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From a cursory glance, it would seem that Gunnin' for That No. 1 Spot--an inspirational high school basketball saga from Beastie Boy Adam Yauch--is just another goddamn niche documentary. Like Spellbound, Murderball, Wordplay and Planet B-Boy, it seems like it'll offer another entertaining but frustratingly shallow look at a craze.

But not so fast.

Essentially Hoop Dreams remade with the same endearingly madcap sensibility that wrought the videos for "Shake Your Rump," "Body Movin'" and "Ch-Check It Out," Gunnin' introduces us to an octet of the country's premiere precollegiate B-ball players en route to a tournament held at Harlem's hallowed Rucker Park, the original training grounds for the likes of Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Sure, Gunnin's subjects represent a broader swath of the socioeconomic landscape than usual, from inner-city youths and a kid from Chester, Pa., to the insanely privileged nephew of none other than Beach Boy Mike Love. But this is still a niche doc, and information and commentary must be eventually quelled so we can bathe in some serious court skills.

And that we do, with Yauch--for the first time not employing his goofy directorial nom de plume Nathaniel H�rnblow�r--cutting the inventively filmed action into the kind of rhythmic orgy only a seasoned musician could achieve. (And backed by the kind of old-school hits-laden soundtrack only someone of his stature could afford.)

Interspersed between the fun is chatter from those involved in the business of basketball, each and every one painting a bleak, pessimistic view of the world these kids wish to enter. One points out the ranking of high schoolers is arbitrary as hell before lamenting that "PR comes too soon." Another adds that they're "treated like a star before they're a star."

Even among this apocalyptic waxing, Yauch remains upbeat, and it slowly becomes clear that he seeks to capture that tiny moment when the players are on the rise but still enjoying what they do. Even as directed by a man who's retained his youthful exuberance, Gunnin' comes off as a melancholic ode to youth on the verge of corruption.

It's best to take the "my" in My Winnipeg with a quarry of a salt. Guy Maddin--the loopy Canadian retro stylist best known for equipping Isabella Rossellini with glass legs filled with beer in The Saddest Music in the World--has a habit of making "autobiographies" that are transparently, hilariously nothing of the sort.

In Cowards Bend the Knee, the protagonist, a hockey player embroiled in Cormanesque intrigue, is named "Guy Maddin." Ditto his previous feature The Brand Upon the Brain!

In truth Maddin was born in and has never moved from Manitoba. "I must leave now," the director bellows early on in My Winnipeg. This latest feature purports to cover his childhood--for realsies, this time. Well, almost. Via his usual blend of silent-era-style filmmaking and obtuse wackiness, Maddin summons up the oft-snowy Winnipeg of his childhood.

"What if I filmed my way out of here?" he asks on the purplish narration track, and thus emerges a florid, 80-minute montage of newsreel, anecdotes, miscellany and recreations.

Among the latter is Maddin's family, which he evokes by (he claims) subletting his childhood home and casting "uncanny" lookalikes as his family. (In the film's most bizarre stroke of countless bizarre strokes, his mother is played by the apparently exhumed Ann Savage, the freakily intense star of the 1945 cheapie classic Detour.)

There are more dubious claims to come. Was he really born in the locker room of a hockey arena? Does Winnipeg truly have 10 times more sleepwalkers than any other metropolis? In 1942, did the city actually take part in "If Day," in which people dressed up as Nazis to simulate a takeover (and sell war bonds)?

Even when Maddin produces footage, as with the latter, you still can't be sure of the truth.

It sounds like Maddin keeps it coming, but the pacing is, for him, relaxed. This is the first time one of his features hasn't nearly exhausted its welcome. (His best work remains the six-minute "subliminal melodrama" The Heart of the World. YouTube it.) That may mean fewer highs than usual, but for a filmmaker who still provides things like footage of horses frozen in a lake, their heads eerily protruding from the ice, that's clearly a relative term.

How many documentaries require a spoiler warning? Surfwise, from Doug Pray (Scratch), isn't exactly narrative-driven, but about halfway through it turns on a dime, going from one kind of documentary to another kind entirely.