Horror Month: The Devil's Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001)

                       This movie defied all my expectations. All I knew about this film when I started watching is that there's a ghost in it and it's directed by Guillermo del Toro. I thought it was going to be a somewhat conventional ghost story. Instead of that, what I got was a fantastic humanist story which wasn't particularly scary in any conventional sense, but did in fact have a creepy ghost in it. 

                      The Devil's Backbone is about a young boy named Carlos who is without warning left by his jerk of a tutor at an orphanage in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. The orphanage is hiding gold for one of the armies in the war, and the caretaker has been trying to steal it for some time. During his time at the orphanage Carlos repeatedly encounters the ghost of a young boy, who is later revealed to be a child who was at the orphanage until the caretaker murdered him. As events transpire, the caretaker takes over the orphanage and nearly blows the entire place up, killing the good people who take care of the orphans in his search for the gold. It turns out that in the end the ghost of the dead child is not really evil as you sort of assume from the start, all he wants is justice for himself against the caretaker. Which in the end he gets, with help from Carlos and the other boys. 

                     As I said before, I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. Instead of the ghost being the story's antagonist, it is the caretaker of the orphanage who is the bad one. The ghost serves to remind us that the evil things we do by no means stay buried, and old acts of evil can come back to haunt us, though not usually in such a literal sense. Del Toro did a magnificent job developing the villain of the movie, making the audience absolutely loathe him. The mere prospect of the caretaker getting away with all the horrendous crimes he committed was appalling to me. And that makes the ending that much more powerful, though the orphans' future is uncertain they have triumphed over evil. I also noticed some similarities between this and Del Toro's other masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth. Both take place during times of political or civil unrest, and both are told from the perspective of a child and involve their escapism from a harsh reality. Del Toro must have the mind of a child, to be able to recreate the innocence and curiosity of a child so well.

                    Great movie.

Review: Pacific Rim (2013)

Holy SHIT.


            This is it. This is the movie that the 12 year old child that persistently inhabits my subconscious and occasionally hijacks my brain has been waiting to see for years. Pacific Rim has everything a good action blockbuster needs, and everything a fan of the genre could possibly want. The plot is coherent, the music score is fantastic, the performances are strong (for the most part), and the action sequences are MASSIVE in scale and extremely well presented. This film is what the live action Transformers movies had the potential to be. It's what they could have been with a competent director, a strong cast and a kickass, all-or-nothing storyline. Pacific Rim absolutely knocks it out of the park, and brings its viewers exactly what they want in so many ways.

             Director Guillermo del Toro, famous for his visually astounding and amazingly imaginative fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth and his more recent involvement in Peter Jackson's epic adaptation of The Hobbit has crafted something very special here. Pacific Rim takes place in the near future, and centers around the constant conflict between giant monsters called Kaiju that enter the world through an inter-dimensional rift in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and the giant mechanical humanoid weapons called Jaegers that the world's superpowers have worked together to build to fight them. The Kaiju are getting bigger and entering our world at an accelerated rate, so former elite Jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket is called out of retirement to help in the battle for Earth's future. He's played by Charlie Hunnam of Sons of Anarchy fame, and instead of playing a cocky young biker thug he plays a cocky young Jaeger pilot. His performance is passable if a little exaggerated , and he really stands out in the beginning of the film in the scenes that show his reasons for retirement (the death of his brother) and the circumstances that shape the character he becomes. Also starring are Idris Elba and Ron Perlman, who both fit into their roles extremely well and do a great job playing their characters, Elba as the hard-ass commander of the Jaeger program and Perlman as an underground profiteer who makes his fortune harvesting and selling different parts of the dead Kaiju. Lastly we have Rinko Kikuchi, who plays Hunnam's new co-pilot and eventual love interest, Mako Mori.

            Speaking of the characters, there is a surprising amount of emotional depth to their relationships, especially for a film such as this. This is for the most part facilitated by a clever plot device, which is that the Jaegers cannot be piloted by one person alone. To operate a Jaeger, there must be two pilots working together, each controlling one hemisphere of the machine's "brain". To achieve the level of synchronization this requires, the pilots need to connect their brains to one another, and then connect themselves to the Jaeger they are piloting. In this film this is called "drifting" or "the drift" and it involves total immersion into the other person's thoughts, memories, and instincts. To be plugged into someone's brain and have them plugged into yours is shown to be a very intimate experience, and requires complete trust on the part of both people. So, only certain people are compatible to drift with one another. In the movie this mostly means blood relatives, siblings, fathers and sons, even a set of triplets. But Raleigh and Mako quickly show themselves to be the best team out there with the deepest, strongest connection. For two people who have never met each other before the events of the film to be able to connect like that and interface everything they are with each other is unprecedented. This affirms the bond between Raleigh and Mako, and strengthens the sense of connectivity between them. It's really impressive that amidst the chaotic tone and awe-inspiring spectacle that is the rest of the film, del Toro was able to create such a strong bond between his characters.

            And in terms of spectacle, Pacific Rim delivers. Oh man, does it ever. The scale of these fights is just incredible. This differs from films like Godzilla or Cloverfield in that instead of one or two huge monsters that become the focal point of the entire story Pacific Rim is about an endless stream of increasingly dangerous beasts. So it's not just "kill the Kaiju and save the city", it's "kill the Kaiju and get back to base, next one shows up in 12 hours so get ready". This means that instead of one satisfying climax at the end, there are several huge battles in the movie culminating in a massive showdown at the end that outdoes all of the previous ones and ends the film in a nuclear blast (literally). In terms of choreography the fights play out quite a bit like wrestling bouts, more specifically luchadore showdowns like the ones popular in Mexico, which is del Toro's homeland. Combatants bear hug each other, throw each other, bash each other over the head with whatever they can find, and use their environment to their advantage. One memorable scene has a Jaeger picking up a massive freight tanker ship and using it to repeatedly smash a Kaiju in the face. One of the things I loved about the fight scenes is that you never lose sight of the sheer size of these beings, and the effects their combat has on the world around them. Jaegers and Kaiju are hundreds of meters tall and weigh hundreds of thousands of tonnes, and the destruction that results of them throwing their weight around is nothing short of jaw-dropping. Skyscrapers crumble like they were made of paper, solid concrete is smashed to bits, huge trucks and buildings are demolished as if they aren't even there. Every time there is a fight in a city, several square blocks of it are completely devastated. This is the cost of victory against the Kaiju. There were several points in the movie where I had goosebumps and was just blown away by how massive it is. When a Kaiju unexpectedly jumped out of the ocean to attack my heart skipped a beat and I literally gasped. That's how immersive this movie is. With all the battle scenes, you are dragged right in on the edge of your seat.


             Pacific Rim is the best Hollywood blockbuster of the summer that I have seen, and one of the best big budget action films of 2013. See it. If you're a fan of either giant robots or giant monsters, this movie has everything you could possibly want. It's like watching your childhood fantasies brought to life.