THE TRIP / Staff Review by Evan Salazar

Michael Winterbottom is one of the few directors who deserves the title of “eclectic” or “quirky.” You’d be hard-pressed to find one of his films that is much like the others, as he jumps freely from the quasi-documentary to the full-on documentary to thrillers and then to, at its core, artful pornography (lets be honest, 9 SONGS is not much more than porn intercut with some live music and strained attempts at plot – which is by no means a bad thing, you know, it just is what it is). In the vein of continuing to do what absolutely no one expected him to do next, Winterbottom directed a six episode British miniseries called THE TRIP, which brought back Steve Coogan (TROPIC THUNDER, 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, HAMLET 2) and Rob Brydon’s fictionalized portrayals of themselves from an earlier Winterbottom film, A COCK AND BULL STORY. The miniseries was then edited into a feature-length film and brought over here to the States, and that is what we are presented with here.

The Loft's FAVORITE FANTASY FILMS

Of all the genres, one could argue that Fantasy is the most open to interpretation.  Typical Fantasy plots tend to involve either children or the mentally unsound (or both), and feature supporting characters like goblins, faeries, and the like.  But beyond such limited conventionalities, Fantasy is what film is all about; when we walk into a theater and watch frozen images moving at 24 frames per second, watch actors reading lines from a script in manufactured rain or sunlight, we pretend for a little while that it's "real."  In honor of the new film THE TROLL HUNTER, which opens today at The Loft, here are our favorite films that we deem Fantasy.

AMERICA, F**K YEAH! THE "TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE"

SING-A-LONG 

AND CURSE-A-THON!