Easy Rider

Director: Dennis Hopper
Writers: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Terry Southern
Released: 1969
Cast: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson

The Hitcher

Director: Robert Harmon
Writer: Eric Red
Released: 1986
Cast: C. Thomas Howell, Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Lee, Jeffrey DeMunn

NIKKI says: I love going back to these old movies with new eyes. Steve said we should watch this with the idea that Jim Halsey and John Rider are the same guy. Apparently, that's a theory going around -- they are actually one and the same, and it's Jim going around doing these horrible things in some Tyler Durden split-personality freak parade.

So, I considered... and I could see where such confusion might come about. There are times when Jim seems completely nuts and just a paranoid kid. But then there are times when gas stations blow up and women get ripped in half by guys driving trucks that cops have told Jim to go and talk to. So, no -- whoever thought Jim and Rider were the same is a fool. The cops can SEE John Rider -- are you MENTAL?

Still, it was fun to look at in a different way. I still enjoy the movie after all these years. It used to freak me out way more than it does, and I always used to put it up there with Duel as far as the suspense. But I don't so much anymore. The more I see it, the more standard it becomes. That doesn't mean it's any less effective, but looking back, it could be more terrifying, and more freaky, and it could also be a bit more realistic, because at times, and maybe I saw this because I was trying to see Rider as Jim, but sometimes Rider seems supernatural. He can go anywhere, get into anything, do anything and never really get caught until the end. So, maybe that lets me down a bit now? He's not as scary a guy when there's that ghostly element to him.

But a good movie nonetheless. And Robert Harmon is one of the most underrated artists in film. He should be the touchstone for all young up and coming cinematographers. In fact, he should just work more. Where are you Robert Harmon?

3/5

Roadkill (aka Joy Ride)

Director: John Dahl
Writer: Clay Tarver, JJ Abrahms,
Released: 2001
Cast: Steve Zahn, Paul Walker, Leelee Sobieski, Ted Levine

STEVE says: Much like Session 9, I didn't expect much from this one and ended up thoroughly digging it. You'd think I'd learn a lesson.

Walker and Zahn play brothers, driving halfway across the country to pick the friend Sobieski up from college. Just for kicks, Zahn picks up a CB radio to kill time along the way, and ends up pranking a truck driver who goes by the handle Rusty Nail. And then the fun begins.

A mix of road movies like The Hitcher and Duel with some Hitchcock thrown in for good measure, Roadkill is better than my preconceived notions would have had me believe. But isn't that always the way?

3.5/5

NIKKI says: I really like this movie. And it's the kind of movie we should hate -- a derivative, rather tame horror film with super-sexy stars of the day. It's all shiny and glossy. It should be right up there with I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. But, somehow, it's not. It has traces of The Hitcher and Duel, and a little bit of I Saw What You Did, but it stands on its own as a decent modern suspense flick. It's a popcorn movie, absolutely, with some great scares, some fun, and a couple of surprisingly awesome performances from Paul Walker and Steve Zahn.

Actually, you know, that's one of the major draws for me about this movie -- I have a feeling Steve Zahn might have adlibbed all his lines. And it's hilarious. If he didn't adlib, then he definitely came up with his own line readings because everyhting is yelled or popped or screamed in places where it so shouldn't be. And it's so great to watch. There were times when Steve and I were sure Paul Walker wasn't acting but reacting to Zahn's bizarreness. It gives the thing an extra dimension having Zahn in there nstead of another pretty boy or a chick, or whatever else could have inserted easily in.

It loses me a bit at the end, when everything starts to come together -- it goes a bit over the top for me, but the lead up is sensational. I love it.

3/5

Grace is Gone, dir. James C. Strouse (2007)

NIKKI says:

John Cusack is one of those actors I think of as "reliable". It's a lame expression, I know, but in his case it really works. He rarely makes a bad movie. He's probably the reason I was ready to just outright buy that damn Martian Child movie without having seen it. Martians and John Cusack? How could you go wrong?

Well, this was another solid movie from him. He plays a guy who's wife dies while on duty in what one assumes is Iraq or Afghanistan. Unable to face the reality of losing his wife and breaking the news to his daughters, he decides to bundle them up and take them on a trip to an adventure playground in Florida. This means several days of driving, and so the movie is basically the series of adventures the family gets up to while on the road.

It's heartbreaking and sad, and John Cusack does so well that pulled-back-emotions thing. He looks ready to burst into tears right the way through this movie. I do have one gripe: I felt that as much as this was the dad's story, it was also the daughter's, in that 12-year-old Heidi seemed to know much more than she was letting on as the road trip progressed. She was fitting pieces together, and that seemed to parallel her developing maturity in other areas -- looking at boys, trying out smoking, wandering around by herself in the middle of the night to think. I thought her little discoveries were going to culminate in some sort of confrontation with Cusack, but that didn't happen and I think it ruined it a little bit for me -- what did her developing knowledge really mean in the end?

It was sweet and sad, and I did enjoy it.

3/5

STEVE says:

The lack of confrontation is my main problem with this movie. I think it could have really been something great, but turned out to be rather middle-of-the-road on all accounts.

Grace dies in the war, see? Her husband, Cusack, a die-hard Republican, never waivers in his support of the war or the President, and that's okay. That's not my issue. Though, since Cusack himself has been vocal about his anti-war feelings, it did come as something of a surprise.

