Little Big Screen: 'The Straight Story' and other Iowa-connected films to stream this month

Little Big Screen is a new column for LV movie lovers that will run monthly online. Look for highlights of the best streaming content available, selected to complement the outstanding curation of our local independent cinema (scroll to the end).

It was May 21, 1999, and the prettiest images of Iowa ever committed to celluloid were first seen going five miles per hour at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie those images belong to is The Straight Story, and to celebrate its 25th anniversary this month, Little Big Screen is showcasing streaming picks that are all about life’s trips and pit stops.

The Straight Story (1999)

Directed by David Lynch

The Straight Story is the true story of Alvin Straight, a 73-year-old man who really did drive a lawn mower 260 miles from Laurens, Iowa to Wisconsin.

The film introduces Alvin (Richard Farnsworth) with a thud, the sound of his body hitting his kitchen floor. We learn that Alvin’s health is failing due to old age, probably helped along in part by the Swisher Sweets stashed in his always-plaid chest pockets. After his own fall, he learns that his estranged brother has had a bad stroke. Alvin’s gotta get on the road to redeem the relationship before one of them dies, but he doesn’t have good enough eyesight for a driver’s license and doesn’t want to be a passenger on the voyage. So he sets out on a lawn mower.

The mode of transport slows down the idea of a road movie — and leads to discoveries of quiet splendor. Even at the checkout counter of Ace Hardware, there are pretty little lived-in details everywhere you look, like the punchy hue of the clerk’s vest or the default wash of Alvin’s blue jeans. The dialogue is also a delight, dry in just the right way. As Alvin haggles for a grabber tool, one of the other old men hanging around the store asks, “What do you need that grabber for, Alvin?”

“Grabbin’,” replies Alvin.

These images and moments, so keen, had to have been observed and developed over David Lynch’s own trips to Fairfield, Iowa. Because here it is: the beauty of Iowa’s in between. Shot on anamorphic, the towns and topography stretch together into the stuff of dreams. Just look at the sun, early and red, beyond the at-first flat then hilly horizon. And how those surroundings change when the camera shows them from Alvin’s perspective, like when RAGBRAI passes by, and the cyclists become blurs as big and fast as Formula 1 cars.

What you see on screen in The Straight Story can’t help but bleed into your vision. The same stretches of road and field you’ve never quite noticed are now framed up by car windows — to be witnessed with the knowing reverence of, say, Grant Wood. I think that’s why no movie makes me feel better about where I come from.

Stream it on Disney+.

Collateral (2004)

Directed by Michael Mann

Collateral makes a great double feature with The Straight Story — and no, I’m not confusing L.A. for IA. Sure, Max (Jamie Foxx) and his yellow taxi cab don’t look a whole lot like Alvin and his green John Deere. And sure, these two movies are shot in two very different ways: Lynch sticks with the warm fuzzies of film, making sure to capture faces waving from the countryside; Mann is experimenting with early digital, reducing thousands of Angelinos to spheres of light passing in the night. But your tear ducts will still arrive at the same destination as you watch Max and Alvin drive towards their destinies, becoming folk heroes simply by choosing to do something within their particular powers.

Stream it on Netflix.

Jackass Number Two (2006)

Directed by Jeff Tremaine

With Kum & Go signs starting to come down under the new Maverik regime, Jackass Number Two is a must-watch in memoriam for the iconic brand name. The Jackass crew repped Kum & Go T-shirts on more than one occasion, but this has to be the biggest plug of the bunch when you consider the untouchable achievement of Number Two as a film — striking an unbelievable balance of vérité charm and cinematic spectacle — plus, the primetime placement of the logo in “Riot Control Test.” The almost-too-brutal stunt places Johnny Knoxville and his Kum & Go T-shirt on the receiving end of a Stingmore Mine, which the military labels “less lethal” because it only shoots 700 or so .45 caliber rubber balls at a velocity of 500 ft/s. In a Tarantinian rewrite of reality, the Kum & Go logo survives.

Johnny Knoxville nurses dozens of deep bruises after the “Riot Control Test” in ‘Jackass Number Two,’ wearing a notable T-shirt. —Paramount

Stream it on Paramount+.

Never Back Down (2008)

Directed by Jeff Wadlow

A Certified Red Box Classic™ with a dozen late-aughts Hot Topic needle drops … and one Dan Gable name drop. Never Back Down is, I guess, a bildungsroman about a meathead moving from Iowa to Florida and maturing from a middle linebacker into an MMA fighter. That makes this movie more required reading than actual recommendation, but if you’ve flown Allegiant direct from Des Moines to Orlando, you already know there’s a “twin flames” thing going on between the two states. Throw this movie on to learn a thing or two about the type of guys who grow up to become the worst drivers in Ankeny.