I think one of the reasons why the whole "First World in Chaos" theme spoke to me is one of my ex-roommate's stories about Sarajevo. Back when the Balkan war covered the front page of the NYT with stories of genocide, my then-roommate regalled me with stories of visiting Sarejevo for the Winter Olympics as a little kid, and he talked about how cosmopolitan and worldly the city was. For brutality to take over, is a constant fear.

I think all of the BMW films are on YouTube - there's a dozen, I think? "Beat the Devil" is incredibly good though, with Gary Oldman as the devil (and guest Marilyn Manson...). But the Guy Richie BMW film starring Madonna is the best. Oh. My. God. I can watch that again and again - Clive Owen just looks like he's having the best time. I bookmarked them all so I can watch them anytime. I'll have to check out your review.

I agree J.. There's this one moment in the Star movie where Clive Owen waves both his hands ("look! no hands!") and shakes his head and it's so brief but so fabulous.

James Brown's persona and the Michael Caine character in Children of Men are of a mode--exuberant, vivacious, and kind even in the face of great chronic adversity. Children of Men was one of the most brutally anxiety-causing movies I've seen in a long time--on either side of me my friends would turn to me and gasp, or I to them, "I'm so stressed out!" in a sharply and weirdly necessary way of reminding each other that it was only a fictional movie.A lot of these kinds of war and apocalpytic stories entice you to identify with the protagonist and his moral courage--"Yeah, I'd like to think I'd do that in those circumstances." But I agree that the harrowing bit was the familiarity and the realization that even in far better circumstances we frequently do quite worse--and that such harrowing circumstances exist all around us.

Children of Men was one of the most brutally anxiety-causing movies I've seen in a long time

The second weirdest thing about the negative reviews of Children of Men (the weirdest thing being, you know, the negativeness) was that several of them said the movie was plodding or dull. In some cases, this was only one of many factual errors. (My opinion of the film was cemented by the fact that all of the negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were just objectively wrong.)

PS. Pan's Labyrinth

First off, Children of Men had the most creative chase scene I've seen in a long time. Whoever figured out how to make two cars rolling down a muddy hill suspenseful is a genius. Every pothole made me gasp.
I was struck by how effective the cinematography in Children of Men was at deadening the shock of all the horrors on screen. The camera work was very matter-of-fact and documentary-like; the movie never seemed to dramatize the violence or the squalor. In fact, I thought most of the scenes were more disturbing in retrospect, when I had time to contemplate them, than they were while I was seeing them for the first time. I'm still mulling over a lot of the background stories that were hinted at or mentioned in passing. I'm a sucker for complex background stories (á la Christopher Guest movies) and this movie was a gold mine. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a prequel.