The Best Movie of the Year

Melissa and I recently watched Pan's Labyrinth, and second only to The Departed, this was the best movie of 2006. The setting is the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s, where a young girl exists simultaneously in two worlds, the 'real' world of her family, war, and pain; and the 'fantasy' world of the labyrinth. Though the labyrinthian world is utterly terrifying, compared to the brutal realities of life, it remains a welcome escape. This movie is also reminiscent of the Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, which follows a group of Communist fighters as they are involved in the Spanish Civil War.