Bewitchingly bonkers.

| Nov 12, 2014

It's so audacious and so technically accomplished, and arrives here garlanded with so many radiant superlatives, that I wish I liked it more.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2014

The story is a compelling and deeply involving one, and the film is both beautiful, exciting, and sometimes horrifying. The creature effects are superbly handled.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 12, 2014

It's less of a labyrinth than a forest path, one that takes you through wonderful scenery but doesn't lead anywhere.

| Nov 12, 2014

We are never allowed to get truly lost in Pan's Labyrinth. The fantasy sequences are fetching when they should be intoxicating, while the scenes above ground are largely prosaic.

Full Review | Nov 12, 2014

Watching the unique explosions of Guillermo del Toro's mind realise themselves on screen is truly astounding.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 12, 2014

Guillermo del Toro has crafted a masterpiece, a terrifying, visually wondrous fairy tale for adults that blends fantasy and gloomy drama into one of the most magical films to come along in years.

Full Review | Nov 26, 2012

This is a fantasy realm so fully and elegantly realized, it might be the adaptation of a classic novel. Yet the source is Del Toro's own capacious imagination.

| Nov 26, 2012

Ofelia's smock is swiped from Alice, her faun from Narnia, and her magic book from Harry Potter, Del Toro sets her fairytale apart with its unrelenting gore and misery.

| Original Score: C | May 15, 2009

Pan's Labyrinth suggests that fairy-tale violence helps the vulnerable process and overcome real-life conflicts and that real-life violence permanently smashes the soul and the heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 4, 2007

A fantasy for adults that will make you feel both the intense wonder and fear of childhood more than any film in years.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2007

So breathtaking in its artistic ambition, so technically accomplished, so morally expansive, so fully realized that it defies the usual critical blather. See it, and celebrate that rare occasion when a director has the audacity to commit cinema.

| Feb 3, 2007

It's as if Lewis Carroll's Alice had wandered into a Francisco Goya painting, particularly the famously gruesome Saturn Devouring His Son, in which an ancient demon has ripped the head off his progeny.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 20, 2007

It explores the connection between fantasy and reality, with eyes wide open to the dangers of giving either too much credence. That it works on both levels is impressive; that it makes them so clearly one is the stuff of art.

| Jan 19, 2007

It is an adult fairy tale that will lead grown-ups to eagerly await the day that their own children will be old enough to understand.

Full Review | Jan 19, 2007

Ofelia, you break our hearts. But you also restore our confidence in human decency.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 19, 2007

Pan's Labyrinth resembles a cross between Alice in Wonderland and H.P. Lovecraft, with some Buñuel thrown in for good measure. It's a tribute to -- as well as a prime example of -- the disturbing power of imagination.

| Original Score: A | Jan 18, 2007

In coming up with one of the finest modern fantasies to date, del Toro seamlessly blends two stories, one set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and the other in a parallel realm of fairies and fauns.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 18, 2007

Pan's Labyrinth is del Toro's home run. He's delivered a film full of power, beauty, horror and, ultimately, sadness.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jan 18, 2007

The movie is that original, and that attuned to the power of myth. I don't see why it shouldn't sit on the same altar of High Fantasy as the Lord of the Rings trilogy -- it's that worthy.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jan 17, 2007