Details
Release date: 2006;Length:119 minutes; Genres: Drama, fantasy, mystery; Imdb's rating:8.4/10

This fantasy tale is about a girl named Ofelia who lives during a time of war in Spain. The movie is in Spanish with English subtitles, if you understand Spanish this can give the movie a more authentic feeling. Her mother marries and is pregnant with Vidal's baby. Vidal is a high-ranking military officer. At the beginning of the movie they are going to live with him; the mother sees marring Vidal as an opportunity to give Ofelia a father. The man is evil, and acts like he loves them but he doesn't. When ever a problem arrives for her or her family Ofelia tries to solve it in her fantasy world because she can't do anything in real life. For example, her mother was having trouble with the baby she was caring. One of the characters from her fantasy world told her to put this root thing under her mother's bed to help her with her pregnancy. At first it seem to be working, but her mother found the root thing under her bed. Her mother argued with her Ofelia explaining that it was not working and it will never work. Vidal walked in interrupting them. He become angry with Ofelia's superstitious believes and yanked the root out of her mothers hands, then threw it to the fire place demanding that this nonsense stopped.

I really liked this movie because it's unpredictably pulled out emotional reactions from me. Even though a lot of the movie takes place in the fantasy of a little girl this makes you learned things about the characters on a different level than just the ordinary events in the movie.

The movie was visually gorgeous. Any shot of natural looked more lush, green, and full of life than in real life. In the girls fantasy world the characters looked so real that I couldn't distinguish whether they were real or not.

I believe that this movie deserves a 10 out of 10, because it was so unique and brilliant; that you probably won't see a movie like this in a long time. It's not a standard Hollywood movie where the hero wins at the end or the guy get the girl. It's a story about a little girl who is having a hard time adjusting to this new family and is trying to stay away from this in a fantasy world.