7. Children of Men
Upon its release in 2006, Children of Men was immediately hailed as one of the all-time great sci-fi films and established Alfonso Cuaron as one of the top modern directorial talents. The film takes place in a dystopian future where humanity has been infertile for the last 18 years, sending many of the world's governments into chaos. A cynical bureaucrat is hired by his ex-wife, who is the leader of an immigrants rights group, to obtain transit papers for her and a refugee. Theo ends up transporting the refugee, who turns out to be pregnant, alone to The Human Project, a group of scientists who are working on a cure for infertility, while the authorities and various factions pursue them. Children of Men ends with Theo, Kee (the refugee), and her newborn child, alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean as a Human Project boat heads towards them while Theo dies from a gunshot wound. Children of Men has a dark, grainy aesthetic that really hammers home the sense of dread that most of the characters feel throughout the film. The sun hardly ever shines and a good portion of the film takes place in a refugee camp where the dregs of society are pushed to extremes by the security guards. The ending of the film offers little resolution; The Human Project is in no way guaranteed to know how to fix humanity but at the same time, hope plays a major role in Children of Men. It allows the characters to push through near unimaginable circumstances without giving up. Even so, Cuaron wanted the ending to be ambiguous, describing his approach by saying "We wanted the end to be a glimpse of a possibility of hope, for the audience to invest their own sense of hope into that ending. So if you're a hopeful person you'll see a lot of hope, and if you're a bleak person you'll see a complete hopelessness at the end." A frustrating ending to be sure, but also brilliant, devastating, and oddly inspiring.