What to stream: Go on lam with cinema's iconic road trip rebels
Published in Entertainment News
The new film from Adam Carter Rehmeier, “Carolina Caroline” hits theaters this week, starring Samara Weaving and Kyle Gallner as a pair of lovers on the run who run scams throughout the American Southwest, conning clerks and robbing banks until they get to the inevitable end of the line. It’s a familiar tale, but beautifully made, with a great country soundtrack, and sizzling chemistry between Weaving and Gallner.
“Carolina Caroline” calls back to some of the classic movies of doomed pairs on the run in modern American cinema, so if this crime romance, in theaters Friday June 5, gives you a hankering for more, here’s where to steam some of these road movies featuring outlaws, lovers and besties.
The blueprint is, of course, Arthur Penn’s 1967 “Bonnie and Clyde,” starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as the real pair of Depression-era criminals. The movie was a seminal text in the evolution of New Hollywood in the late ‘60s, broke barriers when it comes to violence onscreen, and is still the gold standard for “lovers on the run” movies. Rent it on all digital platforms.
Terence Malick also pulled from real life for his 1973 neo-noir “Badlands,” starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as a couple who go on a killing spree. The film was inspired by the 1958 murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate. Rent the poetic and devastating “Badlands” on all digital platforms.
Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone did their own version of this tale with “Natural Born Killers” in 1994, starring Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in the Tarantino-penned, Stone-directed film, though it was a meta commentary on the media glorification of murder. Rent it on all digital platforms.
Melina Matsoukas also brought the trope into the new millennium and imagined it in a new social/racial dynamic with her 2019 film “Queen & Slim,” starring Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya, in which the crime spree is triggered by an incident of police racial profiling. Rent it on all digital platforms.
But perhaps the best and most wholesome version of this formula is the one featuring best friends, as in Ridley Scott’s 1991 masterpiece “Thelma & Louise,” in which Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon play best friends who set out on a fishing trip and ultimately find love, freedom, pleasure, and escape with each other on the road. The iconic “Thelma & Louise” is available on MGM+ or for rent.
And if those don’t pique your interest, catch up with a couple of Rehmeier’s other films: the 2020 road movie starring Gallner, “Dinner in America,” which has become a certified cult hit in the past six years, streaming on Kanopy, and the affable “Snack Shack,” a 1990s-set hangout movie starring Gabrielle LaBelle and Mika Abdalla (now in “Off Campus”). Stream “Snack Shack” on MGM+ or rent.
Finally, Weaving has another movie now on VOD featuring another couples trip gone wrong. “Over Your Dead Body” is a black comedy from the Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, starring Weaving and Jason Segal as a couple who go on vacation with plans to off each other, only to find their respective plots thwarted by a group of escaped inmates. This remake of a Norwegian film is darkly funny and very bloody. Rent or buy it on all digital platforms now.
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