Writing in the Spring issue, Jonathan Rosenbaum referred to a process whereby film culture, after a 1960s consensus, “splintered into academia and journalism, which often lamentably functioned as mutually indifferent or sometimes even mutually hostile institutions”

With Pan’s Labyrinth, however, writer-director Guillermo del Toro has built on his proven skills in fantasy (Hellboy in 2004) and Spanish history (The Devil’s Backbone from 2001) to produce a work that is at once a logical development of his artistic trajectory and a wholly unexpected masterpiece from a director identified with such low-status genres as horror

Comparisons of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima; Haneke; Inside the Actors Studio, and an interview with Oliver Stone

READ: Tuning Up, and a review of Pan’s Labyrinth