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Friday, December 16, 2011
THE TEN BEST FILMS OF 2011
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Road To Nowhere
6
Monte Hellman directed the ingenious noir drama "Road To Nowhere", written by
Steven Gaydos.
Monterey Media
Monte Hellman, director
Steven Gaydos, writer
2 hours 2 minutes
Rated R for some language and brief violence
(Monterey Media)
June 2011
Shannyn Sossamon, Tygh Rungan, Cliff De Young, Waylon Payne, Dominique Swain
Blu-Ray/DVD (U.S., Canada)
"This is my bullshit
Hollywood movie."
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Friday,
December 16, 2011
Monte Hellman made a triumphant return to big screen feature film directing
after a 21-year absence with "Road To Nowhere", the independent drama that got a
very small (and fleeting) summer release. Mr. Hellman, who directed the
landmark 1971 film "Two-Lane Blacktop", brings noir back in this layered story
of fact and fiction.
A political scandal in North Carolina is being made into a documentary, but are
the participants actors or the actual scandal subjects? Velma Duran (Shannyn
Sossamon) is apparently a victim of murder. Laurel Graham (also Ms.
Sossamon) is an actress hired by the film's director Mitchell Haven (Tygh Rungan).
The strands of this intricate film slowly draw tighter, and Steven Gaydos
executes the dimensions of these potent characters so crisply. Owing much
to "Lost Highway" and "The Lady Eve", the latter which it borrows to make a key
point, "Road To Nowhere" was richly absorbing, engaging and breathtaking.
"Road To Nowhere" is crammed with clues, many of which are only glimpsed on
second or third viewing, yet is never predictable as a drama. Lightning
bolts of irony, mystery and malevolence mark this atmospheric film in which Ms.
Sossamon was absolutely perfect, playing dual roles so adroitly. Her work
marked what for me was the year's best acting by a woman on screen, arguably the
year's best work, male or female.
Mr. Hellman's film is about process, the ritualizing and rote patterns of
filmmaking, and in a year where moviemaking was celebrated on the big screen.
"Road To Nowhere" was the most unsentimental of the film-within-a-film movies,
this year, and it flaunted murder as a business as cutthroat and spontaneous as
the engines of Hollywood itself.
Rule: Mr. Hellman shouldn't ever be away from feature filmmaking for so long
again.
Full written review
here.
NEXT: NUMBER 5
COPYRIGHT 2011. POPCORNREEL.COM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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