Day 3 TIFF

Two more films to end the weekend.

Pan’s Labyrinth.

Guillermo Del Toro can make a visually stunning film, but he has some trouble putting a coherent story together. Pan’s Labyrinth is probably his best work to date, combining strong special effects with a very good script. The movie strikes a balance between being a fantasy and a war thriller.

Sets in Spanish Civil War, Ofelia followed her pregnant mother to live in an outpost with her future husband, a fascist Captain Vidal. The girl has strong imagination and loves fairy tales, and one day she actually sees a fairy, which led her to a labyrinth of sorts, where she discovered that she is actually a princess from the underground and if she can complete three tasks, she can go back to her kingdom.

The wonderful thing about this movie is that it’s not a pure fantasy/fairy tale. In fact, you really don’t know if the fairy tale is real or not. This is a very dark movie, and definitely not for kids. The visual is stunning as usual for Del Toro, and the performance by the little girl as a Ofelia is just perfect. I can’t praise this film enough. Hopefully, it will be a major contender in the Academy Awards next year. Grade: A

Monkey’s Warfare

Dan and Linda is a hippie couple living in Toronto, they don’t usually go for a ‘day job’, but instead they buy peculiar things on yard sales so they can sell it online. They don’t have a phone or a car, so they travel by bikes. One day, Don meets Susan, a young pot dealer. Don likes her, and needs the pot, so he let her hang out with her. It turns out Susan is angry young rebel, who wants to rebel against society and ask Linda and Dan for help. Meanwhile, Dan and Linda don’t want any part of this, but they need her weeds.

Monkey’s Warfare is your typical Canadian film. Very quirky and offbeat. While it’s not a profound film, nor was it stunning visually, it did hold my interest and it has a good soundtrack. If the movie is 5 minutes longer, then I will not recommend it, but as it stands right now, it’s not bad. Grade B-