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The 20th Century

2019

Matthew Rankin

Dan Beirne, Sarianne Cormier, Catherine St-Laurent, Mikhail Ahooja ...

6.3

241

Comedy. Fantasy A bizarre biopic that re-imagines the formative years of former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King as a series of abject humiliations.

	Author	Review
United States	Jordan Mintzer The Hollywood Reporter	"Proudly and perversely Canadian (...) Guy Maddin meets John Waters by way of Powell and Pressburger"	POS
United States	Alissa Simon Variety	"It can be enjoyed for its combination of supreme creativity, jaw-dropping audacity and amusing tongue-in-cheek dialogue"	POS
United States	David Ehrlich IndieWire	"A delirious and perverse biopic about Canada’s most famous Prime Minister (...) It helps that Beirne and the rest of Rankin’s cast are all on the same page"	POS
United States	Nicolas Rapold The New York Times	"An exuberant feat of visual design, it’s meticulously weird and full of rambunctious humor."	POS
United States	Charles Bramesco AV Club	"Movies this strange aren’t often so formally rigorous or intellectually curious, and movies this dense aren’t often so unrelentingly fun"	POS
United States	Andrew Todd SlashFilm	"Possibly the craziest and most unique biopic ever made (...) The film’s style is impeccable, its comedic delivery perfectly timed, and its editing sharp and energetic"	POS
Canada	Kevin Ritchie Now Toronto	"If Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Anna Biller, Guy Maddin and Bette Davis’s Baby Jane wig raised a child together, it would be this movie (...) An absorbing visual delight from start to finish."	POS
United States	Ty Burr Boston Globe	"There are elements of Lynchian nightmare and echoes of the deranged 1982 cult classic 'The Forbidden Zone' (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Ethan Vestby The Film Stage	"One hopes 'The Twentieth Century' points to a bold new direction for Canadian cinema: one willing to laugh at itself while taking very seriously aesthetic ambition."	POS

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