Pan’s Labyrinth   (Photo: Courtesy of Picturehouse )

5. Fascism, Mexican Style
The Mexican directors—and close friends—Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro turned out two shatteringly brutal films that center on the encroachment of fascism. Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, set in Franco’s Spain in the aftermath of the civil war, weaves fairy-tale imagery (some of it wondrous, most of it ghastly) through the story of a girl swept up in the political resistance by the machinations of her sadistic stepfather. Cuarón’s Children of Men is set in England in 2027—a dying world where women have become inexplicably sterile and where refugees are rounded up and (frequently) executed. Is this the most ferociously dystopian one-two punch in movie history?