KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Perception_de_Ambiguity Roaring car engines. Spinning Earth. A road at night. A car drives off straight into the darkness. Two cars next to each other get leveled. A race! Cars get checked by race organizers. Money gets exchanged. A man looks at us. Red light in his hand flashes up. Red dies, green is begotten. Engines start roaring again and now two cars drive into the darkness. Man in blue car tells us: "Watch the fight." Blue is our guy. Same game again. Leveling, red, green, roooar and vanish. Cut to the finish line. Blue arrives first. Red lights flashing in the dark in front of Blue. The other car drives on, Blue turns around, drives back. Red flashing lights chase Blue. Blue slows down to pick up friend. Off they go. Red flashing lights lose Blue.Our man, Blue, The Driver...he's into driving. Not much else. Most of the rest he blocks out. Socially awkward. Except when it comes to setting up races. That he is interested in, so that he can do, motherf***er. Don't tell him how s***ty your life is, he doesn't want to hear about it. But GTO wants to tell him. GTO, a man who likes to talk. Doesn't matter who, anyone will do. A born bulls***ter. A girl joins Blue. She can because she wants to. No questions asked. The friend and the girl make love, or what one calls "making love". The Driver stays out of it. The girl appears in GTO's car. They talk. She lures GTO into racing against the guys. Or with them. Now she helped The Driver to set up a cross country race, and they have a good talk about the s***ty life of bugs. The Driver and the girl end up...I don't know, making out for five minutes. The Driver now participates in a pointless road game. The girl on the backseat, witnessing the power game. A road accident brings it to a halt.One time GTO is talking to The Driver he doesn't want to bulls***. Because GTO just watched how the car that he set up the big race with beat his vehicle in a little race. He used to think he could win the big race. He hoped he could. All the things he lost, all the things he tried. But the road life isn't his either. Now what else has he left to hang on to? Words. Just words. But they don't ground enough. And if he's not grounded pretty soon, he's gonna go into orbit.The girl joins GTO. She can because she wants to. GTO is bulls***ting her about a future together. The girl isn't into it. They walk into a diner. Some boy who looks like the girl sees the two. The girl sees the boy. Meanwhile The Driver wants to find the girl, real bad. He does! The Driver proposes to her a future together. He's not bulls***ting. "No good", says the girl. The guy who looks like her leaves and gets onto his motorcycle. He waits. The girl follows. She can because she wants to. She has to leave behind much of her stuff because there's no space for it on the machine. She doesn't mind, it's just stuff. Three men left behind. They part. Whatever race there once was, it's over. GTO continues to pick up people. To talk to them. To bulls*** them. The Driver is game for his next race.

tiekbane This is a totally amateur movie, like it was made by high school kids in first year film class. Whereas, perhaps, some existential meaning could be taken from Easy Rider & Vanishing Point, this mess seems to be totally ad-libbed, like they just decided to go to New Mexico, shoot some footage & then splice scenes together. It feels like a home movie. It's as uninspired as the paint job on the car.There are few shots of the countryside. Most of the scenes were filmed in the car, in gas stations & diners and at night.Characters come & go adding nothing to the story. We never learn anything about them, not even their names.There is very little dialog. The main topic of conversation, when there is any, is the car. Dennis Wilson must have checked those points and carburetors about a dozen times. The 'actors' stare blankly into space most of the time. James Taylor has the charisma of a floor jack. It's no wonder he kept his day job.Heck, they even forgot to finish the race.If there is a deep meaning to this flick, it seems to be to always keep your engine properly timed.Give it a try, but don't expect much. This film literally has the soul of a shop manual.

Scott LeBrun "Two-Lane Blacktop" is, without a doubt, *the* masterpiece of the unsung director Monte Hellmans' career. At first glance, it might seem to be typical drive-in fare, aimed at the younger audience, with two very cool cars at the forefront. But Hellman, and the screenwriters (Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Corry) aim to create something different. This film is far removed from something such as "The Cannonball Run" and its ilk. It's a memorable depiction of mans' folly of narrowing his life to a single focus. Will the characters here end up open to more of life's possibilities, or remain single-minded ciphers?Hellman works wonders with the script by Wurlitzer and Corry, also creating some of the traditional appeal of a cross country road movie. It's episodic at times, with one of our characters interacting with a wide succession of hitchhikers (one of them played by Harry Dean Stanton, in a poignant cameo). Hellman uses the Panavision aspect ratio to great effect, letting our eyes take in as much as possible at any given moment.Singer / songwriter James Taylor and Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys deliver their sole acting performances to date, playing an unnamed Driver and Mechanic, tooling about the U.S.A. in a primer grey '55 Chevy. They repeatedly encounter a man (Warren Oates), doing his own wandering in a yellow Pontiac G.T.O., ultimately challenging him to a cross country road race. The prize will be the pink slip for the losers' automobile.Taylor and Wilson perform adequately for the characters that they play, but they are simply blown off the screen by professional actor Oates, who was rarely better than he is here. G.T.O. is substantially more interesting, and appealing, and is more inclined to question things. Laurie Bird rounds out the main acting quartet, doing a nice job as the young girl tagging along with our Driver and Mechanic.Instead of building to a "big finish", "Two-Lane Blacktop" winds up with a much more low key resolution. It forces its viewers to ponder the reality of obsessions, and what some people choose to do about them.This may be one of the finest cult films of all time.10 out of 10.

Joakim Thiesen (thefilmmann) Masters Of Cinema Cast - Episode 4 - Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop Monte Hellman's 1971 film Two-Lane Blacktop is rare film. Judging by appearances it is a typical road movie, fast cars, cool guys, pretty girls and endless roads yet Easy Rider this is not. Its two main characters have no names other than The Driver and The Mechanic - they barely say a word and when they do its just about cars anyway. For light relief we have Warren Oates in the kind of role that only Warren Oates could play but for those wanting something a little more deeper or indeed a little more...well anything then Two-Lane Blacktop maybe something of a slog. It simply refuses to act like a film should. The main plot is not that gripping, you don't really get to know the characters in any great depth and its doesn't even have a score to tap you foot too. But sometimes cinema is about those moments of silence between characters, that reflective look out the window and where that story you have seen many times before should be is something altogether different. In this episode Joakim and Tom and joined by Hunter Duesing from the Midnight Movie Cowboys Podcast to discuss this cult oddity as well as go on a fair number of tangents. Enjoy. moccast.blogspot.no/2013/05/episode-four-two-lane-blacktop.html