Pan's Labyrinth (2 DVDs)

Note: review was written for Freeola in 2006, thanks! Guillermo Del Toro has always been a director with a vision. Even Hellboy, which I found decidedly average, had a unique visual style, and has clear led onto bigger and better things with his latest effort - El Laberinto Del Fauno, or for us - Pan's Labyrinth. The basic plot is that in war-torn Spain, as guerrilas rise up against the authority, a young girl by the name of Ofelia is drawn into a fantasy world, where a faun offers her the title of princess if she can complete three goals for him. Set against this back-drop of warring Spain, the film cuts between Ofelia's journey, and the events ...  Read the complete review

~~~Prelude~~~ Pan's Labyrinth is a beautiful film: dark and at times terrifying. It mixes folklore and fantasy with the brutal reality of Fascist oppression post the Spanish Civil War. Centred on a young girl who finds a dark refuge from her surroundings in a fairy world whose monsters are not so unlike those from whom she is hiding. The film won Mexican film maker Guillermo del Toro three awards at the Golden Globes. ~~~Plot~~~ A young girl and her pregnant mother move to a rural military camp to join her stepfather who is captain there, working to overcome republican guerrillas. She clutches her fairy tale books close to her, despite her mother's ...  Read the complete review

This is the first effort by acclaimed director Guillermo Del Toro that i was luck enough to see, which is ironic in that it is his most recent work. Bowled over by its spell, i think that it is a film to be shouted about, so here i am, shouting. Director - Guillermo Del Toro Born on October 9th 1964, Del Toro was brought up by a strict catholic grandmother in Guadalajara Mexico. He realised his love of film in his teens, and learned about make-up and effects working alongside Dick Smith on the Exorcist in 1973. He worked in make-up for many years, but finally got the break he yearned for in 1993, directing Cronos. This won him 9 academy awards in ...  Read the complete review

So, 'Pans Labyrinth, the big "must see" foreign film of 2007, if you read and listen to the professional critics, or at least it was according to the BBCs unflinching film critic Mark Kermode, and like his similar hype for History of Violence and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, this again falls short of that built up universal expectation. Now it's not a bad film, indeed there are many beautiful and telling moments in it that garnered six Oscar nominations, bagging three statues, but it's not what you're hoping for. In fact I would steer you more towards the director of this in Guillermo Del Torros previous foreign language film on his beloved Spain during the ...  Read the complete review

Mark Kermode, in The Observer said that Pan's Labyrinth was the best film of 2006, describing it as "an epic, poetic vision in which the grim realities of war are matched and mirrored by a descent into an underworld populated by fearsomely beautiful monsters." A description not far wrong! Pan's Labyrinth, in my opinion, was a beautifully mastered film, giving the audience a whirl wind of emotion through the eyes of a young girl, Ofelia. Set in Spain during the civil war, Ofelia and her heavily pregnant mother are sent to live in the country with her fierce Stepfather, Captain Vidal. Here Ofelia meets with a strange, imaginative set of ...  Read the complete review