Matt Yglesias, like me, thought that Pan’s Labyrinth was okay. Of his three major beefs I disagree with one, sympathize with the next, and agree with the last.

Beef one: “a silly sentimental ending” that I, on the contrary, thought was the best part of an otherwise fairly rote and unimaginative fantasy.

Beef two: “they sapped the Spanish Civil War of any ideological content.” That’s certainly true insofar as the Captain is pretty much just a very bad bad guy (though a very good very bad bad guy at that) rather than one who’s specifically fascist/Falangist, and insofar as the red guerillas might well have skipped out on performing as the students in Les Mis