The Impossible (2012)

“The Impossible” follows a family dragged low by one of history’s greatest disasters: The 2004 tsunami that killed 300,000 people in Southeast Asia. Director Juan Bayona and Sergio Sánchez (both of  “Orphanage”) make this true story horrifying real as they place us inside the deadly wave with the characters as they fight not to be drowned, crushed, or impaled. 

Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts -– both fantastic -- head the wealthy Brit family and when disaster hits, parents are separated. Mom with an older boy, dad with two younger sons. Mom is sickeningly wounded. Dad is sickeningly worried. Bayona and Sánchez make their ordeal personal, like the family swept up in Wouk’s “Winds of War.” 

But wait. The real family in this tragedy was Spanish -- not WASP -- and every major character we follow in this tragedy is WASP. The indigenous locals? Side characters. Helpers. Magic negroes, to be bluntly nasty. 

Great as this film is, these diversions choke like a swallowed stone. The movie studio trusted a Spanish team behind the camera, but not in front. Yes, movies (“Argo”) constantly shuffle ethnicities, but here with so many nonwhites killed, getting past that hump is … impossible. B

El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel) (1960)

One of the great gags in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” has a direct reference to Luis Buñuel’s acid-to-the-face classic satire “The Exterminating Angel,” a nasty little tale that makes “The Lord of the Flies” seem quaint and targets the privileged class of Europe. The gist is wildly “Twilight Zone” simple: The servants at a lavish mansion are inexplicably leave their stations and the home just as a lavish dinner party begins, and never ends. For the same spirit, or psychological block, keep the guests trapped in one room. Food and water runs out, hygiene turns ugly, a man dies of a heart attack and his body rots, the hosts and guests – Sivia Pinal is the lead actress – go quite mad. Into animals, the kind these hoity-toity blue bloods described the working/lower class as in the film’s opening. Incest, drugs, witchcraft, demons, suicide and sheepacide (is that a word?) – nothing is off limits to Buñuel who saves his final daggers for The Church and The Military. It’s a dark, nasty, scathingly funny slab at the powers that be, the elite folks who place themselves on higher moral ground, closer to God, because they hold more wealth. A timely movie for sure. A

Cronos (1993)

Guillermo del Toro’s debut “Cronos” is a dark beauty: A vampire tale about a grandpa-granddaughter love straight from “Heidi,” but this old man licks snotty blood off bathroom floors and the girl can swing a skull-smashing club. This is nasty violent and funny as hell, a precursor to del Toro’s later genius work. We start in 1590s Spain as a watchmaker produces a device that gives eternal life, in all its eternal damnation. We jump to present day as an antiques seller (Federico Luppi) finds the mechanism – a gold-plated, egg-shaped spider -- inside a sculpture. The device turns the old man into Dracula, and freaks out young Aurora (Tamara Shanath). Meanwhile, a dapper thug (Ron Perlman of del Toro’s “Hellboy”) is hunting the device for his Howard Hughes-like uncle. Del Toro provides sick-minded visuals: Grandpa rips embalmer’s stitches from his mouth, and wears a taped-on suit backward. There are mind-blowing punches at religion: Risen grandpa –- full of wounds -– repeatedly declares his name, “I am Jesus. Jesus Gris!” Even the dialogue bleeds. A

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

I can't say enough about "Pan's Labyrinth" ("El Laberinto del fauno") ... it's one of my all-time favorites, and not just because I caught a late-night show in NYC upon its initial release. (Is there a better city in the world to see a film then walk out into the night? Hell, no.)

Written and directed by the brilliant Guillermo del Toro, it follows Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) the child of a dead tailor and a hugely pregnant, horribly ill mother (Ariadna Gil) now married to a sadistic fascist colonel (Sergi Lopez) in the Spanish army circa 1940s. The country still is under mass civil war and disorder; violent death is every where.

Ofelia comes to live with the colonel ("He's not my father") at a house in the middle of the rural woods. Behind this house is an ancient labyrinth. To all adults, it's a simple maze with pretty stone workmanship. To Ofelia, it is the portal to her real birth world, where she is the princess of a God-like king and queen, her parents.

Her only contact, the only way into this heaven, is a mysterious tree-like faun. The faun tells Ofelia she must prove herself worthy to him to regain her throne, under her parents. She must take a key from a fat, disgusting frog, then take that key and enter the dining hall of a demon and open a cabinet to take a knife. Then she must let her new brother (the prince) bleed by the knife.

Del Toro's film is so complex and layered, so rich with strong religious and "Alice in Wonderland" overtones, one can watch the film a dozen time and pick up on new themes, messages and feelings. Indeed, as Spain and likewise Ofelia's new family's house/army base sinks further into savage violence, so does the girl's secret world.

Is the faun becoming a sadist, like the colonel, or is he testing Ofelia's good will, her Christ-like love? The most important question at the end of the film: Did Ofelia imagine her world of fauns, demons, a king and queen? I change my mind every time as the blood-soaked FUBAR ending is wonderfully, eternally debatable. Right now, this instant, I think all is lost, this is a film of doom.

I never waver, though, on how much I love this film -- its look, the intricate plot, the magic, the demon in that dining hall with eyes in his palms and skin melting off his twig body, and the rivers of blood. I love the film's refusal to be sentimental, to paint violence with an uncensored brush that is shocking to watch even after a dozen views. This is an adults-only film in the clothes of a child.

From the very opening scene, del Toro promises a grim but fantastic journey, and he delivers. Baquero gives one of the best child performances I can remember. Lopez is pure fhk'n evil as the depraved colonel hell bent on dying violently, and as the faun and the saggy-skinned monster, Doug Jones should have gotten some type of Oscar. What kind, I can't say. A+

The Orphanage (2008)

"The Orphanage" ("El Orfornato") definitely comes from the mind of Guillermo del Toro, who directed "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Devil's Backbone." But Jan Bayona is the helmer here as del Toro only produced. Nevertheless, like those great films, this is a gorgeous gem dealing with children, death, supernatural forces and raw-nerve endings. This fascinating, unnerving film mixes, I kid you not, "Peter Pan" with "Poltergeist" with "The Elephant Man," with a heart-startling shot of startling originality and the nastiest "hit by a truck" scene you'll ever see. Plus the stomach punch found in Spanish films. This ain't no American "feel good" film. The ending puts a kick to the gut. A