Guillermo del Toro

Del Toro's new movie, Nightmare Alley, is a film noir starring Bradley Cooper as a murderer who joins a traveling carnival, first as part of the crew, and then as part of a clairvoyant act. The Oscar-winning Mexican director talks about researching psychics, his feelings about mortality, and why he relates to Frankenstein's monster. Del Toro also directed The Shape of Water, the Hellboy movies and Pan's Labyrinth.

"I wanted to make a completely honest, heart-on-sleeve, non-ironic melodrama," del Toro says. Set in 1962, his new film features a fairy tale romance between a creature and a mute woman.

Director Guillermo del Toro's film, Pan's Labyrinth, is up for six Academy Awards this year, in categories including original screenplay and foreign language film. Del Toro, who grew up in Mexico, wrote and directed the film.

Two new movies are based on well-known children's stories. One is "Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical," adapted from the popular stage show. The other is "Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio," a stop-motion animation version of the classic fairy tale. Our film critic Justin Chang recommends them both.

In more than three decades of work, Doug Jones has carved out a niche in the acting world by playing strange and otherworldly creatures. He was a demonic superhero in Hellboy and a monster with an appetite for children in Pan's Labyrinth.