So Cusack doesn't know how to tell his daughters that their mom is dead. And here's our conflict. Okay so far. But come midpoint, this conflict should be reversed. Heidi should have figured out what was going by this point, but she did not. Instead, the reversal is Cusack and Heidi finally having a heart-to-heart about boys, life, smoking and whatnot. Erm... okay. But later, Cusack, speaking to Grace through their answering machine (one of the film's few interesting ideas), says that he doesn't know how to talk to these girls. Not how to tell them she's dead, specifically, but how to talk to them in general.

When he finally does tell them about Grace, it's very sad and very moving, but there's nothing about the war. Grace may as well have died in a plane crash or a car smash or a drive-by shooting for all the impact the war had on the movie. It's really kind of exploitative and demeaning to the soldiers.

2/5

Vanishing Point, dir. Richard C. Sarafian (2001)

NIKKI says:

So, this is what Death Proof wanted to be? Maybe, something like that? All I remember is the girls in that movie talked about car in this movie like it was some kind of gift from the Gods. Oooh, the white car from that movie no one's heard of! We're so cool that we know that! Unless of course this movie is way more well known than I'm figuring it is. Quite possibly. Anyway, had Quentin modelled his pic a bit more on this pic, it might not sit at the very top of my Most Disappointing Movies of All Time list.

This was a bit like Easy Rider, in that I felt it was very much a comment on the times. Man on a mission through 1970s intolerance, hippie-dom, the techno-boom, the post-Kennedy police state, racism, fascism, sexism, all the good stuff. It's quite a good film, a slow and steady rumble through the jungle and I really found myself enthralled. I wanted the guy to get to San Francisco so damn badly because it meant I could get where I wanted to go too regardless of the roadblocks. But this is not that movie. Still, I'm very pleased to have discovered it.

Well played, Death Proof.

3.5/5

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, dir. Sam Peckinpah (1974)

STEVE says:

You can't beat that for a title, can you?

I saw this movie first about 15 years ago, and remembered it only in bits and pieces. Since we started up our Peckinpah retrospective last month with Convoy, I've been wanting to watch it again, hoping that it was every bit as good as I remembered it. 

According to IMDb: "An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo." Yeah, but that's only the set-up. Said bartender, Warren Oates, soon learns that his prostitute girlfriend recently spent three days and three nights with Alfredo Garcia, which only serves to make the idea of decapitating him more appealing. When Oates learns that Garcia is already dead, killed in a car accident, it only makes his job easier - but also goes a long way in making him more despicable. For a while, anyway.

It's strangely crafted: I thought the first half dragged, with all the talk about dreams and finding a better life, but come midpoint I realized its purpose, and understood just how necessary all that talk was. The first half of the movie is the calm before the storm...

3.5

Cactus, dir. Jasmine Yuen Carrucan (2008)

NIKKI says:
Tense and smart -- that's really all I was hoping for with this one. And it delivered. It's a road-movie in the grand old Aussie tradition of road-movies, with men on a mission through dust and desolation. No matter how much you isolate yourself, the movie tells us, threats abound both physical and psychological.

John kidnaps Eli and takes him on a dusty drive across country. Eli is not sure what he's done to deserve this treatment or just who it is John is delivering him to, but he seems to settle into the idea that someone has it in for him. And so, instead of wondering he starts to figure out a way to escape, His attempts are thwarted at every turn by John who Eli realises is not your average delivery man. John's car gives away the fact that he's a family man, so Eli begins to use that knowledge to get close to his kidnapper. The two begin to form a bizarre kind of kinship that plays itself out in deep conversations interspersed with incidences where John must remind Eli who's boss.

But the outback proves it's not hidden, that eyes are everywhere, and that as tough as you think you are, it's 10 times tougher. The plans of both men are soon thwarted, and shit really starts hitting the fan.

In the end, you just don't know who to root for. The movie plays with convention, screws with our conceptions of good guys and bad guys, and ups the ante as far as the whodunnits and whydunnits until the end. It's a decent little movie, with some amazing lead performances, great scenery, and clever writing. My favourite bit? You might think being bound and gagged in a dingy car in the middle of the Aussie outback is torture -- what if, at the same time, the Wiggles' "Hot Potato" is on the stereo ON REPEAT? Now what's torture?

3/5

STEVE says:
This was not the movie I expected it to be. I was hoping, I guess, for more of a Hitcher or Road Games type thriller. Instead, I got psychological drama and character study.

That said, it wasn't a bad movie, and I'd like to see more of its type. It was well-written and well-made overall, but it was not what I was in the mood for, so I'm rating it on a curve.

3/5

Moving McAllister, dir. Andrew Black (2007)

NIKKI says:
You know, more and more I find myself telling customers at work that something was "cute". It really has become my word for inoffensive comedies that make me laugh but never really resonate.

Moving McAllister was exactly that sort of movie -- I liked everyone in it, I laughed a few times, I don't think I'll ever watch it again, and I wouldn't have died never having seen it. It is, in a word, cute.

The lead guy, who also wrote the script, was cute. Mila Kunis, though very annoying in the beginning, turned out to also be cute. And even Jon Heder who gets a pimple squished and wears his undies a lot, is cute, too. The story is cute -- Ben Gourney must drive Kunis across the state to California to impress his boss. Along the way they pick up a weird hitchhiker who believes he swapped bodies at birth with an American Indian. Mila doesn't not want to make Ben's journey easy and they end up having to escape from Billy Drago who stole their truck. Among other things.

It's a road movie, a romance, a comedy. And it's cute.

2.5/5

Steve did not view.