Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Also known as El Laberinto del fauno.
Guillermo del Toro said that crafting and directing this movie nearly killed him. Had he died to make this, it still could not have been a better film. Beautiful, thrilling, mysterious, uplifting, dark, haunting, depressing, and exhilarating, Pan's Labyrinth is as close to perfection as it could ever hope to be. At it's heart, it most resembles the original fairy tales, before they were edited for modern consumption, where evil and scary things happen, and the answer is always more involved than a simple moral, and where the endings weren't always wrapped in a neat package. This is an adult fairy tale, crafted with style and brutality, with sympathy and grace, and with the knowledge that sometimes what seems best isn't always what's right. This is the kind of story that sticks with you, that frightens you, and brings back bittersweet memories for the kid in all of us who sees a world of infinite, and sometimes terrifying possibility. You simply cannot ask for a better way to spend two hours.

10 out of 10.