Advanced Search Beta »
Basic Search Fields
My Winnipeg
Metascore
84 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 24 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 24 out of 24
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 24
  3. Negative: 0 out of 24
view
per page
  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    (1) Shot for shot, Maddin can be as surprising and delightful as any filmmaker has ever been, and (2) he is an acquired taste, but please, sir, may I have some more?
  2. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    100
    So it should come as no surprise that what Maddin eventually produced is a film about HIS Winnipeg, a psychological terrain that's no more -- nor less -- "real" than William Carlos William's Paterson or Marcel Proust's Combray.
  3. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    100
    Both the definition of ''my'' and the definition of ''Winnipeg'' become profoundly fluid in this exquisite ''docu-fantasia'' (Maddin's term), an entrancing riffle through the olde curiosity shoppe of the filmmaker's psyche.
  4. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    91
    Maddin talks at length about Winnipeg's hidden layers, but what makes My Winnipeg perhaps his best film to date is that so much of it is right out in the open.
  5. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: John DeFore
    90
    Hilarious for those on Maddin's mad wavelength and more varied than his strictly fictional features.
  6. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    90
    This haunting phantasmagoria of a film -- comic, singular, surreal -- is not only something no one but the Canadian director could have made, it's also a film no one else would have even wanted to make. Which is the heart of its appeal.
  7. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    88
    Deeply personal, wryly funny and fantastically cinematic.
  8. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    88
    Ann Savage, the femme fatale from a slew of old Hollywood noirs, is savagely funny as Maddin's beauty-parlor proprietress mom.
  9. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    88
    Maddin's Winnipeg is a rich, funky, funny stew of fears and desires, of mangled civic chronology mashed up with hothouse private emotions. This is a secret history, and it's a wonder.
  10. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    88
    Mock-heroic yet still lyrical, faux-mythic but honest too, uniquely and absurdly and often hilariously Canadian, My Winnipeg is like no documentary you've ever seen.
  11. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    83
    It's sometimes uneven, but it's glorious, too, with constantly churning invention and the guarantee that you have never seen anything like it before -- unless it came from Winnipeg and Guy Maddin.
  12. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Matthew Sorrento
    80
    The faux-doc/tone-poem hybrid My Winnipeg is a worthy product.
  13. Empire
    Reviewed by: David Parkinson
    80
    Witty, moving and visually dazzling.
  14. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    80
    Like all poetic inward journeys, My Winnipeg is likely to resonate with sympathetic viewers in unexpected ways. In viewing his apparently placid prairie city, and his apparently placid prairie childhood, as an intensely symbolic landscape of mystery and terror, Maddin invites all of us to view our own equally ordinary lives in the same light.
  15. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    80
    My Winnipeg is overloaded and digressive--it comes with the territory--but it's also grounded in a place, Maddin's Manitoban hometown, and it's painfully engrossing.
  16. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    80
    In the course of this clanging, spectral memoir, all of the artist's previous movies--from his underground mock epic "Tales from the Gimli Hospital" through his faux–Soviet silent "The Heart of the World" to his period spectacular "The Saddest Music in the World"--come to mind.
  17. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    80
    Maddin's real point -- and, for admirers of this brilliant and idiosyncratic artist, the true source of the movie's interest -- is that Winnipeg explains him.
  18. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    80
    This autobiographical meditation is seductively funny, as well as deliciously strange, and hauntingly beautiful, as well as stream-of-consciousness cockeyed.
  19. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Philip Kennicott
    80
    Maddin has called his new film a "docu-fantasia," and it's an apt label for an entirely idiosyncratic mix of local myth and history, dubious science, salacious gossip, personal rumination and endless camp humor.
  20. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    80
    The movie is dominated by Maddin's usual black-and-white photography, silent-movie syntax, and deadpan melodrama.
  21. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    75
    Guy Maddin's films are always delightful, but his latest, My Winnipeg, has an added treat for film buffs: It features Ann Savage!
  22. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Ruthe Stein
    75
    The best way to take this film is with a box of popcorn and a grain of salt.
  23. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    75
    It's a twisted but beautiful love letter to a city, not factually correct but emotionally true.
  24. Variety
    Reviewed by: Eddie Cockrell
    70
    Though it may feel undernourished to the faithful, Winnipeg is an easily digestible meal, for the uninitiated and fans alike.
prev next
Page:
  • 1

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 16 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 10
  3. Negative: 1 out of 10
  1. ryancarroll88
    10
    What is "My Winnipeg"? Sure, it's easy to dismiss it as an experimental film, but that's like blacklisting it to a future in some storage bin in a modern art museum, which would be a shame. The film claims to be a documentary about Guy Maddin's hometown, Winnipeg, MB. The footage shows what appears to be reenactments of Maddin's childhood, scenes from his family and a speckled history of the town. From the beginning it's obvious that this 'reality' is pure imagination, a fantasy concocted by Maddin, but for what purpose? Why is he trying to escape reality and his hometown that he loves so dearly? The best way to understand is to watch it, accept it as truth like Maddin has, and experience the world as it becomes a much more magical place.… Full Review »
  2. ChrisP.
    7
    It's watchable and amusing, but incomplete as a work of art. Maddin's voice-over narrative has some witty quips but deflates rather than fueling the romantic/mythic/dreamlike emotional energy he's trying for. The best sequence in the film is a silent recreation of a seance in the Legislature; only for these few minutes is the film allowed to speak for itself and achieve some real emotional impact. For such a visual director, he repeatedly violates the "show me, don't tell me" rule, so that the visuals and narrative don't add to each other but just run side by side, and that loosely. Also surprisingly, there are too few visual ideas in the film; Maddin keeps showing us the same image over and over long after the point has been made. There's some brilliant editing, but the style of the film is monotonous; intensity comes in random fits and starts, but never achieves any momentum or arc. Narratively, there's no insight what makes Winnipeg tick or why its city council makes the famously bad decisions it does, nor why Winnipegers allow those decisions to happen and nurse the feelings of betrayal that they do. Maddin's ironic detachment functions more as a self-protective mask than as an opportunity for critical reappraisal of the sentiments he's expressions. Overall, the whole thing comes across as fairly masturbatory (metaphorically speaking, although there is some fairly cliched stuff about sexual repression in here); one is tempted to think the director isn't interested in anyone's emotions but his own, and is not much in touch with those. There is a lot of potential in this film (it might have worked brilliantly as an all-silent film) but it's an unfinished and art-schoolish, not the work of a mature artist.… Full Review »
  3. BryanR.
    10
    WOW! Guy Maddin is filmmaker who hasn't has his vision stomped by TV or Hollywood -- like the last living real movie director cringing in an ice cave in Canada of all places!… Full Review »
See all user reviews »