Getting Away from Things That Get Bad: The ILX Road-Movie Poll Results Thread

14. Wanda
64 points/6 votes

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"Goddamn it, it was 'Wanda, Wander.'"
"It was 'Wonder, Wanda.'"
"'Wanda, Wander'! 'Wanda, Wander'!"
"'Wonder, Wanda.'"
"What difference does it make? It was a hit!"

(Henry Gibson and Barbara Baxley in Nashville.)

Would love to read a book on the making of this.

Well, yep. Only saw it for the first time during nominations but it went straight into my top five. Barbara Loden is amazing.

She made two more shorts, both 1975, and nothing else till her death in 1980 (age 48). Married Kazan in 1968, was still with him when she died. I got some of the background when I saw someone introduce this a couple of years ago, but what a story.

13. Paris, Texas
64 points/8 votes

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As good as it gets when Ry Cooder's playing and they're driving at night. Some of the last third loses me.

Two more I need to see. I PVR'd Wanda a while ago and must have accidentally erased it.

12. Weekend
67 points/6 votes

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There's a road, and there are cars.

Another one I've never seen, but I'm right in the middle of reading Laura Mulvey on Godard, so I'm gearing up for a big JLC catch-up soon.

Paris was another one of my top votes, love it.

also hoping this gets some kind of uk release: http://variety.com/2017/film/festivals/lucky-sxsw-film-review-1202008227/

John Carroll Lynch, wow. His parts in Fargo and Zodiac make for one of the most schizophrenic pairings I can think of.

xp
I remember seeing a DVD of Wanda in a Tower Records when they were doing their going out of business sale, and I thought if a waited a few more days it'll be cheaper, but when I went back it was gone. They also had a Ross McElwee box set I planned to do the same with, also gone.

11. Five Easy Pieces
67 points/9 votes

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Perfect place to end for today. I had it fifth on my ballot, but any one of my top five could have been #1. I realize that part of why I think of this as a road movie actually has to do with the first paragraph of Stanley Kauffmann's review, reprinted in Living Images:

Two months ago I was driving down through the Grand Tetons and gave a lift to a young man. He turned out to be a Ph.D. candidate from an eastern university who had just finished his course work and couldn't get up enough interest to write his dissertation. The whole process had turned futile on him. He had come out to Wyoming to get a job with his hands; he didn't know how long it would be before he went back. Perhaps never.

I thought of him when I saw Five Easy Pieces.

I'm conflating an anecdote in a review with the film itself, but that opening has always stayed with me. In my mind, the part of me that wishes I were Bobby Dupea has this whole separate life that bears little resemblance to the one I actually lead.

Weekend or The Freewheelin' Jean Luc Godard is the bratty inversion of the genre i think, kind of a big fuck you to the romance of the car and the road, but it still manages to be soaked with the romance of the car and the road. i love how at this point onwards in his career JLG pushes boredom as a formal quality and still fills up on beautiful shot-framing. plus the notorious tracking shot near the beginning is everything that a road movie ought to be and kids really love it if you make them sit and watch it all in class. think i'm just back in a phase where he chimes with my shitty mood, wd've made this my own number 1 i think.

oh and that song the female protagonist sings periodically sticks in my head all day

I come at Weekend from two angles: the experience of watching it, and conceptually. I've seen it four or five times: sequences and images that stay with you forever, also boredom and impatience and befuddlement. It's not one of my favourite films, or even one of my favourite Godards.

Conceptually, though, everything NV says and more--as one person's response to 1968 (something that clearly starts building in his work as the decade goes along, all of it coalescing in Weekend), there aren't many films I hold in higher esteem.

10. Lost in America
68 points/8 votes

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"Why are you treating me like an animal?"
"I'll explain it to you later."

If that makes you inexplicably smile, you're on this film's unique wavelength.

