Indie Picks: At The Movies This Weekend

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in "The Trip" (IFC)

The Trip (Violet Crown Cinema)
The Trip was an award-winning television series that aired on BBC Two last year in England. The original six episodes of the program, directed by Michael Winterbottom (9 Songs, The Killer Inside Me), have been edited down into this feature film, which debuted at last year's Toronto International Film Festival.

It stars comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing "semi-fictionalized" versions of themselves on a vacation across the UK to write a series of restaurant reviews. As a road movie, it may venture into familiar territory, but fans of British comedy will not be disappointed. It's been praised by critics around the globe and, closer to home, the Austin Chronicle calls it "screamingly funny."

The Last Mountain (Regal Arbor)
Bill Haney directs this documentary about the devastation in Appalachia because of Mountain Top Removal by Big Coal companies like Massey Energy. The practice is doing considerable damage to coal mining towns in West Virginia while the corporations try to quickly collect every inch of coal they possibly can in the quickest way they know how: by blasting into the mountains with huge loads of dynamite, polluting the air and nearby water supply in the process.

The film contains interviews with residents whose homes and lives are in the affected areas as well as people who used to work for Massey Energy (including Don Blankenship, their former CEO).

Also this weekend:
*The Paramount Theatre's Summer Film Series has an Alfred Hitchcock double feature tonight with 35mm screenings of To Catch A Thief and Rear Window. Saturday brings a very different doubleheader, with Patrick Swayze starring in Road House and Red Dawn.

*The 80's film series Zzang!!! continues at the Drafthouse with 1984's The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai on Sunday night at 7 p.m.