Vint, Alan

Two-Lane Blacktop - Criterion Collection

Drag racing east from L.A. in a souped-up '55 Chevy are the wayward Driver and Mechanic (singer-songwriter James Taylor and the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson in their only acting roles) accompanied by the tagalong Girl (Laurie Bird). Along the way they meet Warren Oates's Pontiac GTO-driving wanderer and challenge him to a cross-country race - at stake: their cars' pink slips. Yet no summary can do justice to the existential punch of Two-Lane Blacktop. Maverick director Monte Hellman's stripped-down narrative gorgeous widescreen compositions and sophisticated look at American male obsession make this one of the artistic high points of 1970s cinema and possibly the greatest road movie ever made.System Requirements:Run time: 103 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/RURAL LIFE Rating: R UPC: 715515026925 Manufacturer No: CC1729DDVD

James Taylor is The Driver, a car-obsessed racer with stringy hair and a concentration that precludes conversation. He travels the backroads of rural America with his buddy, The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys), an equally obsessed lost soul at home only in the car or under the hood. They have no names, only designations, and no life outside of their gypsy existence, riding the unending highway in their souped-up '55 Chevy from race to race. After picking up a hitchhiking Girl (Laurie Bird), whose presence breaks the tunnel-vision focus of the two men, they challenge a middle-aged hotshot, the garrulous G.T.O. (Warren Oates) to a cross-country race. Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop is the most alienated evocation of modern America ever made, an almost abstract study in dislocation and obsession set against a vague landscape of roadside diners and rest stops. Taylor and Wilson deliver appropriately blank performances, only expressing emotion when The Girl sparks jealousy between them. Oates is a glib dynamo constructing a new persona in every scene, as if trying on characters to play as he ping-pongs between the coasts. "How fast does it go?" asks The Driver, admiring G.T.O.'s car. "Fast enough," he answers. The Driver snaps, "You can never go fast enough." These are characters on the road to nowhere who can't work up enough speed to escape themselves. --Sean Axmaker

The Panic in Needle Park

Badlands

Still one of American cinema's most powerful, daring filmmaking debuts, Terrence Malick's Badlands is a quirky, visionary psychological and social enigma masquerading as a simple lovers-on-the-lam flick. Inspired by the 1958 murders in the cold, stark badlands of South Dakota by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the film's plot, on the surface, is similar to that of other killing-couple films, like Bonnie and Clyde and Gun Crazy. Martin Sheen, in an understated, sophisticated performance, plays the strange James Dean-like social outcast who falls in love with the naïve Sissy Spacek--and then kills her father when he comes between them. The two flee like animals to the wilderness, until the police arrive and the killing spree begins.

What sets the film apart from others of its genre is Malick's complicated approach. Gorgeous, impenetrable images contrast sharply with Spacek's nostalgically artless narration, serving as ironic counterpoints, blurring concrete meaning, and stressing that nothing this horrific is simple. Malick observes, rather than analyzes, the couple in a manner as detached and apathetic as the couple's shocking actions. No judgment or definitive motivations are offered, though Malick's empathy often leans toward his senseless protagonists, rather than the star-struck society that makes killers famous. Compared with the interchangeable uniform cops who hunt them and the film's other nameless characters stuck in suburban banality, the couple are presented like tarnished, warped and frustrated results of squelched individuality.

Badlands, on one level, views America's suffocating homogeneity and, conversely, its continued obsession with celebrities (individuals considered different but adored) as hypocritical. Ambiguous and bold, the movie hints that society may be as guilty as the killers. --Dave McCoy

Macon County Line

Shortly after entering a small Georgia town three innocent young people are wrongly accused of brutally slaying the local sheriff's wife. Based on a true incident which occurred during the fall of 1954. A sequel RETURN TO MACON COUNTY (starring Nick Nolte and Don Johnson) emerged in 1975.System Requirements:Running Time: 88 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/CLASSICS Rating: R UPC: 883929005321 Manufacturer No: 1000036017

