In 1965 Ernesto “Che” Guevera (Benicio del Toro) says he is going to check on Sugar growing, and he leaves Cuba, leaving a letter which Fidel Castro (Demian Bichir) reads on the TV to the Cuban people. In it Che gives up his Cuban citizenship, to go foment revolution elsewhere, leaving his family behind. He first went to the Congo, but this film focuses on him in 1966 when he goes to Bolivia, disguised as a middle aged Uraguayan businessman. He heads out into the woods to foment revolition, having trouble at first because he is an Argentine and not a Bolivian, but he has fought through that before. He wants the overthrow of American backed President René Barrientos (Joaquim de Almeida), but has problems right from the get go.

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Che hides his identity, as they know Barrientos will go for him, if he knows where he is, and he attempts to recruit the peasants to help them, but they are constantly betrayed. Some think they are cocaine dealers, and believe they can make more money, and many believe government lies, but also the Army goes in and will kill the peasants if they help Che, so he and his people are constantly betrayed.

There are food shortages, and many problems between his Cuban soldiers and the Bolivian ones.

By Day 113 there are deserters and the Bolivian army get their basecamp.

Tamara “Tania” Bunke (Franka Potente) screws up and lost their identity and gave away the basecamp and 5 years of planning. She is wounded and ends up with a wounded group trying to get back to Che’s unit.

And Mario Monje (Lou Diamon Phillips) the head of the Bolivian Communist Party does not want armed conflict, so he does all he can to hurt the revolution.

And the CIA has set up a training camp to train a special forces of the Bolivian Army to do counterinsurgency, and they also give helicopters and airplanes, and men trained in Vietnam.

By day 280 Che is very sick from his asthma, and he had left his medication at the basecamp, and can’t get any more, so he is in bad shape.

On day 302 Tania and the wounded are killed by the Bolivian army, having been betrayed by peasants as they crossed a river.

On day 340 Che and his forces enter a seemingly abandoned town, and are surrounded and taken out one by one. Che is wounded and captured, and locked in a hut.

Cuban American CIA agent Félix Rodriguez comes to talk to Che, who won’t talk to a traitor, but Che had his uncle executed in Cuba. The Bolivian government gives approved to execute him, and a soldier volunteers and shoots him in the hut, bringing out his corpse on a helicopter.

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A sad film about a man who could easily have lived the good life in Cuba, but even though he had such bad Asthma wanted to go on and fight the good fight, but was unsuccessful, and was killed doing what he believed was right. Benicio del Toro is amazing, as always, and deserved best actor at Cannes!

The film is intercut between 1964 and starting in 1955 at a gathering in Mexico City where the Cuban Revolution really began, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara (Benicio del Toro) first met Fidel Castro (Demian Bichir). In 1964 we have Che being interviewed by Lisa Howard (Julia Ormond), which is intercut through the film, as well as Che’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly about the Imperialism of the United States in South and Central America. In 1955 Che, Castro and around 80 others head to Cuba via boat, and start the armed revolution in Cuba. It is not easy for Che, who has asthma. At first he is not trusted by many because he is an Argentine, and not Cuban, and even Castro ends up demoting from him division, and putting him in charge of the wounded, but it is there that he learns to truly be a soldier.

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Che’s time moving the wounded, where he uses not only his skills as a solider, but his skills as a doctor. Also going to the people, and helping as many peasants as they can, and buying everything they use, and making the people like them. Punishing those troops who do not respect the peasants.

Eventually Che takes back over a military unit, and becomes one of the revolutions top soldiers, taking his troops into the Battle of Santa Clara, that breaks the back of the US backed Batista, and winning the revolution. On the way heading to Havana he says, we have won the war, but the revolution starts now.

The film ends back in the room in Mexico where Che first met Castro, and we see the two talking. Che admits Castro is a bit crazy, but then he says he will join him if Castro promises that the Revolution will not end there, but will go on and encompass all of South America.

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A really great film. I loved it, I really did. Especially the intercutting with the battle sequences with the scenes of Che after the war being interviewed and talking to the UN, which really give a great counterpoint. Really amazing. I highly recommend this film!

Taking place in Spain earlier this century, in the middle of World War 2, when Spain was still ruled by the Fascist Franco, and the rebels were being put to death as the people suffered. A young girl who is enraptured by books and fairy tales named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) travels with her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) to have her child with her new husband Capitán Vidal (Sergi López). Along the way her mother gets sick, and Ofelia sees a rock statue, and a huge bug she thinks is a fairy. They arrive, and Vidal is obviously a cruel man, killing even innocents who stand in his path. He has one kind servant Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) who is in fact helping her brother in the resistance. Things seem bad, but at night the fairies return and lead Ofelia into the nearby Labyrinth and to the creature Pan (Doug Jones) who tells her that she is in fact a princess from the underworld who has been reborn and she must complete 3 tasks to prove that her spirit survives…

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Through the film we see the cruelty of Vidal, who in fact doesn’t care for his wife, but only wants the son to continue his family name. He will torture and kill, and murder innocents as well. Carmen is getting sicker and sicker as well, and is stuck in bed, under the care of Dr. Ferreiro (Álex Angulo) who is also helping Carmen and her brother.

Ofelia starts doing the tasks, easily completing the first involving a giant frog in a tree, then on the second task, she does what she was told not to, and eats grapes while getting a knife from a creature, and fairies are killed, and she almost does not escape, so Pan abandons her. Then Vidal finds out the plant she put under her mother’s bed, which seemingly was making her better (Pan had given it to her) and burns it, and the mom gets sicker, and in childbirth she dies.

Mercedes knows that Vidal is onto her, so she tries to escape with Ofelia, but they are caught. Ofelia is locked up. And Vidal is going to torture Mercedes, but she has a hidden knife and stabs him and cuts his face open, and she is chased, but her brother and his allies save her and kill the soldiers. Pan returns to Ofelia and tells her she must take her baby brother into the labyrinth as he last task. She puts her mother’s medicine in Vidal’s drink and runs with the baby, but is chased by him as the rebels attack, he chases her.

Pan tells her they must spill the blood of the baby to open the portal, and Ofelia refuses, then Vidal comes and takes the baby and shoots her. In her mind, she was right, and she spilled her own blood, and makes it to the underworld and the kind, and his wife is her mother, so so she is happy. Though in fact we see that Vidal is killed by Mercedes and his son will never know of him, and Ofelia has died. It was all the fantasy of a young girl trying to escape the horror of the world around her.

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Sure the creatures were cool, but the characters were very 1 dimensional, and the story and the tasks themselves were pretty simple and boring. I was so not impressed by this film.

I have wanted to see this film for sometime, and even more so after seeing the Prisoner of Azkaban which was so wonderfully directed, and of course this was the film my girlfriend has so wanted to see. This is a very well done, and sexy film about 2 teenage boys going on a road trip with a beautiful woman who is married to a cousin of hers, and who teaches them things about life and love and sex, and causes the friendship to fall apart do them their own actions with each other.

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