Thursday Minute
No. 20 | January 28, 2010

Best of the Decade

Our theme this week
Best movies of the decade at Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes

Featured this week
Monday         —   The Hurt Locker
Tuesday         —   Ratatouille
Wednesday    —   4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Pan’s Labyrinth

The essentials
Metacritic:  98
Rotten Tomatoes:  95%

Perhaps there’s something in the water.  Or maybe the tequila.  Whatever the reason, Mexico is home to some of the great moviemakers of this past decade.  That select group includes Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, Babel), Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men), and Carlos Carrera (El Crimen del Padre Amaro).  Add to the list Guillermo del Toro, director of Pan’s Labyrinth, one of best-reviewed films of the past ten years.

The film takes place in 1940s Spain, under the repressive regime of Francisco Franco.  A young girl, Ofelia—portrayed wonderfully by eleven-year-old Ivana Baquero—accompanies her pregnant and sick mother on a trip to visit her stepfather, Captain Vidal, in the Spanish hills, where he’s in ruthless and brutal pursuit of rebels.  An avid reader, Ofelia takes refuge in the world of fairly tales.  One night, she follows a winged insect into a labyrinth.  She meets a faun, who tells her that she is a princess of a kingdom from underground, and that she must complete three tasks before she can return, where she will meet her father, the king, and achieve eternal life.  The tasks are a gruesome test for Ofelia, and at story’s end, she faces a terrible choice—to join the immortals or to save her new infant brother.

Pan’s Labyrinth is a fable mixing horror and fantasy, with monsters both real and imagined.   It’s a story about a child, but hardly a movie for children, or for the squeamish.  Del Toro’s images are scary, vivid, and highly imaginative, and along with a great score, the production is one of the more artfully rendered films of the last, or any other, decade.

Beyond the final credits
Next up for Guillermo del Toro, he’ll be collaborating with Peter Jackson on a two-part adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien book The Hobbit.  Jackson will produce and del Toro will direct.  The films are due out in 2011 and 2012.  (The Hobbit is, of course, the prequel to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.  More about those films tomorrow.)

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