Pan's Labyrinth
Grade: A-

Guillermo del Toro's dark fantasy film has been sprouting up like weeds on Top Ten lists across the country, and I'm happy to report that it lives up to the hype. Be warned, however, that this is thoroughly gruesome stuff, filled with blood and torture - (not to mention a creepy faun and a saggy-fleshed monster that can't see unless he inserts bloody eyeballs into his palms).
The story is set at a rural mill in Spain in 1944. Though the Spanish Civil War ended several years earlier, a fascist military captain constantly employs his men to fight the guerilla resistance fighters who hide out in the woods. When the captain's intelligent stepdaughter, Ofelia, is not attending to her frail pregnant mother, she hangs out with flying fairies and the aforementioned faun, and tries to prove that she embodies the spirit of a mystical princess who died many years ago.
The acting, sets and photography are all top-notch, and nearly every scene casts a menacing spell that makes it all but impossible to take your eyes off carnage that soils both the real world and the grotesque fantasy world explored by Ofelia.
This is Mexico's candidate for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and could very well give Volver and the German film The Lives of Others a run for their dinero.