Trailers from my top 100 films of the ’00s:

80. Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story (2005)

It’s essentially impossible to adapt Lawrence Sterne’s 200-years-ahead-of-its-time post-modern novel, but Michael Winterbottom’s attempt stays truer to the spirit of the thing than any literal attempt any could. (I write that as if I’d ever read the whole damn, hilarious, frustrating novel. One of these days…) Simpatico leading man Steve Coogan plays Steve Coogan playing Tristram as a film crew tries to shoot an adaptation. It’s filled with self-aware humor and plots that fold in on themselves. And, and its heart, there’s a deep concern about how stories shape and distort the world and the impossibility of looking at it through anything but the narratives we construct