But it is a fun bit of escapism that reminds most Americans of everything we like about the Brits. Which is why “The Queen” is such an excellent film–it reminds us of everything we don’t–the haughtiness, the snobbery, the downright old-fashioned undemocratic silliness of it all.

The reason is counts as a Travel Movie We Love is because it includes fantastic footage of rugged Scotland as seen from the immense grounds of Balmoral Castle. You can see snippets of the beautiful grandeur in this trailer:

Are you familiar with Dame Helen Mirren? If not, off with your head! Because when you see her transformation for this role, it’s impossible not to be impressed.

She mentioned in an interview I read at the time that when she saw the wardrobe for this film, she cried. I can see why:

Seriously. Those glasses are the worst.

Which is why this foxy shot below was such an Internet sensation when it made the rounds. Go Helen (at 62, no less)!

I think she won the Oscar for those abs alone.

But seriously–rent the movie. It’s great fodder for Brit-o-philes, and handles the situation with immense intelligence. Just as one would expect.

Earlier last year, Betty and I recapped our favorite travel movies of all time. Here’s a new one for the list: Exit Through the Gift Shop which made me want to visit London and encapsulated something intrinstic about Los Angeles better than 1,000 Hollywood-directed flicks.

I’ll admit that for the first thirty minutes I thought I had the film figured out. But the last section of it completely upended what I expected, and reminded me of everything I find fascinating about L.A. Even though it’s kind of slam on the city and its naive residents, it made me want to go back, which is the point of any good travel movie, right?

Other people have made this point, of course, including the always-brilliant Emily Nussbam and the Guardian. We knew, going in, that “Eat Pray Love” was doing to fit all the stereotypes of a chick flick, and as Jezebel and EW so aptly summarized, “if women like it, it must be stupid.”

So–what did we actually think of the movie, the book, the whole Elizabeth-Gilbert-theme park that is “Eat Pray Love”?

Betty: I’m just going to say it: I loved Julia’s clothes. I couldn’t stop obsessing over them. She was so appropriately dressed for traveling as a 30-something woman, especially when they were on the beach at the end. She looked like a real traveler who had ditched her foundation months ago.

Lia: Yeah, totally. She made the flowing linen look reasonable. And there wasn’t a single fugly reversible travel dress in the lot.

I will say that I was kind of poised to hate it, even though I can admit that I read the book. Then I saw the ad in the New York Times and was like: Huh. They totally got what it’s like to travel to a place you’ve always dreamed of visiting. Have you seen the ad?

Betty: Nope.

Lia: She’s sitting eating gelato in Rome, and there’s nothing that tells you that except the architecture nearby and the nun on the park bench, plus the oh-my-god-I’m-actually-here face. I also liked that even though her Bali rental was off-the-hook insane, her Rome apartment was crappy. I’ve also heated up a bathtub in a hostel with water from the stove, so I liked that too.

Betty: Yes. And I have totally had a crazy pseudo land lady who had puritanical rules about no boys allowed. But I was prepared to hate the part in India.

Lia: Because of the New Ageyness? I know that’s not a word.

Betty: Because the scene on the rooftop in the book was SO ANNOYING, her asking forgiveness of her ex and him coming to her. And then, of course, while watching the movie…I sobbed.

Lia: Me too. And I sobbed to Neil Jackass Young, which is so much worse. Even as I was doing it, I was like: I hate you a little, Elizabeth Gilbert.

And speaking of things that are annoying: Javier. He has a disturbingly giant head. It filled the entire screen. Like, at some points in the movie, didn’t it feel like his giant eagle head was eclipsing the scenery? And that his face is made up of 50 percent eyeballs?

Betty: As you know, Lia, I love him. Loved him in “Vicki Christina Barcelona.” He was so hot in that. I couldn’t wait for face time in EPL. But what happened to him? Did he marry Penelope and all of a sudden his face became the biggest face in the world? Did he recently get work done because of a massive boxing accident? Is he suddenly Mickey Rourke? It’s confusing.

Lia: It will probably kill you to hear this, but I couldn’t make it all the way through “Vicki Christina Barcelona.”

Betty: WHAT!?

