Driven to distraction: the best film, music, games and more to prepare for a road trip
Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Roma) took a break from his burgeoning Hollywood career to capture lightning in a bottle with Y Tu Mamá También, a Spanish-language road drama set against the backdrop of Mexico’s political turmoil at the end of the 20th century. Julio and Tenoch (Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna respectively) play wide-eyed teenagers who hit the road in search of female flesh and a mysterious beach called Boca del Cielo (“Heaven’s Mouth”). Accompanying them is Luisa (Maribel Verdú), a sexy older woman with a dark secret. What follows is one of the most thought-provoking and unabashedly erotic (and homoerotic) comingof-age movies ever made. Alex Mistlin ***
TV
You don’t need to leave London to find joy on the road. No, honestly! In Zen Motoring, rapper Ogmios sees the urban beauty in the everyday moments on the city’s streets as he drives around recording it all on a wobbly dashcam. He then narrates his subtle observations in soothing, send-me-to-sleep tones. “While they empty their bins, I empty my mind,” he says of the refuse collectors, stopping to appreciate their choreography. Later, he gets out of the car to rescue a pigeon by letting it chill on the dashboard. When an elderly man waves at him four times while crossing the road, our zen driver almost cries. It’s a form of therapy. Hollie Richardson
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Music
A good road trip needs a dramatic soundtrack, one that peaks and troughs in all the right places. As well as throatshredding singalongs, it should also encourage air guitar (for the passengers) and steering wheel-based piano tinkling (for the driver). It needs tender moments to ease the pain of the inevitable traffic jams and mammoth solos for when the terrain opens out. Ticking every box is this gloriously overstuffed 1977 epic from the late Marvin Lee Aday, AKA Meat Loaf. Allow the title track to propel you off the driveway like, well, a bat out of hell, and the gorgeous Heaven Can Wait to ease your pre-service station dip. Pair it with 1993’s 75-minute follow-up for maximum windows-down freedom. Michael Cragg
*** Books
When he was 38, William Least Heat-Moon lost his job and his wife but “got the idea instead”. He decided to take a circular trip over the Blue Highways, the back roads of the United States, marked in blue in his old Rand McNally atlas. He put a camp bed in the back and started out on his slow, 13,000mile journey in early 1978. He was a man searching for a new life with no idea how to get there, but also someone capable of persuading just about anyone, anywhere to share their story with him. The result – Blue Highways – is one of the oddest and best books written about America. Sam Jordison
*** Game
The Forza Horizon titles are ostensibly racing games where you compete to earn cash and become famous. But, in fact, you don’t ever have to race anyone, you can just drive. Forza Horizon 4 (PC, Xbox) lets you do that within a beautifully replicated Britain. You can jump in a car in the Cotswolds then drive it up through the Pennines and into Scotland. The gorgeous scenery washes by, the weather changes, sunlight glints off distant hills, the rain forms puddles on the tarmac ahead of you. You get to be your own Kerouac, your own Thelma or Louise – and if the trip goes wrong, you just start again. This road trip is truly endless.