Thanks for the memories!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, all those places has taken on life on the screen through this nostalgic mix of old silent films and documentaries, videos, photos and animations, most black and white, supported by the beautiful narration of the director Guy Maddin. The surrealist style of this movie works incredibly well, moving between the dreams, the memories and the reality, resulting in something incredibly beautiful and unique."My Winnipeg" is one of the most fascinating film experiences ever made. Even when it is certainly one of those movies that one either does hate or love, I consider "My Winnipeg" one of the most extraordinary works of love ever done in the history of cinema, being able to make all the places described or just mentioned in this movie a part of our memories and souls as viewers.

Ledge Man!...Man-Pageants...Horses Heads Frozen In A Lovers Lake...The Two Rivers beneath the Two Rivers...The Sleepwalkers Laws...The Re-Enactments Of Family Arguments And Confusing Memories Of Yesteryear...Ghost Hockey Teams...and buildings which refuse to fall when demolished...one man must face all of this on a train, heading out of town. Before he can leave the place of his birth, he must pass through all those places which have become monoliths in his memory. Through the trains windows he sees these scenes play themselves out, or can dream them with his head pressed against the window. I've tried to watch Guy Maddins completely silent films in the past, and they've always felt excessive and thin in all the wrong places. "My Winnipeg" is a perfect marriage of auto-biography, fantasy, documentary, silent film, German expressionism, and surreal cabaret, basically all those things which Maddin draws his palate from. Manages to make Winnipeg, Canada, into a dreamy, personal, mythic place, the incommunicable way a place feels after you've lived at it all your life, the love/hate where all dreams come from, and where they all seek to escape. Oh, but there is a point about 10 minutes in, when the words "the lap...the fur...the forks..." will be repeated so many times, it will make you want to turn it off, if you don't you will have one of the most unique and even enjoyable experiences you can have with a movie. I looked forward to watching it again before it was over. Better every time I watch it!

Guy Maddin's ninth feature is a pseudo-documentary about the director's hometown of Winnipeg. It mostly focuses on his relationship with the city, but it also includes re-enactments of his family life and famous weird things that happened in the city's past. It's a bit of a mess, but, as I've said before regarding Maddin, his films play out like dreams. A mess makes sense a lot of the time. I do think the film lacks the focus of his best work, and is, in fact, my least favorite of his features. Also contributing to my relatively low opinion of it (i.e., I don't think it's one of the best movies ever) is Maddin's own narration. I loved his previous film, The Brand Upon the Brain!, but objected to the narration. It's even worse here, taking a lot of the mystique out of the silent film pastiche Maddin has been perfecting since The Heart of the World (I'm kind of hoping that he'll some day return to the stuff of his earlier works, which felt more like the films of the '30s than those of the '20s). My favorite sequences were the occult ceremony in the Masonic temple and the hockey legends game, where septuagenarians play one last game as their stadium is demolished by wrecking balls. Darcy Fehr of Cowards Bend the Knee returns as Guy Maddin, who, in the movie, is as desperate to leave his depressing hometown as he is to stay (throughout the movie, Fehr appears dozing in a train car that never seems to get out of Winnipeg). And Maddin dug up Detour's Ann Savage, possibly literally, to play his mom.

Screened with live director-narration at the Sydney Film Festival, My Winnepeg was not always easy to engage with but was, ultimately, one of the most satisfying filmic experiences of the Festival fortnight to-date.Mixing surreal, dreamlike images with heartfelt reminiscents, Guy Maddin created extraordinary cinema that will linger long in the memory of all that witnessed it.The first 20 minutes are the toughest slog - it takes a little while to comprehend exactly the direction this loving-yet-satirical homage to Maddin's home town is trying to accomplish. And I also have reservations as to how this is going to play to audiences without the immediate, personal engagement the live-narration provides - the connection the on-stage presence provided made for an intimacy that may not be otherwise available.But, with no reservation, the dreamlike images, coupled with the heartfelt words of the creator, made for a unique, beautiful, hilarious, moving experience. This is a major work from an extraordinary talent; a must-see for those that crave films that engage the head and the heart.