Pan's Labyrinth (Spain)

[cronus71]

A Guillermo Del Toro movie, a beautiful movie that should deifinitely be seen in the cinema.

Plot moves along too slowly, a story about a girl living in a post-war Franco dominated Spain. Her life/situation is so traumatic that she adds fantasy to it in order to cope with reality. Still the fantasy is as if not scarier than reality.

Very difficult to put this movie in a category, as it is indeed very brutal yet there's a lot of beautiful fantasy aspects to it, complete with fairies, fauns, monsters etc.

Everything is very visual and realistic-ish, cuts, bruises, deaths and monsters.
A sad movie, which leaves you with a lot dwelling in your head.

7/10

I recommend watching The Devil's Backbone as well, in my opinion a better movie from Del Toro, just as beautiful.

[WalterPill]

The Devils Backbone is a cracking movie and I'm glad Pan is is a return to form for Del Toro after that Hellboy crap. I'll be checking this out.

[TheManWho]

Caution! If you haven't seen this, but seen the trailer and think it's going to be an epic, fantasy journey into a dark and hauntingly beautiful world akin to 'Dark Crystal' or 'Labyrinth' - it's not!

We've just come back from seeing it and my head is still divided in that it was:

1) Insanely, relentlessly, MENTAL!

2) Quite close to ingeniousness!

On the face of things: visually it’s stunning – both in the ‘real world’ and in the ‘fantasy world’, wonderfully acted with the most amazing Labyrinth characters (Pale Man & Faun especially) – it’s just quite hard going and gratuitous, to the point where I questioned the 15 rated certificate.

Clever madness – didn’t dislike it, but didn’t like it either - I have a feeling I’ll look back on it and appreciate it more once it’s sunk in.

Hmmmm

7/10

[TheManWho]

I recommend watching The Devil's Backbone as well, in my opinion a better movie from Del Toro, just as beautiful.

Good catch, appearently Del Toro describes Pan's as the sister movie to The Devils Backbone.

[cronus71]

Good catch, appearently Del Toro describes Pan's as the sister movie to The Devils Backbone.

Just a few weeks ago, I actually watched The Devils Backbone again, didn't have the same impact as it had when I saw it the first time. I was in Santiago de Compostela attending a wedding, and the night before myself and my girlfriend were staying at this old B&B. I flick on the TV and started watching Canal+, that movie came on. I totally freaked out, probably because I had to really focus on what they were saying (no subs). Great feeling though, the same as when I saw Los Otros/The Others the first time, it smelled of poo in the room, that's for sure