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List Price: $29.95 | | Label: Kino Video
Salesrank: 39277
Released: October 17, 2000 |
| Our Price: $18.89 |
| Used Price: $18.00 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A dreamlike film that explores the jealousy and madness instilled in two men who share a hospital room in a gimli we no longer know. The two men einar and gunnar are friends at first until they share their darkest secrets. Tale of creeping pestilence unconsummated passions reckless envy & necrohilia. Studio: Kino International Release Date: 10/10/2000 Starring: Kyle Mcculloch Angela Heck Run time: 68 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Guy Maddin
Tales from the Gimli Hospital Reviews:
Not for the timid! 
2008-12-26 - One of the best works by Guy Maddin. Extremely bizarre and surreal but more accessible than some of his other works. In the same league as "Une Chien Andalou".
A Hilarious Charmer 
2005-10-26 - I love the negative review down below where the reviewer, in a embarrassingly humorless way, misses the point of this wonderful little film. Oh sure, Gimli's an homage to Murnau and Pabst and whatnot, but what could be funnier and more ironic than a budget self-consciously Canadian filmmaker paying homage to the European Film Canon (He makes lots of Canadian references in his movies). Maddin's films, especially the earlier ones, constantly hint at Canada's, uh, tenuous position in the European cultural mainstream. They are typically Canadian-self-deprecating and his genius is to make great movies with that. When ya got lemons...
Anyway, yeah this is a cheap flick but he makes up for it with incredible imagination, humor, and fantasy. Also, I really don't like the comparisons with Eraserhead--superficially just barely justifiable--but this film, and his others, come from a uniquely different place. Maddin's casting, for example, is entirely different than Lynch's; he casts like he's making an old mainstream movie, not like he's making the most disturbing thing imaginable. Your grandma could watch Maddin films and although she might be confused a bit, she wouldn't be put off by the characters. In a way, Maddin's a deeper and more complex filmmaker, he doesn't rely on weirdness for its own sake too often, it's more a matter of continuously subverted expectations. He's also tons funnier than Lynch and his black humor is far less ugly. Watch, say, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs and you'll see how far from Lynch's mindset this great director is.
This is also a charming movie, in a adult sort of way but absolutely not in a "hip" raunchy/violent modern way. I doubt any American filmmaker could have ever dropped the ego, the portentiousness, the self-conscious hipness, the icky sarcasm, enough to have made anything like this. Kind of like a fairy tale (What am I saying, it is a fairy tale, started by a narrator in Princess Bride fashion). I love this flick!
extra good film
2005-01-20 - One has to know icelandic folklore, to be able to begin to appreciate this ingenious film.
the best Icelandic film ever!
My favorite movie of all time
2004-04-10 - I've watched this movie several times and am fascinated by it. What makes it so terrific is its uniqueness and the wonderfully fitting music that is found throughout the effort. You'll never see another movie like this and I must say that you have to be a little "off center" to enjoy it. If you're looking for something different then I recommend you try it.
why the hype? 
2003-11-24 - This is ham-fisted moviemaking at its worst--or should I say best? Burdened by an impossibly cheesy plot which fills the movie with more dead-air time than your next laundryroom round, the movie is at once too insultingly imcompetent to be a homage to the great German expressionist films which supposedly inspired it, and too boring and poker-faced to be a send-up of anything but the director's own mediocrity. Go see any film by Murnau, Pabst, Ruttmann, or Lang from the 20s--or for that matter any silent films at random, whether Russian, American, French, whatever--and they'll be infinitely better than this puerile endeavor at self-indulgence.
