241) Road to Nowhere (2010) and RV!: Road to Nowhere (2010)

241) Road to Nowhere (2010) Dir: Monte Hellman Date Released: June 10, 2011 Date Seen: June 8, 2011 Rating: 3.75/5

RV!: Road to Nowhere (2010) Dir: Monte Hellman Date Released: June 10, 2011 Date Seen: August 21, 2011 Rating: 4.25/5

Yeah, it's that good. See my review for Slant Magazine.

23) The Shooting (1967)

23) The Shooting (1967) Dir: Monte Hellman Date Released: XX 1966 Date Seen: January 23, 2010 Rating: 3.75/5

Even though I watched a really bad video/audio transfer of The Shooting, the impact that the truly horrible sound/picture quality had on me was minimal. The film's biggest asset is its Twilight Zone-esque dialogue, which stands apart from its generic compatriots in that it's more about an invisible menace than a tangible one with a six-shooter and spurs. Jack Nicholson's script, which I've heard he "meticulously" researched for period-specific details (commence eye-rolling here), crackles with the kind of straight-forward intellectual brawn of Rod Serling's great serialized drama. As in The Twilight Zone, he tension in The Shooting is purely imaginary, never really a matter of visualized terror or gore, not of sight or sound, but of mind. In that sense, the film deviates a bit from its tightly-scripted and largely suggestive build-up and gets a bit high on its own fumes by the end during its big psychedelic reveal but otherwise, it's a steady and consistently funny acid western.

56) Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)

56) Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) Dir: Monte Hellman Date Released: October 1972 Date Seen: February 23^rd, 2009 Rating: 4.5/5

Richard Linklater is right to say that Two-Lane Blacktop “is about the alienation of everyone else” but only to a point. It isn’t about “the designer alienation of the drug culture and the war protesters” but it could be. The male control phantasy that the film revolves around may be more alluringly steely-gazed and quietly transfixing than most films about soldiers, hippies or heads but at its core, it’s no different.

The connection between The Driver (James Taylor), The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson) and their car essentially revolves around the elasticity of their relationship with The Girl (Laurie Bird). Once that dissolves, without warning or any unnecessary display of histrionics, that one essential bond between that prototypical manly, romantic menage a trois between two men and a machine tightens back up to its breaking point.

This is no more complex than the best portrayals of ‘Nam vets afflicted with PTSD or straights forced to watch their user friends burn out. It’s just that the subtle disintegration of the system that The Driver has based around, er, driving, is the one thing that keeps him sane and is therefore that much cooler and no less truthful than any other proto-‘70s outsider zeitgeist mishigoss.