Lia: I was like: Why is ScarJo trying so hard to sound like Woody Allen? Ohhhh right. I gave it 45 minutes and then gave up.

But back to EPL. Why do you think so many people hate it? I mean, I liked it for what it was: A pretty travel movie with some New Age philosophy thrown in. It was like the movie equivalent of visiting the Body Shop. Why the hate?

Betty: They’re jealous of her success, and they don’t want to hear about a woman calling bullshit on her crappy marriage. Plus, I think the New Age bit threw some people. Also, in the book, it’s unclear whether or not she cheated on her husband and people LOVE TO JUDGE THAT.

Lia: I also blame the audience, just like I do with “Twilight.” Fun film + some obsessed idiot fans = tacky, mockable, out-of-control spectacle. Whenever the Balinese healer would come on, the ladies–and it was all ladies–in the audience would coo, like he’s a baby. I think a girl actually said out loud: “He’s so cuuute.” Honey, he’s a grown man, not Justin Bieber. Along those lines of the fans being kind of gross, did you see this Louis Black bit from last night, about the Home Shopping ELP-a-thon?

Betty: Nice. The merch situation is out of control. Eat Pray Love Shop™. Yikes.

Lia: But can I just say, looking at the haters on rottentomatoes.com (which gave the movie a 38% positive) that I refuse to take advice from Boomers like these. The reviewer from that site, who’s listed on rottentomatoes, actually liked it. But she used a Calgon reference, as in “Calgon take me away.” Hello. Calgon was last sold in a store in 1976. Time to update the database.

I do think, when I look through these reviews and see Peter Travers–another soulless Boomer who needs to retire–that if the movie had a gun fight or car chase he would totally love it.

Betty: Exactly. I also loved how she found community in each place. You and I have talked about this. People romanticize traveling alone, but it’s actually not always fun.

Lia: Yes. I liked that too.

I know I keep going back and forth, but one thing I didn’t like I was feeling actively manipulated, both by the book and by the movie. Both Elizabeth Gilberts were trying too hard to be charming.

Betty: I hear what you’re saying, but she doesn’t have to be perfect to write a book. I mean, for Christ’s sake, this is the woman who brought us “Coyote Ugly.”

Lia: Are you kidding? I didn’t know that.

Betty: Can I just say that pic of her at TED bugs me to no end?

Lia: Honestly? I thought her entire TED talk was barfy. When you put “genius” in the title of your talk, you’re kind of calling yourself a genius. Um, no.

That stuff reminds me of what I didn’t like about the book, that kernel of super-annoying myopicness. I almost gave up on the book when she compared her divorce to 9/11. I was like: Really? REALLY?

Betty: Lia, my past job was the Holocaust. I hope you don’t mind me saying that.

Lia: I’m going to ignore that. But I still come back to the fact that she wrote this book, and it’s kind of not her fault that it blew up into this giant pop-culture moment.

Betty: I’ll just be honest. I really want to go to Bali now.

Lia: What do you say to people who argue that Elizabeth Gilbert “ruined” Bali?

Betty: I think those people need to get a grip. Did Hemingway ruin Paris? No.

Lia: That. Is awesome.

Betty: I just think it’s a cop out. I don’t think it ruins places. People like to go to awesome places.

Lia: I also think that if her memoir was published by McSweeney’s in a limited edition felt-covered book, it would be a cult classic. But because she went on Oprah and TED, people hate her.

Betty: Absolutely.

Lia: I heard this joke that seems appropriate: How many hipsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A number that you totally wouldn’t have heard of.

Betty: Ha.

Lia: I think that’s her deal. She went from like, tiny Radiohead to GIANT STADIUM RADIOHEAD, and people hated her for that, too.

Betty: Right. you don’t see her acting all Jonathan Franzen-ish. She’s like: BRING ON THE PUBLICITY. I’M AWESOME.

Lia: This is also a stupid thing, but I also think it’s because she smiles in her author photos, and looks kind of all-American, glowing, and healthy, when you’re supposed to look like Ellen Page, only poutier. Or, to be honest, if you’re writing a travel book, you should be a dude who’s also done war reporting. And have a graying goatee or those tan lines around your eye wrinkles. In other words, Bill Bryson or Sebastian Junger.

Betty: Totally. OK, one more small thing: How much did you love her bicycle riding?

