Critic wrangle: "My Winnipeg."

2008-06-13 17:00:02

Guy Maddin's "docu-fantasia" "My Winnipeg," about a town almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the Manitoban urban center in which he grew up, opens in theaters today. And the crowd goes wild! Or at least murmurs appreciatively. "Even though much of My Winnipeg is overtly ludicrous--from the corrupt judging of male beauty pageants in The Hudson's Bay Company's "Paddle Room" to Maddin's memories of a locally produced TV series about an overly sensitive man who spends every episode out on a ledge, threatening to kill himself," writes Noel Murray at the Onion AV Club, "the movie still touches on real feelings of loss and regret." He concludes that it's "perhaps his best film to date." "My Winnipeg is Maddin's best filmmaking since the not-dissimilar confessional bargain-basement phantasmagoria, Cowards Bend the Knee," suggests J. Hoberman at the Village Voice. "[E]ven though I suspect that some of its more outlandish assertions are...

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