Venice. Children of Men.

Compare and contrast: "Unwrap the fascinating dystopian vision of the near-future in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men - based on the sci-fi novel by British literary baroness PD James - and you find a fairly ordinary movie with stock characters," writes Lee Marshall for Screen Daily. But for the Hollywood Reporter's Ray Bennett, "Cuarón takes the classic movie formula of a cynical tough guy required to see an innocent party to safe harbor, and shoots it to pieces."

For Marshall, who praises the film's "sheer imaginative verve" and "terrific chase and battle sequences," its "urban future vision is not obvious multiplex material, particularly in the US," but Bennett sees "a winner at the box office in all territories."

For Variety's Derek Elley, the film "suffers from cold lead playing by Clive Owen but gains some heart and soul from a wonderfully eccentric perf by Michael Caine that's awards-season-worthy." But for Bennett, Owen is "in top form."

The lack of consensus only piques curiosity, doesn't it? Meanwhile, via Joe Leydon, Dalya Alberge interviews Caine for the London Times.

Update: Time Out's Dave Calhoun writes that the film "is testament to the growing influence of Mexico on current world cinema. Together with fellow director Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel), screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) and actor Gael García Bernal, Cuarón is both revitalising the domestic Mexican industry with films such as Y Tu Mama Tambien and injecting new spirit into English-language film with Hollywood-produced fare such as this latest movie.... It's a film which easily could have been ridiculous. In Cuarón's hands, it emerges as quite some achievement, both technically (look out for the one-shot take that graces a battle scene late on) and dramatically."

Update, 9/11: While it "doesn't even advertise itself as overtly political," writes the Telegraph's David Gritten, it "succeeds in saying more about the way we live now than [The Queen and Bobby] put together."

Posted by dwhudson at September 4, 2006 4:43 AM