Guillermo del Toro's epic, hugely-anticipated robots vs. monsters blockbuster Pacific Rim is finally unleashed upon audiences tomorrow - and you can read my full review
here - but what better time to re-examine the revered director's filmography? Over the last 20 years, del Toro's generally acclaimed corpus of work has, above all other merits, been a visually diverse catalogue of the Gothic, the grotesque and the bizarrely beautiful, and with his latest work, he crowbars open yet another facet of his filmmaking talent. Though not all of the director's efforts have totally succeeded in their goals, del Toro is a rare filmmaker who even in failure manages to make an
interesting film, and even then, his "failures" (or rather, his one failure) has been only modestly disappointmenting at worst. Running down his 8 movies to date, here are Guillermo del Toro's works ranked from worst to best...
8. Mimic
Mimic marked del Toro's first outing with a Hollywood studio, and as a result it's little surprise that he became another international director blindsided by the intrusive studio process. Going from the $2 million budget of Cronos straight into $30 million for his sophomore feature appeared to overwhelm the filmmaker, focusing on its grotesque style though failing to hammer down a water-tight premise. Instead, the film is a relatively derivative creature feature that boasts one truly shocking moment - where two kids are killed by the monster - but is utterly lacking in some much needed humour to buoy its B-movie tone. Mira Sorvino's casting as the scientist protagonist also attracted plenty of criticism, though to be honest, that's really the least of the film's issues. It's a perfectly watchable, silly effort, but just not a particularly impressive follow-up to his startling debut. That said, the 2011 Director's Cut does paper over a few of the narrative cracks...