A glimpse into the debasement of a national icon is perhaps an appropriate reminder of Canadas dual role on the world stage simultaneously boastful exemplar and timid underdog.

| Feb 13, 2022

There's no question that the director has ample technical facility ... [but] there's ample cause for disappointment, then, when it comes to The Twentieth Century.

| Jun 5, 2021

A nightmarish absurdist comedy that's full of good cheer and whimsical silliness even as it presents an almost unendurably cynical understanding of civilisation.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 3, 2021

I loved the way it uses expressionist tropes and subverted thing...a little bit Monty Python...

| Feb 25, 2021

With an endlessly absurd plot and consistently brilliant production design, this is the anti-biopic to beat for the winter season.

| Feb 8, 2021

Finally, the film dissolves in silliness and whimsy, but not before it's given us some surreal spectacle.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 8, 2021

Like a Heritage Minute on acid the film details King's campaign. Instead of policy the film pits politicians against one another in "traditional" Canadian pastimes like baby seal clubbing and waiting your turn.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 30, 2021

With hallucinatory visuals and deadpan comic timing, Rankin turns history into a fevered Freudian national dream.

| Jan 9, 2021

We're talking German Expressionist sets, wacky animations, drag performances, sexy underwear, Eton collars, silly contests, melodramatic music cues, fake newsreel clips, a boot fetish and a gigantic cactus...

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 25, 2020

The angular, surreal, cartoonish sets deliberately summon up the best of German expressionism. The bizarre, sometimes inexplicable side moments resemble the hallucinations of David Lynch.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 10, 2020

Mattew Rankin's gloriously bizarre debut feature is the reductio ad absurdum of biopics that privilege the ineffable spirit of their subject over matters of historical fact

| Original Score: B | Dec 9, 2020

A Guy Maddin film not directed by him.

| Original Score: B | Dec 7, 2020

A wonder for sure. Bends time and collective history in a way only a madman could. It's everything. This movie is everything.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 7, 2020

The look of Rankin's scenes resembles such German Expressionist silent films as "Nosferatu" and "Metropolis," with jagged angles of light thrusting themselves onto the screen at odd angles.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 4, 2020

Rankin's visual style fully embraces artificiality and surrealism, with much influence from German Expressionist cinema and his fellow Canadian artist Guy Maddin.

| Dec 3, 2020

"The Twentieth Century" confirms there's a deep reservoir of weirdness lurking beneath the placid surface of our neighbors to the north.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 2, 2020

It ends up being a smashingly good and goofball history of the non-world of Canadian history and flim-flammery, deeply committed to its own colonial crazy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 1, 2020

The Twentieth Century is not a satire that makes any meaningful political statements about Canada. However, it does have enough oddball unpredictability, sly metaphors, and eye-catching visuals that make it hard to look away.

| Nov 28, 2020

It's an exercise in absurdity, played and looking like the melodramatic real deal.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 27, 2020

The Twentieth Century proves that contemporary cinema still has an appetite for sweeping portions of unparalleled imagination and humor.

| Nov 26, 2020