Easy Rider

The freedom of the open road, far from social, moral and economic strictures, is at the heart of the road movie, a theme it borrowed from the western. So in Dennis Hopper’s ramshackle but hugely influential 1969 drama, he and Peter Fonda’s LA hippy bikers naturally want to hit the road, but their “trip” descends into a nihilistic, countercultural subversion of that frontier spirit.
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Kings of the Road

This 1976 drama by Wim Wenders skirts the border of East and West Germany as it ponders the state of cinema, American cultural colonialism and male friendship. A film projector repairman (Rüdiger Vogler) and his depressed passenger (Hanns Zischler) are on a road to nowhere, soundtracked by that Roger Miller song.
BFI Player

Badlands

Fifties South Dakota teenager Holly (Sissy Spacek) falls for unstable, young rebel Kit (Martin Sheen) and goes on the run with him after he shoots her disapproving father. Terence Malick’s 1973 debut is in some ways a typical lovers-on-the-lam tale, but the film-maker’s now-lauded feel for landscape and atmosphere infuses it with a lyrical, fairytale quality.
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Sightseers

A defiantly British take on the killers-on-the-run thriller. Instead of Monument Valley and the Mojave desert, Ben Wheatley’s jet-black 2012 comedy gives us the Derwent Pencil Museum and Crich Tramway Village. Steve Oram and Alice Lowe’s sociopathic caravanners go on a road trip in northern England that escalates into a murder spree. Like Nuts in May, but with blunt-force trauma.
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Midnight Run

Cop-turned-bounty hunter Robert De Niro thinks he’s got an easy payday when he picks up shlubby mob accountant Charles Grodin. Little does he know … Martin Brest’s sparky 1988 comedy of errors plays up the bickering pair’s differences as they travel across the US by various modes of transport, and brings out a hitherto little-seen comic side of De Niro.
Netflix

Y Tu Mamá También

The road movie as coming-of-age drama. Alfonso Cuarón’s finely pitched 2001 Mexican film stars Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna as teenage friends who persuade a married woman (Maribel Verdú) to join them on a long drive to a remote beach. En route, however, they discover more about themselves than they anticipated.
Available on DVD

Taxi Tehran

Jafar Panahi’s wry 2015 drama posits the car as a symbol of political freedom. In the Iranian director’s case, he was banned from making films, so rigged a taxi up with hidden cameras and shot himself picking up an array of passengers. A private, yet public snapshot of modern life. Abbas Kiarostami’s 2002 film Ten is similar, but from a female perspective.
BFI Player

Wild Strawberries

In Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 masterpiece, Victor Sjöström’s professor drives from Stockholm to Lund, joined by his pregnant daughter-in-law and three young hitchhikers. In the process, he takes an uncomfortable journey into his memories, coming to terms with childhood pain and lost love. An atypically heartwarming piece from Bergman, with a much-imitated dream sequence.
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The Straight Story

David Lynch’s arch, elegiac 1999 comedy-drama features probably the slowest road trip in all cinema, as Richard Farnsworth’s Alvin Straight drives his lawnmower, at 5mph, 240 miles from Iowa to Wisconsin to see his sick, estranged brother. An understated examination of heartland America and old age, and available to stream for a bargain 99p.
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Thelma & Louise

Both the road movie and the buddy film are co-opted and refashioned in Ridley Scott’s immensely enjoyable, feminist 1991 drama. Downtrodden housewife Geena Davis and her significantly tougher waitress friend Susan Sarandon end up fleeing the cops, their old lives and society’s expectations of women from Arkansas towards Mexico.
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