Pan's Labyrinth

This was the best adult fairy tale I've seen. I've heard two different people say that this is the type of movie that M. Night Shamylan has been trying to make and failed many times. I agree. The special effects were spectacular, specifically because you don't notice them as being special effects. Since I work with video and graphic effects (albeit on a much different scale) I generally have no choice but to think about how'd they do that? But most of my time watching this movie I was too caught up with what was going on to notice that it couldn't have been real. There was such an interesting attention paid to details, without attention called to details that I haven't seen in many movies lately. When the captain stitches up his own sliced cheek and then takes a shot of whiskey to clean the wound, the gauze swells with blood and liquor. This was just one interesting detail that pulls you into the realism of the telling of the story. But there wasn't a close up shot to show off the bandaged face. It just happens as any other action in the shot.