here was a reason that Pan’s Labyrinth didn’t make my Best Movies of 2006 List: I hadn’t seen it yet. Initially released limitedly for Oscar consideration (it snagged a Best Foreign Film nod), Pan's is now showing in most major cities; that means at a theatre near you. Had it had a local release last year, Pan's would have found itself in the coveted number one spot on my best of list.

Set in 1944 fascist Spain, the gothic fable has everything that a good fairy tale should have: death, loss, fantastical monsters, a lost princess, and a willful suspension of disbelief prerequisite.

Ofelia, the princess (well, sort of), has just moved, along with her mother and brutish stepfather, to a new countryside home in post-civil war Northern Spain. Immersing herself in her imagination—and getting as far away from her miserable real life as possible—Ofelia finds a garden maze and envisions the labyrinth as another world.

There she meets Pan the gatekeeper (the very goat-like, king of creepy, Doug Jones) who tells her that she is the long lost daughter of the King of the Underworld (you know how that happens). Ofelia, like any other young girl, isn’t surprised by her royal lineage.