The Devil's Backbone/El Espinoza del Diablo (2001) - The excellent Gothic genre-mix that is Del Toro's best film so far

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One of the chilling posters for Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone

The boy Carlos arrives at an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War. Among the complexities that he tries to navigate in his life there is the eerie ghost of a recently deceased boy.

Devil's Backbone is a sweepingly beautiful war horror drama about the haunted life in a war-torn orphanage, with great cinematography by Guillermo Navarro (Pacific Rim (2013)). The film is the result of an unusual and bold script by great Mexican director Guillermo del Toro (Blade II (2002)), Antonio Trashorras and David Muñoz (Holy Night! (2011), both).
The children act impressively well, and it is a highly effective plot with Carlos (Fernando Tielve (The Shanghai Spell/El Embrujo de Shanghai (2002))) and the ghost boy Santi (Junio Valverde (Shiver/Eskalofrío (2008))). Of the adult actors, the film also features fine turns from Spain's great Marisa Paredes (All About My Mother/Todo Sobre Mi Madre (1999)) as the institution's mysterious 'mother' with a strange prosthetic leg, Federico Luppi (Phase 7 (2010)) as her doctor husband and Eduardo Noreiga (Beauty and the Beast (2014)) as the vengeful caretaker. This is a solid, imaginative ghost story rich with details that makes it worth watching several times. It has a really soulful Spanish feel to it.
The Devil's Backbone is often compared to its director Toro's three-times Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth/El Laberinto del Fauno (2006), which is also a dark film about a child in war-torn Spain, but I find that Backbone is the better film of the two and still Toro's best film. 
He has since its release grown to become one of the most prominent directors in the world with several huge upcoming projects: The first one to arrive will be the highly anticipated, hugely stylized gothic horror Crimson Peak (2015), which will be the director's first film since the kaiju movie Pacific Rim.

Related reviews:

Guillermo del Toro: Pacific Rim (2013) or, The Monster Resistance
Blade II (2002) or, The Vampire Ass-Kicker 2 

Watch the strange American trailer for the film here, which, - characteristically (and ridiculously), - avoids revealing that Spanish is the spoken language in the film

Cost: 4.5 mil. $
Box office: 6.4 mil. $
= Big flop
[Despite being well-received critically, Devil's Backbone didn't make much money outside its native Spain, (where it made 3 mil. €.) It made 0.7 mil. $ (11 % of the total gross) in the US.]

What do you think of The Devil's Backbone?
Is it also your favorite Del Toro movie?

The Method/El Método (2005) - Madrid-set job interview, reality-themed thriller

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The entire cast of Marcelo Piñeyro's The Method

An unusual corporate thriller without any bloodshed, The Method is based on Jordi Galceran's (Dakota (1996)) play The Grönholm Method/El Mètode Grönholm (2003) written by Mateo Gil (The Sea Inside/Mar Adentro (2004), co-writer) and co-writer-director Marcelo Piñeyro (Burnt Money/Plata Quemada (2000)).

7 applicants for a top corporate job meet for an advanced, collective interview that unfolds unpredictably: Following the mysterious 'Grönholm Method', the 7 are set to decimate themselves in order for the winner of the job to be found.

Several scenes play out nicely, with fast, dramatic cutting, and an invitation to guess at hints and choose sides in a reality TV-like fashion. The acting is good, and the characters believable. Without being phenomenal, it is an exciting and highly entertaining film for the most part.
The third act regrettably fumbles some of the nice work, as The Method fizzes out in intrigues and melodrama. SPOILER The woman (Najwa Nimri (Room in Rome/Habitación en Roma (2010))), who seems obviously the most competent and intelligent of the applicants, suddenly gives up and offers her male counterpart (Eduardo Noriega (Beauty and the Beast/La belle et la Bête (2014))) the job. Then she leaves down the street that has been messed up by an angry anti-IMF mob earlier in the day, (and is now seemingly totally abandoned?)
The implication of this last image, and the recurring sounds of the protestors, are very vague. So vague, in fact, as to become an annoyance. Whether they are there to be a symbolic attack on capitalism for the entire movie, or mean something else entirely, perhaps a gender point I am missing, it is too unclear, and it also seems very irrelevant for the practical thriller plot that was built up before it.
Piñeyro does well in adapting this extremely dialog-heavy play to the screen without it feeling heavy or dousing to the senses.The Method mostly plays like an intelligent and unpredictable reality TV-inspired film with good acting and humor as key ingredients.

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 3 mil. $
Box office: 3.4 mil. $
= Big flop (returned 1.13 times the cost)
[The Method premiered 14 September (Toronto International Film Festival, Ontario) and runs 115 minutes.  The film was quite successful in one of its 3 production countries Spain, where it made 2.9 mil. $ (85.3 % of the total gross). Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Argentina (another production country) with 0.3 mil. $ (8.8 %) and France with 0.1 mil. $ (2.9 %). The US was among the smallest of its 8 markets with a mere 7k $ gross (0.2 %) over the course of 2 weeks in 2 theaters.The film was nominated for 5 Goya Awards and won 2, for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Carmelo Gómez (Tiempo sin Aire (2015)) (the first character to leave in the film.)) Piñeyro returned with Las Viudas de los Jueves (2009). Noreiga returned in Che Guevara (2005), Nimri in Las Vidas de Celia (2006). The Method is fresh at 71 % with a 6.2/10 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Method?