NYFF. Pan's Labyrinth.

Aaron Dobbs: "Even as difficult as it is for me to say that I liked or disliked Inland Empire, it is quite simple for me to shout hosannas expressing my immense love for and awe in both Korean director Bong Joon-ho's phenomenal The Host and Guillermo del Toro's post-Spanish Civil War fantasy fable Pan's Labyrinth."

But at Reverse Shot, Andrew Tracy writes, "No one's going to argue with the elaborateness of this fantasy bric-a-brac (God bless production designers), but elaborate is a poor substitute for imaginative—except for those cheerleader critics who are laboring to make them synonymous. It's precisely because del Toro's film has none of the texture, mystery, and surprise of actual imagination that it's garnered the plaudits it has."

"Del Toro's imagery is so vivid and concrete that it's likely to change the color of your sleep," counters Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, praising this "ambitious, glorious and harrowing adult fairy tale."

Mark Asch in the L Magazine: "But for the depth of wonderment that's present in Del Toro's films, they're remarkably tidy creations, models of screenplay construction with collision-course subplots and copious first act plant/third act payoff business."

At the IFC Blog, Alison Willmore finds it "a splendid intersection of genre and arthouse, which may, like The Host, make it appealing to no one in our compartmentalized moviegoing public. Not that we imagine Del Toro cares - much of what is exhilarating about Pan's Labyrinth is that it seems to be exactly the film he wanted to make."

Posted by dwhudson at October 15, 2006 9:47 AM