11 Jun 08
Le Mans, featuring Steve McQueen
Now we don't exactly want to encourage you to bring out the inner couch potato in your dad, but there are loads of great videos out there for the petrolhead-inclined cineaste.
Grand Prix (1966) looks a little dated these days, but it is over 40 years old now and comes from an era when men were men and racing drivers were men too.
On a similar tip, there's Le Mans, Steve McQueen's labour of love that chronicles a battle between Ferrari and Porsche at the famous 24-hour race. Many of the stunning race sequences were actually filmed during the actual race in 1970. And it has McQueen at his slow-burning best.
Claude Lelouche's C'etait un Rendezvous is another 70s classic, showing a high-speed dash across Paris. Shot in real-time, the film is surrounded by a series of myths involving the identity of the driver, the make of car and how he managed to pull it off. It's not big, it's not clever, but it is certainly unforgettable.
Two-Lane Blacktop
Also from the 70s is a trio of counter-cultural celluloid car classics that just have to be seen - Vanishing Point, The Driver and Two-Lane Blacktop. All three are wonderful snapshots in time that reveal a lot about both the US and Hollywood at that time, although they persuade your dad to grow his hair long.
Then there's a whole series of crime movies that have a car chases as an integral part of the plot: choose from The Italian Job, Bullitt, The French Connection, Ronin, To Live and Die in LA, and all the Bourne movies (The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum), which are available as a box set.
Bringing us bang up to date is Quentin Tarantino's last movie, Death Proof, a modern exploitation flick about a homicidal misogynistic stunt driver who kills women with his modified 'death proof' car. The final chase sequence will be seen as a classic in years to come, so get dad onboard now.
