Director Monte Hellman’s lovely and deeply melancholy film is ostensibly about a competition between Warren Oates, a middle-aged serial fabulist in a brand-new Pontiac GTO, and drag racing duo James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, driving a souped up 1955 Chevy 150. Hellman shot on location, in sequence, following his characters’ southwest-to-southeast route. The screenplay by cult novelist Rudy Wurlitzer matches the spare poetry of Hellman’s camera eye, and is compulsively quotable to-boot. More info: TWO-LANE BLACKTOP | The Beacon