A Powerful and Memorable Fairy Tale: Pan's Labyrinth

We went to see this movie last Saturday in the early afternoon. I usually go to the theater to see a film only if it's rated a B+ or higher by both critics and users on Yahoo Movies. I've also been browsing through various genres on IMDB to see which ones to rent.

This was a great movie. At first I thought it was a fairy tale for kids because the main character is a girl, probably 7 or 8 years old, and it features some science-fiction. Soon enough, we realized that the target audience is adults, as the violence of the Spanish Civil War--fictional in the film but based on real events--is shown in graphic detail. While the violence is vivid and disturbing, it does fit in with the plot very well, because the story is about living through and overcoming eye-for-eye violence that is usually so pervasive in any conflict, as it was during the Spanish Civil War.

Along with The Last King of Scotland and The Queen, Pan's Labyrinth is the best movie I've seen in the past 4 or 5 months.

Oh, I almost forgot: this guy next to us walked out of the theater a couple of minutes into the movie. It looked to me like he walked out because he thought the movie was in English. Too bad for him. This is a Spanish movie (in Spanish, from Spain) with subtitles.