Lia: Yeah, knowing how obsessed I am with bikes like hers, you can probably guess that I was singularly focused on it as she rode up. But then it distracted me. I was like: Do people really not lock their bikes in Bali?

Betty: People don’t lock their bikes in Thailand.

Lia: My internal dialogue continues through the whole scene: If her bike got stolen, could they identify it? Was it a rental, in which case it was too crappy to steal? It overrode the entire scene. Bike-theft concerns.

Despite all these issues, I still fundamentally liked the movie, and would add it to our recommended travel movie list.

My movie capsule review would be: The movie drags in some super-talky parts, the clothes and scenery are pretty, she didn’t love her husband any more, and she tried to become the hero of her own life. That’s it.

Betty: Love that. Hero of her own life. Exactly.

Sense and Sensibility had Emma Thompson and an Oscar, while Pride and Prejudice has Mr. Darcy. Most Jane Austen die-hards have seen the movie version of Mansfield Park and even Emma.

Persuasion, in my experience, causes people to scratch their heads. Persuasion?

The movie has no marquee stars (although Ciarán Hinds has one of those I’ve-seen-him-before faces). But it has two things that are better: a heroine who longs to travel and the British town of Bath:

“I should very much like to see Lyme again,” said Anne.

“Indeed! I should not have supposed that you could have found anything in Lyme to inspire such a feeling.”

“The last few hours were certainly very painful,” replied Anne; “but when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure… We were only in anxiety and distress during the last two hours, and previously there had been a great deal of enjoyment. So much novelty and beauty! I have travelled so little, that every fresh place would be interesting to me.”

The movie–originally a BBC TV movie, of all things–was shot in Bath, located to the west of London. As a sightseeing town, Bath has many layers: the original Roman baths that are its namesake; the beautiful Georgian-era city of Jane Austen’s time; the unfortunate mall that seems to crowd out much of the charm of today’s downtown Bath.

It’s a lovely place, despite the sometimes crass attempts to cash in on the Jane Austen connection. I’m a sucker for a view of something like the Bath Abbey:

When I was there, it was an incredible thought to me to share the street with so much history–never mind the Romans, but with the people like the kind I had seen in Persuasion. I actually watched the film one night when I was there. It was rainy and dark, and I was exhausted. I curled up with tea and butter cookies, though, and fell in love with this quiet, sleepy, less-famous Jane Austen film that captures the soul of this great artist and this great town.

Someone has posted the first 10 minutes, in case you want to check it out for yourself:

Whenever I’m in Washington D.C., I walk through the National Mall. It’s expansive and intense, and I always feel something that falls somewhere between nostalgia, pride, and extreme power. It’s the backdrop for so many of America’s stories, both good and bad. And it’s one of the settings in “All the President’s Men,” a terrific film about the infamous Watergate scandal.

I used to watch this movie over and over again in high school. Embarrassingly, it played a big role in my decision to major in political science and to work as a reporter for my college newspaper. While my dreams of becoming the next Bob Woodward were never realized, I still hold on to my love for media and politics.

D.C. is, of course, a major player in this film about bringing down Richard Nixon. While you may think parking garages and the insides of newsrooms are the sets for the majority of the scenes, there are great panoramic shots of the city and sinister, ghostly images of the White House and Capitol. Woodward, played by Robert Redford, and Carl Bernstein, played by Dustin Hoffman, walk quickly through long, shadowy government corridors and go door to door asking questions. One memorable scene in particular is of the two of them waking the formidable Washington Post editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee (played perfectly by the late Jason Robards), and having a heated discussion in front of Bradlee’s Georgetown home.

Here’s the theatrical trailer. I love the flirtatious banter between the source and Bernstein with the Mall in the background, at the 1:17 mark.

Clearly, Lia and I have a thing for Harrison Ford.
 
Based on the book by Paul Theroux, “The Mosquito Coast” tells the story of an eccentric patriarch who drags his family to Central America in hopes of creating a Utopian society away from America’s capitalistic grip. Ford plays Allie Fox, who as the father of his clan is both charming, brilliant, and completely psychotic. Helen Mirren plays his wife in a completely different role than her more recent steely performances as the Queen or detective Jane Tennison in the awesome BBC television series, “Prime Suspect.” The late and great River Phoenix plays the eldest son, Charlie, in typical amazing range.
 
