Throughout his career, writer-director Guillermo del Toro has capably balanced pulp sensibilities with high-end art, and the result is a filmography that is fanciful and highly enjoyable.  With “Pacific Rim,” Del Toro throws his more serious side out the window to make a big-budget spectacle that pays homage to giant-monster movies like “Godzilla” and “Gamera.” The premise of the film is as silly as one would expect, but that’s OK. Del Toro has fun with the material and, as a result, the audience does, too. 

Filmcraft: Directing is composed of 16 interview-profiles of internationally acclaimed filmmakers. Goodridge also devotes five Legacy chapters to “innovators and pioneers in the filmmaking field.” The directors he chooses “to represent the first 115 years of cinema” are the usual suspects: Kurosawa, Bergman, Ford, Hitchcock, and Godard — the filmmakers whose films you wind up watching eventually, dutifully.