Skip to footer

Film critics pick the 50 best movies of all time

From film critics Gail Kinn and Jim Piazza's new book 'The Greatest Movies Ever,' their picks for the 50 greatest films

23. 'Pan's Labyrinth'

  • By Molly Driscoll

"Goya meets Alice in Wonderland in this genre-obliterating tour de force," Kinn and Piazza write of the 2005 film directed by Guillermo del Toro. "Intermingling dark and shimmering special-effects imagery with an abiding respect for character, del Toro questions our notion of the polarity between reality and imagination."

Director del Toro said during an interview with the Guardian that "we had a distributor tell us, during pre-production, that if we made it in English, the exact same story and everything, they'd raise their backing to $30m [more than double the original budget]. The answer was very immediate: no. Because the moment you start accepting anything that feels remotely wrong... the moment you give in, you're giving up. You've lost control, it's not the movie you wanted."

The director was next to author Stephen King at a screening of the film and saw King shifting uncomfortably at some of the gorier sections. Del Toro said it was the greatest moment of his life.

Actor Doug Jones played the Faun that speaks with girl explorer Ofelia, and Del Toro told USA Today that for the end of the film, when the Faun is stronger, he "told Doug to go rock star on me, like a glam rocker. But less David Bowie, more Mick Jagger."

28 of 50
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.