Lucky (2017)

Posted on September 26, 2025 by 4 Star Films

Harry Dean Stanton, aka Lucky, feels like a bastion of a bygone era at the center of this story. The world around him still has the flavor of the West, though it has modernized. He is planted in a tradition reminiscent of The Misfits or Hud. Of course, he costarred with the likes of Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, and his credits are strewn with all sorts of footnotes to Classic Hollywood history, from westerns to revered cult classics and arguably his greatest achievement, Paris, Texas.

In his directorial debut, actor John Carroll Lynch made a love letter to his dear friend, and weak with illness, there’s a self-aware sense that this would be Stanton’s final film at 91 years of age. It proved to be true as he would pass away before the film was released in 2017. He always looked aged and world-weary decades earlier, and so you can only imagine what it is like to watch him here. Let’s make this clear. It’s an undisputed pleasure.

Because he’s a crotchety, ornery son of a gun, that’s most of the reason he’s still alive and kicking. His mornings are full of yoga in his underwear. He gets dressed in his cowboy boots and hat before stepping outside and walking everywhere he needs to go.

His favorite mental exercise is doing crossword puzzles at the local diner, he has favorite TV programs to watch, and he has a daily ritual of grabbing a carton of milk from the same family mart. All his rhythms are supported by the twang of harmonica music. It’s not quite Ry Cooder, but it gets the flavor across.

It’s unsurprising to say Lucky is profane and opinionated. He’s not afraid to say when he thinks someone has said something asinine; sometimes it just comes flying out because he’s in a foul mood. No one takes it personally. Because they know it belies a man who does have his share of tenderness.

There’s a collective responsibility where everyone cares for him, but they try not to press him too hard so he can live his life the way he wants. Still, there’s something idealized and idyllic about the small-town community.

If it’s not already apparent, Lucky has many obvious antecedents from The Straight Story by David Lynch and the road movies of Wim Wenders, like Paris, Texas. Of course, both of these films featured Stanton in critical roles. But there’s also something about the movie reminiscent of the contemporary movie Paterson by Jim Jarmusch.

Veterans like James Darren and David Lynch sit around the bar with Stanton, trading stories about romance and a lost tortoise named Mr. Roosevelt (who makes a very important cameo). It’s not some profound meeting of the minds, but to bask in their presence and see friends gathered together carries with it a special poignancy.

There are several specific passages, one where Stanton recounts his childhood and then another where he shares a conversation with a fellow veteran (Tom Skerritt), where there are very distinct echoes of Alvin Straight. It’s almost uncanny. Surely it’s not a coincidence. If they are not cut out of the same cloth, then they were formed under the same shared circumstances, be it the Depression or World War II.

Latin culture has a wonderful, well-deserved reputation for its hospitality and the importance it attributes to family across generations. When Lucky gets invited to a little boy’s fiesta for his birthday, he watches the scene, and though he’s totally welcome in that space, you can tell he desires what these people have. It’s communal and full of smiling people who know each other, who are close, and who share connections with one another.

He’s prided himself on being independent all his life, and yet he must come to terms with a life alone. Even though he makes a point of defining the difference between the choice of “being alone” and “loneliness,” that doesn’t make reality any easier to contend with. Then, Stanton elevates the moment by breaking into an impromptu rendition of “Volver, Volver.” Faces turn first surprised and then impressed that he knows all the words, and the mariachi players join in. It feels like a final stirring statement looking back on a life of 91 years.

In terms of storytelling convention, Lucky is not totally without peer. We know this. The meditative swan song, allowing talents of yesteryear a final moment in the spotlight to reflect on their celluloid careers, is a very specific and still persistent guilty pleasure of mine.

Boris Karloff in Targets, John Wayne in The Shootist, Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond, and even Peter O’Toole in Venus. The list could probably go on and on. Stanton was never as big a star as these men, but he probably garners just a fiercely devoted following, if not more so.

