Reviews

Great care has been taken with the art direction. You are immediately transported to 1939, with Franco's army about to descend on the Spanish countryside. Even the crumbling buildings of the boys' school the characters inhabit play a role. The actors are superb, and the child actors give award-worthy performances.

This story is only incidentally a ghost story. It's a story about love and betrayal and the miseries of war visited on a people. It has a lot to teach about the depths of human cruelty, and the grace of sacrifice. It left me weeping. I don't want to label it Del Toro's masterpiece so early in his career, but it will stand through the years with his best work.

Au contraire, Jacob Cremins, The President's Analyst is a brilliant snapshot of mid-60s America, with all the insane paranoia and absurdity of a culture spinning out of control. It is intensely funny to anyone born before 1955. I'm sorry you had such a disagreeable experience viewing it. Your generation will have your movies, this one is mine.

This is a wonderful Christmas movie for the old fart on your shopping list. William Daniels' role as a gun-happy suburbanite is worth the price alone. The talented, and woefully under-used Godfrey Cambridge finally gets a star turn as a government agent undergoing analysis. And Barry ("Eve of Destruction") McGuire as the leader of a band of hippie musicians is a dead-on send up of the emerging flower children.

Yes, one had to be a telephone customer before the advent of the Baby Bells to grasp the sheer villainy of THE PHONE COMPANY!