Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

burntouthack Meh. Whimsical/bitter reminiscing with lots of made up facts and anecdotes which you can imagine some audiences rocking with mirth to but which aren't all that clever or witty - they're just very whimsical.eg (my spoof)Grainy b/w shots of someone in a living room being offered a cup of tea and drinking it with a smileNarrator: A cup of tea. A cup of tea. My mother would always offer visitors a cup of tea. What is this drink? This tea, cupped in porcelain, porcelain as white as the snow which falls outside onto our Winnipeg sidewalks? My mother served tea in a cup from a set her grandmother gave her, a cup which had come from the mayor's wife, who murdered her own sister, drowning her in a bath of Earl Grey. A drink of death. The cup of life. A cup of tea.It's sort of like that, with a quick shot thrown in of the sister drowned in the bath of tea. 80 mins of that. Doesn't really have anything to say.

druid333-2 Canada's Guy Maddin is certainly a film maker who's films are for some a joy ride into the unknown,while for others an acquired taste. His influences are (among others)some of the films of silent era Soviet documentary film maker Dziga Vertov (Kino Pravda),and Serge Eisenstein (Ivan The Terrible,Alexander Nevsky),as well as some of the pioneer experimental film makers of the 1950's & 1960's,such as Kenneth Anger (Scorpio Rising),Stan Brakhage (The Way To Shadow Garden)& Jack Smith (Flaming Creatures). In this entry,Maddin manages to evoke a love/hate letter to his hometown of Manitoba,Winnipeg. The film seems to be part documentary,part rant on whatever happened to his beloved hometown. Besides incorporating some original home movies,he re-enacts moments from his youth & adulthood with a cast of Canadian actors. Sequences of animation add to this cinematic fever dream that some will love,others will probably walk out on. Not rated by the MPAA,this film contains flashes of nudity,sexual content,rude language & some violent content. Best to leave the little ones home (who would probably be either very confused or bored by it all)

MacAindrais My Winnipeg (2008) ****Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Winnipeg. Everything in Winnipeg is a euphemism. Sleep walkers hold the keys to their old homes! By law! Nazi Fascists invaded Winnipeg! The coldest city in the world! Home of the Ultravixens! Forks and the Forks under the Forks, and the horsehead picnic tables! Hermaphrodite streets - half front street, half back lane! Masons, ghosts, spirits and sad buildings! Citizen Girl! Yes, you can find these things in Winnipeg, Winnipeg, wonderful Winnipeg!If you've ever seen a film like My Winnipeg before, it was likely only in your dreams, or the dreams of the mad poet of Winnipeg, Guy Maddin. Maddin's love of the silent film era has shaped his own visual style, shot usually on old grainy film stock, appearing as it his films were perhaps well preserved 1920s avant garde. He's built a career on making films so outrageously insane by modern film-making standards. His films are usually either bizarre horrors or totally unique comedies, or both. My Winnipeg is a film of sinisterly off the wall humor, conveyed through Guy Maddin's narration (played by Darcy Fehr). One gem: "My father died, with nothing left to do, he died. I'd like to say he spontaneously combusted on the ice at the area, that would have been great."The narration often doubles back on itself, repeating itself in different forms, or entirely contradicting itself in single sentences. All the while the images (usually grainy black and white, but also occasionally in color or animation) are punctuated with flash cards, usually in single or short phrases (Tragedy! Dead Man walking! Dance of the Hairless Boners, Naked! Hairless! Dance! Swollen Pride! Why?!) They flash only for a fraction of a sentence, making them difficult to read.I guess if My Winnipeg could be placed in a genre, they would have to call it a slapstick documentary. Maddin uses archive footage mixed with Maddin's own. The central thesis of the film is Maddin's memories and the city's as well. To begin, he rides a train, sleeping, while it rolls around the Winnipeg streets, seemingly unable to ever leave town. To come to terms with his inability to ever leave the city. He rents his old home for a month, to recreate his childhood memories. He recruits actors to play his siblings, and takes his mother (Ann Savage) to the home, then recreates memories and incidents from childhood. Maddin always seems to have a fascination with mothers, his mother. Elsewhere, he details the Masonic undercurrents of the city, the occult, man pageants, Nazi takeovers, and the rape of the city's beloved Winnipeg Jets by that corrupt National Hockey League!So, the question that many ask then, "is it true?" Being Canadian, I know some things are true, some things are not. Would you want to really know the answer anyway? Its law that everyone gets to keep the keys to their old homes. Why? Because the town has the highest sleepwalking rate in the world! They leave their homes and wander to their old houses in the dark, in the cold, in the snow! You must let them in until they wake! Is that true? I don't care to know. If I knew then I would have to have come back to reality. Unless of course Maddin's Winnipeg is reality. In which case, Winnipeg! Wonderful Winnipeg!

Polaris_DiB This movie is just about as un-describable as Guy Maddin is. If you're familiar with who Guy Maddin is, then you're probably aware of this movie and how it fits into his general approach to film-making. If you're not, well, this would be a great way to be introduced."My Winnipeg" is fairly straight-forward in concept, it's just different in execution. Guy Maddin mixes fact and fiction (as he's wont to do) to make a sort-of documentary about Winnipeg, his home and geographical Oedipal complex. As usual, his approach involves some of the most strange, surreal analogies (strange because they come out of nowhere; surreal because they actually make sense and work for what he's going for); dark humor; silent era montage editing; and dark, dry humor. He narrates it himself with an angry, purposefully whiny voice, both intoning with audio the frustration he feels with the world he's trying to escape and the underlying love and passion for it. The "plot", if you'd call it that, is technically about him trying to leave Winnipeg, but by the time the end comes, you'll be convinced he doesn't really want to leave--even though he never says as much and the "plot" doesn't head in that direction.Beware: here be demons. There's sleepwalkers, frozen horses, smashed deer, and sexual undertones to almost everything. There's re-enactments, found footage, animation, digital effects, and back-projection. There's montage editing, snow falling constantly, layered images, and repeated ostensibly failed takes. It's a whirlwind of paranoia, anxiety, hysterics, and humor, all with the usual black-and-white enclosed feeling that's inherent in many of Maddin's works, the type of imagery that feels like you barely perceive it at the back of your mind and yet it's right in front of your eyes (even when it is in color). And you will laugh. There's not much else that can be said definitively about how to react to this movie, but laughter is a pretty good prediction.But rest assured (and most amazingly): It's accessible! Maddin's commentary, intertitles, and playfulness is contagious, and even though his stream of thought seems awkward and even at times repetitive, it's easy to follow and summarily follows through to a good conclusion. This is the type of movie that proves that a movie can be "weird" and still abruptly entertaining. There's just not enough of that out there...--PolarisDiB