Lucky gets one last scene in the bar with all his “friends.” It’s not exactly an uplifting sendoff. He says we’re all eventually going to go away and we’re left with ungatz…nothing. How do you respond in the face of the bleakness? Not being a particularly religious man, he lifts a Buddhist practice he heard about in an old war story. You just have to smile in the face of your fate and accept it…

It’s a sobering worldview to come to terms with, but one must confess there is something poetic about Stanton clomping off on a desert trail and walking off into the sunset one last time. It reminds me of another fellow of a very different disposition who was always predisposed to “Smile.” That was Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp because he was a creature of unreserved hope.

I’m not sure if anyone would immediately count Harry Dean Stanton as lucky. It almost seems a bitter irony. He never had matinee idol looks. He only earned his first starring role well into his 50s. He never won major awards or plaudits. Not even a swan song like Lucky could get him that. And yet here is a man who seemed to make his own luck and by the same token wound up having a fairly charmed life.

He worked with some indelible directors, featured in mainstream successes, and earned an ardent following as a cult favorite. When I watch him in a throwaway episode of Chuck as The Repo Man, my reaction isn’t one of derision, but appreciation. By now, he is baked into our popular culture. What an extraordinary career.

3.5/5 Stars

The Straight Story (1999)

Posted on September 23, 2025 by 4 Star Films

The Straight Story is based on the real-life journey of one Alvin Straight to visit his brother, who suffered a stroke. What makes it extraordinary is that he lived hundreds of miles away, and Straight made the journey on his John Deere lawn mower, going about 5 mph!

The material doesn’t immediately scream David Lynch, a man who has left his mark with more bemusing visions of Middle America. Still, in keeping with the story’s ethos, Lynch taps into his midwestern roots in the most charming and straightforward manner.

There is a sense that The Straight Story was a movie out of a different era and even a different century. Whereas now even our eldest geriatrics interface with smartphones, have high-speed internet at their fingertips, and any number of technical marvels, there was a time, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, when men like Alvin Straight reached back into bygone generations.

Alvin can barely see and walks with the assistance of a cane, but he’s obstinate. He was a sniper during WWII. Eats franks by the campfire and always has his cigars handy for a puff or two in the evening as he ponders the stars. His wife, who’s gone now, bore 7 children, and he still lives with one of them, his grown daughter (Sissy Spacek). I won’t say people of his ilk don’t exist anymore, but as we get more and more modernized, it seems less and less commonplace.

There’s a sense of the late ’90s about the movie that I appreciate because I was alive then, albeit very young, on the cusp of the possibilities of a new millennium. The year prior, I traveled with my family across the very same Midwest, though we used a much more luxurious automobile (I had only minor experiences in Iowa with tractors and other implements that felt completely foreign to a California kid). For Alvin Straight, these were his lifeblood as common to him as the water he drinks and the air he breathes.

He gives a glimpse into his own life on his parents’ farm, where he and his brother learned what hard work was as they turned daily chores and tasks necessary for their survival into games that they could play even as they looked up at the stars at night, dreaming about what might be out there.

Time and disagreements soured their relationship, so now, as they stand old and gray, they’re estranged from one another. You understand how it happens. Their generation was not always the greatest at expressing themselves or sharing their emotions. Still, we know they are present, and the fact that Alvin willfully makes this trip shows how deep the bonds of brotherhood go. He speaks through actions.

The film’s boldest and most valuable asset is its sense of time. It is pregnant with silence and comfortable with slowness out of necessity. It goes at the kind of languid pace that’s necessitated by the whole premise of Alvin’s journey from the very beginning. That tractor’s not going to sprout extra engines and zoom forward. The journey is the essence of incremental progress toward an inevitable end.

Like Pilgrim’s Progress, there’s a process to the journey, and it’s made up of all of these various interactions. Each one along the road feels like a specific representation of the human experience as Straight comes in contact with all sorts of folks. Lost souls looking for direction, Good Samaritans, fellow war vets content chewing the fat, men handy with tractors or quick to offer shelter or some form of hospitality.