It'll be scattershot, but I've got to finish this during the day. I promise you the most downbeat, anti-climactic Top 10 ever.

downbeat and anti-climactic are key notes of the true road movie

think 4 Mad Max films in the top 10 or just 3?

Weekend is far and away my favourite Godard of the ones I've seen, btw.

9. L’Avventura
69 points/5 votes

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There's no film I've tried harder to connect with. Seven or eight times I've gone back to it (unlike, say, 8-1/2, which I realized after a couple of tries was of a temperament far from my own). L’Avventura isn't. But I come up short every time.

(My favourite Godard is one of My Life to Live, Band of Outsiders, or Masculin Féminin. But I realize he had to get all of the Truffaut that flits in and out of those films out of his system before he could make Weekend.)

8. Stroszek
72 points/7 votes/two #1s

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I wrote about the music in this after re-watching it last week. I find Herzog himself a little cartoonish in his recent documentaries--find it hard to put together his persona there with this film.

(Sorry for rushing this along...I've got to get most of this finished before 9:00.)

Would have been my no. 1 on a straight ballot, the last act is just unforgettable and it also includes the funniest jump cut in history.

Trying to think of which jump-cut you mean...That auctioneer's amazing. Was surprised to see Errol Morris's name in the opening credits.

Stroszek is probably my favorite Herzog movie

xp The cut from Strozsek gazing out at where his house used to be to him and in the car with the old man holding a rifle. Just the most perfectly comic/tragic ending to what came before.

to him in the car*

The old guy kills me. There was a short film they were playing throughout Toronto's Hot Docs this year that I'm pretty sure was inspired by the old guy's research project on "animal magnetism."

7. Y Tu Mamá También
73 points/8 votes/one #1

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Haven't seen this. I have it home, so I'll look after that shortly.

...That auctioneer's amazing

you might be interested in this... a number of people appearing in it also show up in stroszek including the auctioneer and the banker dude.

Thanks, that looks great--will download it tonight.

6. The Straight Story
82 points/8 votes/one #1

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I've got to duck out for a couple of hours. This was my #1. I'm sure there are comparable examples if I gave it some thought, but the most anomalous film I can think of in anyone's filmography.

i reeeeeally hated Y Tu Mamá También

Me too

Fuuuuuuuuck guys. I have this thing, consistently, where I confuse Y Tu Mama Tambien with another film (I believe the film I confuse it with is A Ma Soeur because they're both foreign language titles with family members in them?). I voted for it. I've never seen it. Sorry I completely goddamn fucked up my ballot.

5. Easy Rider
82 points/10 votes

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Sorry--two-hour assembly. Wouldn't worry about it, Emily, it would have been high anyway.

Probably the only film countdown we've had where one film in the Top 10 references another one in the Top 10.

I like this okay. Some incredible cinematography, love the use of "Wasn't Born to Follow." Some of it, obviously, a little dated. Still haven't seen The Last Movie, although I saw Kit Carson's making-of documentary last year.

If it had finished first, I might have been tempted to say "We blew it."

4. Walkabout
93 points/7 votes

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honestly my favorite scene in Easy Rider is the opening scene w Spector

so many things I've never even heard of placing

mostly all the ones that start w/ the letter "W" - Wanda, Weekend, Walkabout

Forgot about Spector--great casting.

Have you seen Wild Strawberries or Wizard of Oz, The?

Yay, Walkabout. I wondered if people were gonna be 'not road movie enough' about that one. Completely excellent in every way.

Also Easy Rider deserves to be so high even if it is dated and a clichéd film to like etc, because part of the reason it is those things is that it is one of the Platonic ideals of the whole road movie concept.

mostly all the ones that start w/ the letter "W" - Wanda, Weekend, Walkabout

Fun fact - three fifths of my top five began with W. And yes, it was those three.

Also the Milky Way, which has one of its words beginning with W.

Have you seen Wild Strawberries or Wizard of Oz, The?

well yeah

respect

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