Children of Men is an achingly, almost dreamily optimistic film in the face of such brutally cynical conditions, offering a humanist message that neutralizes political debate.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 12, 2022

Cuaron takes this dense material and fashions an exceptional film.

| Jan 7, 2022

Best Movie of the year. Cuaron just went to a whole new level with me. The class of filmmaking - the extended shots! those shots! my god! - here is astonishing.

| Original Score: A | Jul 6, 2021

Alfonso Cuarón delivers a masterpiece that explores humanity and love in a world that's scarce of hope. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 25, 2021

It's good to be hopeful, but it's even better to be hopeful on the basis of something substantial and fully thought out. The difficulty is that the film's various elements do not fully cohere.

| Feb 14, 2021

As always, Michael Caine manages to steal every scene he's in with effortless, offbeat comedic charm.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Nov 18, 2020

Cuaron was able to infuse every moment with the importance of what is at stake.

| Aug 6, 2020

Children of Men is concentrated cinema, wrought, focused, emblematic.... Cuarón [is] equally concerned with the survival of richly detailed cinema as the fraught voyage of his encircled, besieged characters.

| Original Score: 10/10 | May 17, 2020

This is one movie that will have a lasting impact even if you are forced to watch it on a ten-inch black and white Zenith.

| Feb 28, 2020

A rare kind of film -- thought-provoking, but full of intense action scenes.

| Original Score: B | Nov 21, 2019

The final 25 minutes is truly filmmaking at its absolute best.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 5, 2019

You find yourself reaching for that terribly over-used and abused superlative: masterpiece.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Jun 27, 2019

If any film is to define the state of American cinema in "the aughts," let it be Children of Men.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 6, 2019

It is simultaneously soul-crushing and spirit-lifting. Watching twelve years after its release, the potent themes of immigration, border control, and seeking humanity in others means Children of Men remains more timely than ever.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2018

Beautifully directed and magnificently crafted, it's a wrenching thriller in a grimy world of industrial decay, a distorted mirror of today in a palette of cement dust.

| Nov 3, 2018

Enjoy it for its story, enjoy it for its entertainment value, and enjoy it for its intelligence. Just watch it.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Oct 30, 2018

The future is a touchable, understandable place, the physical sensations of which we already know in our hearts and guts, hence its draw to people who're looking ahead with no small amount of discomfort.

| Aug 23, 2017

[Children of Men] is terribly exciting.

| Aug 23, 2017

Cuarón is implementing a verisimilitude that both matches the film's edge-of-your-seat escalations and demonstrates a new understanding of blockbuster realism.

| Apr 1, 2015

Children of Men founders in its latter moments -- not a lot, but enough. Its failure is less one of plot than of something deeper, a composing idea to undergird the plot.

| Apr 1, 2015