The Orphanage
October 3rd, 2007
From Spain comes an incredibly spooky ghost story by first-time director Juan Antonio Bayona. The Orphanage, produced by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) was just selected as the country’s entry for the foreign film Oscar. Belén Rueda and Fernando Cayo play a couple who move into an old mansion with their adopted son — who has imaginary friends who may be all too real….
Read my review of The Orphanage on About.com
El Orfanato. Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007. ***
The trailer:
The Devil’s Backbone
January 27th, 2007
Even the Academy has figured out that Pan’s Labyrinth is destined to be a classic (it’s exceedingly rare that anything with subtitles plays at Kaufman Astoria), and so we’ve been digging back through Guillermo Del Toro’s filmography. Hellboy and Blade 2 aren’t as good as the fanboys would have you believe, and my memories of Cronos are pretty hazy–but this film is very, very good on its own terms and obviously a stepping stone to the grander, more archetypal Pan’s Labyrinth.
Part Pan’s, part Empire of the Sun, part Lord of the Flies, The Devil’s Backbone is set in a boy’s orphanage during the Spanish Civil war. There’s anti-fascist gold, budding artists, tragic love, a Dumbledore who can’t get it up, and a ghost that spills clouds of blood from his fractured skull. Del Toro’s fertile imagination creates scene after haunting scene, and the film is full of proto-Pan images that are still worth absorbing in retrospect, such as the unexploded bomb that sits in the center of the schoolyard like a freeze-frame from the last page of Gravity’s Rainbow.
El Espinazo del diablo. Guillermo del Toro, 2001. ****
[tags]guillermo del toro, 4 stars, film, spain, war, children, orphans, ghosts, bombs, gravitys rainbow[/tags]
Volver
December 10th, 2006
The second time around, each frame, already brimming with emotion and color, only grows fuller and deeper.
Volver. Pedro Almodovar, 2006. *****
- Marcy’s review.
- Volver at the New York Film Festival
- Volver Press Conference
- Volver Photo Gallery
- Volver at RT: 92%
[tags]penelope cruz, film, 5 stars, pedro almodovar, mothers, daughters, red, spain, murder, ghosts[/tags]
