Children Of Men: Special Edition (15)

If only we could all predict the future with the chilling certainty of Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopian morality tale, eh? If nothing else it would have stopped us forking out for the first near-vanilla DVD release of this film – a thriller following Clive Owen’s battle to protect a pregnant woman in an infertile planet – back in January (reviewed in issue 125), rather than waiting for this two-discer. That said, early adopters can relax, seeing as disc one is the same as the early release and disc two isn’t that, erm, ‘special’ anyway.

A trio of pointless deleted scenes aside, the extras you get are at best competent technical featurettes and, at worse, pretentious drivel. The longest, The Possibility Of Hope (directed by Cuarón), is a dreary, smug discourse on our crumbling society narrated by a bunch of talking heads. The shortest is a baffling explanation of why the film is a work of genius from ‘cultural critic’ Slavoj Zizek. A lisping caricature of the pompous academic (if a Google search didn’t turn up so many references to him, you’d swear Cuarón made him up), Zizek’s painful section lasts less than six minutes. We defy anyone to stay awake.

DVD Extras: "The Possibility Of Hope:" A Documentary by Alfonso Cuarón, "Men Under Attack" featurette, Commentary by Slavoj Zizek, "Visual Effects: Creating The Baby" featurette, "Theo and Julian:" Commentary, Deleted Scenes, Futuristic Design featurette.

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