A product of singular imagination by a filmmaker at the height of his prowess, Pan's Labyrinth is the kind of gothic fairy tale most movies are not--at once wildly fantastical yet elegantly rich in reality, magically inspiring yet profoundly disturbing.

Story

Set during the Spanish Civil War of the 1940sa favorite area of exploration for writer-director Guillermo del Torothe story follows dreamy 11-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) as she's uprooted and relocated to a remote military outpost when…

Guillermo del Toro, who calls himself "the geek from Guadalajara," fires up a classic cinematic fantasy in Pan's Labyrinth, a film for all ages, as long as they're open to gothic twists that scare them senseless. Del Toro is just one of the three amigos showing our local boys how it's done. Mexico City's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu cemented his reputation with Babel, the completion of a trilogy he began with Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Not to be outdone, Alfonso Cuaron, also from Mexico City and…