Review: "Pan's Labyrinth"

When you're watching a foreign movie, there's an easy way to tell if it's really good. At some point during the movie, you forget that it's subtitled. That happened to me while watching "Pan's Labyrinth" over the weekend. At the risk of sounding like the redneck I am, I'll admit that I hate subtitles. But somewhere during the final scenes, I suddenly realized again that the movie had them. I had been completely absorbed in the world presented by Guillermo del Toro.

The movie revolves around a young girl named Ofelia who travels to Spain in 1944 with her pregnant mother, who is in a seemingly unhappy marriage to Capt. Vidal, a vicious and merciless officer in the Spanish Army. Shortly after her arrival, she begins to see fairies who eventually lead her to a faun who tells her she's the daughter of the king of the underworld. The faun assigns her tasks that must be completed before she can take her rightful place. While trying to complete those tasks, she must also deal with her mother's worsening condition and the war between her stepfather's men and the rebels in the mountains.

At heart the movie is a fairy tale, but it's definitely not for kids. There is, of course, a lot of violence and some very dark themes that run through the movie, though, to me, the violence was not as graphic as some reviews have suggested.

When Ofelia is in the fairy worlds, the movie is absolutely beautiful. The creatures she encounters during her challenges are both whimsical and sinister at the same time. The fantasy land sequences play almost like some warped and dangerous version of "Alice in Wonderland." It's a world that I'd like to spend more time in, and if I have one complaint about the movie, it would be that I would have liked to explore the fantasy side of the film more. Some of those scenes, like the one in the hall of the Pale Man, went by far too quickly for me and left me wanting to go back.

I don't mean to say that the "real world" part of the movie was at all weak. It was equally absorbing story-wise and probably could have stood on its own without the supernatural elements. But I still longed for the visual treats and wonder of the fantasy world.

"Pan's Labyrinth" is an impressive achievement for del Toro, so much so that "The Devil's Backbone" has just moved to the top of my "to see" list.

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Review: "The Departed"

Though "Goodfellas" is one of my favorite movies, I've been underwhelmed by most of Martin Scorsese's more recent movies. That's why I was pleased to see him return to the kind of gritty, and yes occasionally gory, movies that have produced some of his best work.

"The Departed" features Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio as double-agent police officers playing against each other. DiCaprio tries to take down Irish crime boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) as an undercover member of his crew, while Damon is actually working for Costello and feeding him information as the officer officially assigned to take him down. Costello has his own secrets, but those I won't reveal.

Initially, the film is a bit confusing simply because DiCaprio and Damon are so similar, and I found myself playing a game of which is which (perhaps fans of the two won't have that problem). After I got it all sorted out, though, the movie became an enjoyable game of cat and mouse with some good performances among the all-star cast.

While the movie focuses on Damon and DiCaprio, the real star is Nicholson. He plays Costello flamboyantly over the top, and it's great fun watching him chew up the scenery. It's perhaps his most entertaining role since "The Shining." Even though I'm not a fan, I also enjoyed seeing Alec Baldwin ham it up as Damon's somewhat bumbling boss.

The film is apparently an adaptation of the Hong Kong movie "Infernal Affairs." Having never seen it, I can't make the comparison. All I can say is that this one feels like a Scorsese piece from top to bottom.

Ultimately, "The Departed" is what Scorsese does best. It's at times hilariously funny and at times brutally violent. Much like real life, the good guys don't always win, and the things that happen don't have to "make sense." It's his best film, at least since "Casino" and possibly since "Goodfellas."

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