The Big Picture: Brilliance Beyond the Border

The films by Cuarón, 45, have been all over the place, artistically and geographically. Of his six feature films, only two are set in Mexico. He has made movies from Dickens (Great Expectations) and Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). González Iñárritu, 43, is more single-minded; his three features (Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel), all written by Arriaga, form a trilogy on the consequences of random acts. As for del Toro, 42, he makes monster movies--in Mexico (Cronos), the U.S. (Blade II, Hellboy) and Spain (The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth). Sometimes the great beast is fascism.

In Hollywood the monster is inertia. American movies still dominate the world marketplace, so who cares if they mostly stink? The rule there is It's broke--don't fix it. That straitjacket doesn't suit the Mexican three. Unlike earlier generations of directors who emigrated from Europe to California and stayed there, these guys make films in Hollywood only when it suits them. With Blade II grossing $155 million worldwide, and Hellboy nearly $100 million, del Toro could have made any old horror film. Instead, he made a wonderful new one, in Spanish.

And González Iñárritu hatched an unlikely four-country political epic that is considered a front runner for the Best Picture Oscar. The Academy has never given its top prize to a film in which English was not the primary language; Babel's in six of them.

Babel, Pan's Labyrinth and Children of Men, like any wildly ambitious films, have their detractors. For this critic, only del Toro's works completely. But all three films can boast daring political positions and a strong, racing pulse. These movies move. And so, ever upward, do the restless careers of our three caballeros. I'd like to think they're the future of movies.