with nothing. The 1995 BBC version and even the much earlier, also crazy anachronistic Olivier version were about eighty jillion times more romantic than this "I love you! I love him! Do you really love him, do you! Mrs. Darcy!" horseshit. All those poor actors, doing the best they can without being allowed to be funny; it was just brutally unfair to demand such a thing of them.

Bah.

Okay, I'm done. A year late. Carry on with the much more interesting discussion of movies that are actually being all movie-like right now.

::goes away to take Pride and Prejudice out of NetFlix queue::