Under his affable and even domestic guise, Guillermo del Toro hides a creative universe that finds in its particular fictions the natural channel from which it finally overflows. The fantastic genre is available, in the hands of this director, as a winning bet to reach higher levels of popularity than that of mere fans of the genre.
Because great fantasies are more accessible in someone like del Toro, without failing to amaze with his exuberance. Just as they dazzle the great cinema public with their background that points to a moral, a metaphor or an algeory of some of those human essences forgotten in our current civilization. Of course, when he doesn't care to scare us with some more terrifying, disturbing fantasy or starts with a new foray into a period noir.
But it is that in addition to the Bull, he is a true factotum of cinema because his creativity emerges from the very birth of the script that sometimes even it becomes a novel. On countless occasions, he is the one who writes the story to be conducted, a one-man orchestra role that of course has also ended up leading him to production tasks in many other films.
Top 3 recommended films of Guillermo del Toro
The shape of the water
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:The fantastic gives rise to all kinds of emotions. Firstly, because it takes us back to childhood; secondly, because it makes us approach the world with new eyes; thirdly, because the imagination is powerful, even to assault our emotions when it has such brilliance. That's what happens with this plot.
Set in the city of Baltimore during the Cold War, at the Occam Aerospace Research Center, recently reached by a being as extraordinary as it is potentially valuable: an amphibian man captured in the Amazon. What follows is an emotional love story between this being and one of the cleaning women in Occam, who is mute and communicates with the creature through sign language.
Developed from the first moment as a groundbreaking simultaneous release (the same story recreated by two artists in the independent media of literature and cinema), this work interweaves fantasy, horror and the romantic genre in order to create a story that is as fast-paced on paper as it is on the big screen. Get ready for an experience unlike anything you've read or seen.
The alley of lost souls
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:I do not know why. But this is a title that evokes me Ruiz Zafon. It will be because of the balance between the tangible and the unattainable with melancholic overtones. The point is that also in this story we go back to a past time but almost reachable from some old photo or newspaper. That past reachable by the memory of our grandparents where everything is mist and a light touch of color barely noticeable among the fog and gray of those strong and harsh days.
Guillermo del Toro dares this time with a remake. Only in his already extensive career he knows how to exploit new resources to get more juice out of the original idea. There is a lot of Robin Hood, with which to empathize in the adventure of the rogues who make a living trying to steal some of the good star that always accompanies the rich.
The point is that the issue can always be twisted when once it goes well and persists in new attempts. Until the matter is darkened by ambition, deception ... the perfect setting for the director to provide that extra disturbing drift. A film born slowly due to changes of letters in the cast of actors (perhaps that is why two Guillermo del Toro films were brought together between 2021 and 2022.
Pan's Labyrinth
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:Tragedies do not happen the same from the perspective of an adult or a child. There is no doubt about that. The question is which is the truest perspective. Because in the subjective notion of how the time of moral misery and postwar economic hardship passes, at least the child tries to keep the best. And even in hunger and abandonment, like that of the little matchmaker, the threat of death can transform itself into what is essentially anyone's life, an inescapable adventure that must be conscientiously squeezed out.
Year 1944, postwar Spanish. Ofelia and her mother, Carmen who is pregnant, move to a small town where Carmen's new husband, Vidal, a cruel captain of the Francoist army, has been assigned to whom the girl does not feel any affection. Vidal's mission is to destroy the last members of the Republican resistance who remain hidden in the mountains of the area. In the area live Mercedes, the housekeeper, and the doctor (Álex Angulo) who takes care of Carmen's delicate state of health.
One night, Ofelia discovers the ruins of a labyrinth, and there she meets a faun, a strange creature that makes her a surprising revelation: she is actually a princess, the last of her line, and hers have been waiting for her for a long time. weather. In order to return to her magical kingdom, the girl must face three tests.