There’s something radical about these folks in their very simplicity, running counter to the way the culture has moved even 30 years on. What we appreciate about them is their candor; there’s a laconic spareness and a straightforward reality to these people and their dialogues.

Alvin’s not needy, but he’s always obliging for accommodation. Some people try and blow him off the road, horns blaring, but others see the nobility in his mission. He will not be dissuaded or moved because there is something or someone at the end of the road to make all of this worth it. There’s never a second thought of his going through with it.

Sure enough, he passes through the valley and over a hill to find a dilapidated farmhouse. He yells out to his brother, and out steps Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton). They sit down on the porch to share their presence with one another. Words would be nice, but they hardly feel necessary. In a generation so often distracted by so many things (especially cell phones), what a radical thing to be completely present with another human being. Again, it’s a dying art that Alvin Straight all but mastered.

If we were not primed already, it’s possible the ending might seem underwhelming, but then we spent this whole time with this man. It was about his journey, the people he meets along the way, and what he represents. There’s something in his sinew and his makeup worth taking note of.

Richard Farnsworth was an actor I was familiar with thanks to Anne of Green Gables on VHS. He was instantly likable in a series full of so much drama and theatrics; there was always something so genial and grounding about him. The Straight Story would wind up being his last film, and as he neared 80 years, he was stricken with cancer.

This film stands as a testament to what he was as an actor and human being. Plain, straightforward, but ultimately replete with all kinds of truth and goodness. I haven’t gotten trite of late, so allow me just this one digression. Disney doesn’t make movies like this anymore. But then again, how would they ever top a G-rated David Lynch film about a truly mythical tractor ride?

4/5 Stars

Note: This review was written before David Lynch’s passing on January 16, 2025

Paris, Texas (1984)

Posted on January 4, 2019 by 4 Star Films

Paris,_Texas_(1984_film_poster).png It occurs to me only someone with an outsider’s perspective would choose to make this movie, which is void of any typical Hollywood flair. No American would have thought in a million years to cast Harry Dean Stanton (a lifelong character actor) and Dean Stockwell (an all but forgotten child star) while capturing such a cross-section of America. Therein lies a moderate amount of the allure in Paris, Texas.

We must begin with the locales. There’s little doubt they are indeed as American as they come and yet director Wim Wenders, backed by a joint French and West German venture, has embarked on something distinctly his own. The film’s title perfectly reflects this blending of Americana with European sensibilities.

Of course, the Heartland of the U.S.A. is evident as well. Anyone who has trekked across Middle America stayed in a cheap motel or found the nearest rest stop knows it well because it turns up so many other places aside from Texas.

It is a film reflecting the degradation of America as much as the austere beauty. Cinematographer Robby Muller captures rundown junk, forgotten turn-offs, billboards, and roadside diners because they are just as much a part of the American experience as any amount of decadence. One might say they are even more indicative of the generally accepted cultural status quo.

Especially in its opening moments, Paris, Texas readily evokes a bit of the ruggedness of the Old West. What others might envision as the mystique of America with one of its distinctly original mythologies. It is the kind of imagery at home in a Ford picture who was himself one of the foremost purveyors of the American mythos.

The hard-edged twang of Cy Cooder’s utterly distinctive slide guitar score gives us a very concrete inclination of our world. The only time I can recall anything similar might be the minimalist music to go along with Murder by Contract (1958).

Travis materializes in our story almost like an extra-terrestrial life form. He wears his iconic ensemble of a red baseball cap with his suit and tie. Red tones course through the entire film in fact. There’s no missing it again and again. However, in these opening moments, it does feel like Travis never had a true beginning just as he merely dissipates in the end. This almost otherworldly quality readily dictates the entire conventionality of the landscape.

When his brother Walt (Stockwell) receives news of his whereabouts he goes to fetch him. He and his wife (Aurore Clement) are the ones with feet firmly placed in a sort of reality. He is a billboard ad man and they have taken in Hunter (Hunter Carson) as their own son.

