If CRIMSON PEAK offered nothing more than the creepiest bathtub specter since THE SHINING, it would still qualify as a monstrously entertaining film. But this is Guillermo del Toro directing and co-writing, and so the lushness of subtext mirrors the classically Gothic idiom of the story. The paranormal is the least disturbing of the elements… Read More »
PAN’S LABYRINTH
The combination of war and her mother’s remarriage to a Fascist captain proves to be too much for Ofelia, the heroine of Gullermo del Toro’s arresting fable of power and powerlessness. The time is 1944, the place is northern Spain, but the landscape is that of the imagination and, in del Toro’s hands, that is… Read More »