My Winnipeg - Movie Review (Metro Times Detroit)

A complete hack review, though I still can’t put my finger on why. Hack reviews at their worst probably tout movies as good to help sell the movie, but I can’t make many excuses for a film review that merely exists to fill space on advertising pages. This review has trappings of a legitimate film review, a thought which some might take as a complement, but those devoted readers of smalter.org know I mean it as a diss.

Here’s a stab in the dark: film criticism as identification of distinguishing characteristics. First, imagine all movies produced to be exactly the same. Is there anything to write? Then imagine a new movie has one different element. I guess the job of the film critic is to point out that element.

What makes My Winnipeg different is the way it looks and various recurring elements like a guy dosing off on a train. However, do we write about film to create taxonomies of film and crush them with our formalism in whatever form? Or at worst, just to speak the film in a different language? My favorite writing on music is to read what people have written about songs that they love.