Stanton is catatonic and yet there is a near robotic purposefulness to his steps. He has a bit of Forrest Gump but this is not quite right. He undoubtedly is plagued by some form of amnesia, which nonetheless is never fully acknowledged. Walt expects his brother to talk after four years off the grid and he rarely obliges.

As they travel back to Los Angeles, the movie rolls along leisurely, content to be almost cavalier with its runtime. Because it wouldn’t be a road trip if you didn’t take your sweet time but it’s certainly a European strain of road film.

As such we might easily segment Sam Shepard’s story it into three parts. The opening moments in Texas set the scene, there’s the interim in Los Angeles, environmentally so different, and then the final odyssey back into the heart of Texas.

Surely the film lacks pure authenticity but instead, we are met with a spellbinding subtlety equal parts poetic and mundane. We must only watch the characters a few moments to know they hardly function as we would.

It starts with Stanton and radiates out from there down to his son and finally his long-lost wife Jane (the exquisite Nastassja Kinski ) who is the object of his journeying. There is parental negligence going all but unquestioned. They never seem to cling to bitterness even the little boy seems mature beyond his years, ready to embark to the ends of the earth with his recently arrived father. It’s as if this one quest galvanizes their relationship without question. There is no need to put words to it. They intuitively understand each other as flesh and blood, no matter the years that may have gotten between them.

Stanton himself is a walking corpse who nonetheless never seems in need of sustenance or sleep. And the extraordinary phenomenon, thanks to time, is the establishment of a new status quo, a slightly modified version of the world, which we readily come to accept. Maybe it’s the foreigners perspective I mentioned in passing or a more pensive contentment with the world. I cannot say exactly lest the film loses some power.

Regardless, the final act by some piece of cinematic ingenuity manages to be gripping. Perhaps as an audience, we become more attuned and simultaneously conditioned to the pacing. Because while the journey might seem slight it’s no less of a journey.

With one concrete lead — a bank in Houston, Texas — father and son set off to find the third member of their fragmented family, staking out the bank with walkie-talkies and waiting for her to arrive. Finally, she does and Travis finally makes contact in a garish back alley peep show.

However, ironically, despite the sullied outer layer, it’s in this environment of anonymity provided by a phone connection and a two-way mirror that allows him to communicate with her in the adjoining room. The pretenses of such a place fall away as the film manages to unearth a tragic intimacy of heartbreak and melancholy in the wake of lost love.

The immaculately staged climax is made up of a monologue — a moment shared between a man and a woman — as he recounts their story. It’s a single scene that must go on for 10, 15, 20 minutes. Except we never realize it. She thinks she is providing a service to the person on the other end of the line, being a listening ear, and she is. But then he solemnly recounts their romance and recognition begins to don on her face.

He pours out his heart matter-of-factly and honestly, turned away from the glass as not to see her in this compromising world. It makes it exponentially easier for the words to leave his lips as she listens captured in every painful recollection just as he is. But there is no emotional outbreak, breaking of glass, or the like. This is purely an exercise in loneliness and regret.

Not until after the fact does the boldness of this scene set in because it’s so easy to get caught up in the moment. We understand the implications and yet we’re desperately trying to perceive the situation, wanting to know if she recognizes him. Even more so we want to know what they will do.

Striking the perfect note of resolution and continued inscrutability, mother and son are finally reunited in a maternal embrace and just as he arrived into the world, Travis fades into the night just as easily.

I can imagine Paris, Texas is a place that is meaningful to Travis just as Nevers and Hiroshima hold importance to the lovers in Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). It’s really not a place at all but a part of his identity, a destination he is hoping to get to, a dream he is doggedly pursuing on earth. He is ever searching, always wandering, but in the midst of it, he maintains an unswerving capacity for love. Even though he’s made mistakes we can hardly comprehend, family remains his guiding compass.

4.5/5 Stars