One of the great independent movies of the 1970s, Macon County Line transcends the "redneck nightmare" genre simply by making its characters fully-rounded human beings. Two brothers, Chris and Wayne Dixon (played by real-life brothers Alan and Jesse Vint), are tooling around the South in a convertible, killing time before they have to show up for army basic training. They pick up a hitchhiking girl named Jenny Scott (Cheryl Waters), then cross the path of Deputy Sheriff Reed Morgan (Max Baer, Jr., most famous as Jethro on The Beverly Hillbilllies), who doesn't like having strangers in his town. But also passing through are a couple of smalltime crooks, one of whom has a traumatic response to cops. Bad things happen, Morgan thinks the Dixons are responsible, and the situation gets very tense. This plot could have been a lurid exercise in bloody revenge, but instead Macon County Line (which was produced and co-written by Baer) takes every opportunity to make the people real and unpredictable. Scenes move fluidly from comedy to suspense; moments that look like they're going to be cliches instead reveal unexpected dimensions. The women--usually little more than props in movies like this--aren't given as extensive a role in the story as men, but they're still individuals with their own ideas and desires. The cast is studded with the familiar faces of steady-working character actors like Geoffrey Lewis (Every Which Way But Loose) and James Gannon (Major League), who give even minor characters grit and texture. Macon County Line has all the sex and violence of its exploitative genre, but treats them with empathy and smarts; the result is a roughhewn classic. --Bret Fetzer

Breakout

The Glass House

Two-Lane Blacktop

James Taylor is The Driver, a car-obsessed racer with stringy hair and a concentration that precludes conversation. He travels the backroads of rural America with his buddy, The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys), an equally obsessed lost soul at home only in the car or under the hood. They have no names, only designations, and no life outside of their gypsy existence, riding the unending highway in their souped-up '55 Chevy from race to race. After picking up a hitchhiking Girl (Laurie Bird), whose presence breaks the tunnel-vision focus of the two men, they challenge a middle-aged hotshot, the garrulous G.T.O. (Warren Oates) to a cross-country race. Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop is the most alienated evocation of modern America ever made, an almost abstract study in dislocation and obsession set against a vague landscape of roadside diners and rest stops. Taylor and Wilson deliver appropriately blank performances, only expressing emotion when The Girl sparks jealousy between them. Oates is a glib dynamo constructing a new persona in every scene, as if trying on characters to play as he ping-pongs between the coasts. "How fast does it go?" asks The Driver, admiring G.T.O.'s car. "Fast enough," he answers. The Driver snaps, "You can never go fast enough." These are characters on the road to nowhere who can't work up enough speed to escape themselves. --Sean Axmaker

Macon County Line

One of the great independent movies of the 1970s, Macon County Line transcends the "redneck nightmare" genre simply by making its characters fully-rounded human beings. Two brothers, Chris and Wayne Dixon (played by real-life brothers Alan and Jesse Vint), are tooling around the South in a convertible, killing time before they have to show up for army basic training. They pick up a hitchhiking girl named Jenny Scott (Cheryl Waters), then cross the path of Deputy Sheriff Reed Morgan (Max Baer, Jr., most famous as Jethro on The Beverly Hillbilllies), who doesn't like having strangers in his town. But also passing through are a couple of smalltime crooks, one of whom has a traumatic response to cops. Bad things happen, Morgan thinks the Dixons are responsible, and the situation gets very tense. This plot could have been a lurid exercise in bloody revenge, but instead Macon County Line (which was produced and co-written by Baer) takes every opportunity to make the people real and unpredictable. Scenes move fluidly from comedy to suspense; moments that look like they're going to be cliches instead reveal unexpected dimensions. The women--usually little more than props in movies like this--aren't given as extensive a role in the story as men, but they're still individuals with their own ideas and desires. The cast is studded with the familiar faces of steady-working character actors like Geoffrey Lewis (Every Which Way But Loose) and James Gannon (Major League), who give even minor characters grit and texture. Macon County Line has all the sex and violence of its exploitative genre, but treats them with empathy and smarts; the result is a roughhewn classic. --Bret Fetzer

The Lady in Red

Pamela Sue Martin kicked off the goody two shoes from her Nancy Drew image to play the feisty farm girl with Hollywood dreams who walked out of the Biograph on the arm of John Dillinger the night he was killed by the FBI. John Sayles wrote this depression-era gangster drama, loosely based on the real story of Polly Hamilton (renamed Polly Franklin for the film), and stuffs plenty of sex and social commentary around a surprisingly faithful recounting of the real-life event. Martin transforms from naive young thing to brassy hustler without losing her sweetness, and Robert Conrad is quite the gentleman hoodlum as Dillinger, but the unsung hero of the piece is Robert Forster, uncredited but indelible as a hit man who falls for fallen woman Polly. Colorful, action packed, and full of underdog spunk, this is exploitation moviemaking with a populist sensibility. --Sean Axmaker

Glass House