I really want to go and see Pan's Labyrinth. Maybe I'll get to go this weekend though I want to see Dreamgirls and haven't made it there yet.

I have to disagree with you about Pans Labyrinth. I didn't enjoy it much at all outside the spectacle and the effects. It was beautiful, no argument there, and it was compelling. I think the stuff about war, the awful stepfather, etc., was way over the top.

I wish the atrocity would have been shown more even-handedly. If the movie was about the awfulness of war, it would have been good to point out how brutal and atrocious the resistance was as well. I guess he wanted a focused 'bad guy', but the way it leaned distracted me.

It was like I heard John Landis say once about horror movies. Sometimes you can be too good at bringing the horror to life, and leave the audience thinking "I just didn't want to see that". The effects and the fairy tale parts pulled me along, but the cruelty and awfulness was honestly not really meaningful enough to make me appreciate the inclusion.

P.S. I collected the original comics, and I think Hellboy was great, as good as any other comic dramatization.

BakerStreet:
Obviously, personal opinions are fair game. I will say this: I didn't see Pan's Labyrinth as a horror film, even in an unconventional sense. I don't think del Toro intended for the audience to focus on the violence or even the setting of the "real world"; if he were attempting to make a political statement, there was a lot more that could have been said about the fact that the faction of ostensible protagonists were in fact communists whose alternative to a Franco regime may not have been much better. Fascism hates competition, though. In any event, I would say that the film was really not so much about the awfulness of war as just one child's way of escaping an unpleasant situation. Now, you officially have my four cents.

Regarding Hellboy, I have read all of the collected books, and the fact that the story of the film represents the condensation of several of the graphic novels illustrates a problem prevalent in a lot of film productions today (the ones that aren't lazy remakes of other movies!), which is the failure to compress a complex storyline into a 90- to 120-minute format in a way that leaves it comprehensible. So much background is left out of the film version of the story that you begin to wonder whether the writer just started with a framework of a story and tossed in whatever random mythological or historical references that he could conceive.

Gah, though, how could you not? The constant fear, and the torture, and, not to give anything away, but the ending... all were honestly as vivid, at least to me, as the fairy tale. I guess I can agree with you that maybe he didn't intend it, but as a father I guess it is too difficult for me to see through the overall dread and awfulness of the girl's life.



Granted. There's no way such a film would get the same leeway, say, as Lord of the Rings, and even then Jackson left out some of my favorite parts. I really thought that the director fitted in enough back story to make it meaty, though. I guess I just expected it to suck so bad that I was thrilled with how good it really was.

I still really want to see Pan's Labyrinth, being very familiar with the history of Spain in the era. I'm fascinated with the country and its history, and the first movie del Toro made about this time period (The Devil's Backbone) was absolutely terrifying. Great movie.

And I loved Hellboy. I know I'll see Pan's Labyrinth, I guess it's just a matter of when.

San Chonino:



I saw The Devil's Backbone on television a few months back. I thought it was great too, although you had to wait almost 2/3 of the way through before anything really supernatural occurred. Nevertheless, it was a terrific story.