I was 29 when I left Marietta, Ohio, for the first time to live somewhere else. Prior to this year, I couldn't escape the "River City." I couldn't leave -- God knows I tried. And that's not, I'm telling you now, hyperbole.

My birth city had a strange pull on me. A magnetic pull. A magical pull. It was home, but it was more than that. A running joke among my high school friends alluded to Marietta as a black hole, that if you didn't leave the city as soon as you could, it would suck you into its rich history, its traditions, its way of life. Trapped. Never to leave.

But what kept me there so long? It's a question I've often asked myself. Was it more than family, friends and a job out of college? Was it the natural beauty? The rolling Appalachian hills, the winding, converging Ohio and Muskingum rivers? Was there something stronger, some metaphysical force within all that pulling me back like the ocean's tides every time I tried to leave?

The first time I planned my escape was, like many young people, after high school. I was accepted to tOSU and was going to study English. I decided at the last minute (as last minute as things like this can be) to stay close to home so I could play soccer in college and keep an eye on my sister, who was still in high school and struggling with the after-effects of my parents' divorce.

The escape failed.

After college, I sent resumes to every job opening I could find in this blessed union. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

I found a job writing at the daily newspaper. Worked my way up. One thing leads to another leads to another ...

In the end, it took a girl. The Girl.

And now, almost a year later, I find myself living somewhere else for the first time in my life, only I've been traveling to Columbus, visiting friends and family, long enough that moving here never felt like moving to a new city. A dreamlike, hallucinatory fog hovered over me on my drives to work. Glimpses of childhood memories eluded me. I was a stranger in a fairly familiar land, and dreams of my hometown, of that familiarity, pursued me, called to me, beckoned for me.

Now that I'm approaching a year in Columbus, I can feel Marietta's hold on me lessen, if only slightly, and it gives me hope that I'm finally, fully starting to move on.

Why am I telling you of my love affair with my hometown in a blog post about a documentary I watched yesterday? Because "My Winnipeg" could very well have been titled "My Marietta."

"My Winnipeg" was one of those movies that was in my Netflix queue so long I completely forgot what it was about or why I had queued it in the first place.

But boy howdy am I glad I did.

Considered by Roger Ebert to be one of the best movies of the past decade, "My Winnipeg," also holds a 94 percent approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes.

It's a weird little film, too.

Directed, written and narrated by Guy Maddin ("The Saddest Music in the World"), it's a film that traces Maddin's relationship to his hometown, Winnipeg, which he had, like me, never left until recently.

Shot mostly in black and white and with many dated editing techniques and camera effects that recall old silent films, Maddin's "My Winnipeg" has a dreamlike, hallucinatory feel to it. Its narration sounds like a beat poem written for a noir film, with stream of consciousness and word association dominating the narrator's sentences.

Maddin opens the film with these words: "Snowing, sleepwalking Winnipeg. Home my entire life. I must leave it. I MUST leave it. I must leave it now. ... How to escape it, how to find one's way out." Concurrently, the narrator is shone on a rickety train that's apparently headed out of town, but never quite makes its destination.

A series of facts about Winnipeg follow. Most appear to be myths, but you don't really want to question Maddin when he tells of a local treasure hunt that offers the winner a one-way ticket out of town," or that, "Not one treasure hunt winner ever left town." When Maddin claims Winnipeg has ten times the sleepwalking rate as any other city in the world, you believe him. When he describes a horse race that went awry, resulting in all the horses escaping the track and ending up frozen on a lake, their heads poking out of the white hardened snow, you buy it fully.

These proclamations fit. They match the tone of the movie and are outlandish enough to be fantastical.

Throughout the 79 minutes of run time, "My Winnipeg" tries to uncover the mystery behind why Maddin never left his hometown by re-examining the city's history and the director's own childhood. Key events from his youth are recreated by actors while Maddin examines his mother's iron-clad grip on his family and how hard it was to please her, but also leave her behind.

If this sounds a little heady and personal, it is. But Maddin also uses humor quite effectively, leavening the seriousness of what he's examining with laughter, especially in regards to the cut-aways to words as seen in old silent movies. I hate to spoil too much for you, but look for scenes involving the words "Man-Swell," "Breast Milk," and something regarding a buffalo. It's funny, even LOL funny.

"My Winnipeg," is easily my favorite of the three documentaries I've seen so far as part of this project ("Pearl Jam 20" and "The Union: The Business Behind Getting You High"). But that could be because of its uncanny correlation to my own life. I'd like to think its merits go beyond that, though.

If you happen to catch it, let me know what you think. I can be reached at editor@uweekly.com.

I'm also going to be adding some new additions to this feature. At the end of every post, I'll post the trailer for the movie I just reviewed, in addition to a list of movies I've already watched during this project and those on my list to be watched. Your suggestions are definitely welcomed.

Watched:

• Day 1: "The Union: The Business Behind Getting You High"

• Day 2: "Pearl Jam 20"

• Day 3: "My Winnipeg"

Still to come:

• "Heavy Metal in Baghdad"

• "Hoop Dreams"

• "Man on Wire"

• "Sweetgrass"

• "Touching the Void"

• "The Cove"

• "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child"

• "Exit Through the Gift Shop"

• "Encounters at the End of the World"

• "The Garden"

• "Wild China"

• "180 degrees South"

• "Blindsight"

• "Up the Yangtze"

• "Beer Wars"

• "Microcosms"

• "Marwencol"

• "No Impact Man"

• "The Pixar Story"

• "Capitalism: A Love Story"

• "Waiting for Superman"

• "Waste Land"

• "The Business of Being Born"

• "Who Killed The Electric Car"

• "The Future of Food"

• "Gonzo"

• "Biggie and Tupac"

• "We Live in Public"

• "Examined Life"

• "God Grew Tired of Us"

• "The Thin Blue Line"

• "Troubled Water"

• "Dark Days"

• "Paris is Burning"

• "Page One"

• "Restrepo"

• "Which Way Home"