The king of big budget cult cinema. He's one of the few people who gets wads of cash to take on niche properties and turn them into veritable blockbusters. And he's pretty good at it too. An oeuvre worth exploring for fans of genre cinema.
Movies
Pan's Labyrinth is a confident, creative and overall impressive film that illustrates how you can blend drama and fantasy.
Smart and stylish genre film, that aptly blends fantasy, romance and drama. The film looks gorgeous, sounds gorgeous and sports a more than solid cast. It's rare for me to agree with the Oscar vote, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is a loving stop-motion animation, but being the last in a series of recent Pinocchio adaptations, it just isn't differentiating enough to spend another 2 hours fully engaged watching the same story play out again. Still, del Toro's touch is worth the effort, certainly for fans of stop-motion. When Geppetto loses his young boy in a war accident, he is inconsolable. He wants to revive his son as a wooden puppet, a fairy grants him his wish and tasks a passing cricket to keep an eye on the little creature. There are some darker touches compared to the more popular adaptations, but the story remains by and large the same. The animation is very detailed, but it's also a bit unadventurous. The voice acting could've been better too and I'm not sure if the extended runtime was warranted. That said, this was certainly one of the better Pinocchio adaptations I've seen so far. I might've expected just a little more though.Read all
Guillermo del Toro goes full-on film-noir here. Heavy raincoats, shady characters and femme fatales are all folded into a rather simple noir plot that feels at least 50 years overdue. His dark, Gothic signature is a solid fit for the material, especially during the carnival scenes, but at 150 minutes the film overstays its welcome. Carlisle is a lone drifter who arrives at a carnival and lands a temp job. He feels at home between the carnival people and decides to stay, learning the tricks of the trade from his colleagues. When his mentor dies, Carlisle sees the time fit to move on and start his own mentalist/hustling business. The cast is great, the cinematography is ultra polished and the film oozes atmosphere. It's all pretty nice, but the story is really uneven and spread out far too much, with several important characters only making their first appearance halfway through the film. A short, more condensed cut would've been far better, but del Toro's talent is undeniable.Read all