The film is mesmerizing, not only for its suspense and great acting but backdrop. The actual Mosquito Coast runs along the Atlantic side of Nicaragua and Honduras, and is one of the most beautiful and remote areas of the world. I was in La Mosquitia a few years ago, a portion in northeastern Honduras.

To get there, we flew in a tiny prop plane from La Ceiba and landed in a grassy field. We then took a dugout canoe deep into the rainforest where we observed some of the most incredible wildlife: crocodiles, toucans, monkeys, and tropical foliage. From there we traveled by foot 15 miles deeper in the forest and stayed in a beautiful little village. The people who lived there were hospitable, friendly, and cooked wonderful meals of plantains, rice, and chicken for us.
 
While it’s easy to romanticize these parts of the world, these areas are obviously extremely poor and have their own set of issues. Ford’s character believed he could make a difference, and when things go horribly wrong for him, it’s not pretty.

Chicago.

The first time I remember ever paying attention to it as something distinct (unlike, say, St. Louis), was when I saw The Fugitive, and Harrison Ford made a phone call from some skyscraper-heavy downtown…that didn’t look like NYC. It looked just as it does in this photo above–which I took a year ago, on my first visit to the city.

Chicago wasn’t a key element in the showy way that New York is for Sex and the City. It’s just kind of quietly, ruggedly….there. I don’t love Chicago as well as I love London and Amsterdam. But it was a perfect setting for a no-nonsense doctor who had to clear his name in order to survive.

Check out the first 90 seconds of the clip below. The director gives major screen space to the city, between the 360-degree turn while Dr. Kimble is on the phone to the panoramic windows in the Feds’ offices.

I want to spend more time in Chicago. I was only downtown long enough to snap that top photo, but the square solidity of those buildings intrigued me. They made me think of one of my favorite poems, “Skyscraper” by Carl Sandburg.

Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the
earth and hold the building to a turning planet.
Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and
hold together the stone walls and floors.

…

Behind the signs on the doors they work and the walls
tell nothing from room to room.
Ten-dollar-a-week stenographers take letters from
corporation officers, lawyers, efficiency engineers,
and tons of letters go bundled from the building to all
ends of the earth.
Smiles and tears of each office girl go into the soul of
the building just the same as the master-men who
rule the building

….

By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars
and has a soul.”

You can read the whole thing here.

Just one note about The Fugitive: When I first mentioned including this flick to Betty, she gave me one of her patented “you’re kidding, right?” looks. At first, I thought of including it because our list is so damn girly (and some Jane Austen is around the corner). But the truth is it’s just an incredible action-packed film. If I come across it on cable and there’s only an hour left, I will watch it anyway because it’s so darn good.

5. I Know Where I’m Going! (1945)

Joan Webster could teach Carrie Bradshaw a thing or two about style. She may be headed to the moody, rainy Hebrides, but she’s a girl who wears her leopard pillbox hat–with matching clutch, natch–for an arduous day of trains, boats, and ferries. She’s the “I” in I Know Where I’m Going–and even with the best of her city-girl plans, her life is about to be uprooted by a charming Scottish laird.

In her tidy train cabin, she pulls out her typewritten itinerary. But as any traveler knows, things don’t always follow The Plan. Bad weather keeps her boat in the harbor, and to top things off, she’s stuck on a bus full of chatty locals dissing her rich fiance. This movie reminds me of trips I’ve had: a journey that just. will not. bend. to your will.

The laird talks her into accompanying him to a céilidh, where villagers are working off their haggis in a hopping dance that shakes the wooden floorboards. I won’t spoil the rest.

The Hebrides have an ancient majesty–a perfect setting for a stormy romance. This movie is a 1940s rom-com, but with a sincerity that pays homage to this tucked-away corner of the world.

When I did make it to Iona (a small island in the Hebrides) a few months after I first saw this film, I was prepared to be unimpressed. How many places live up to our vision of them–a vision from a 50-year-old film?

This one did.

Mull (another Hebrides island, shown below) and Iona (above) are just the same as the movie: romantic, stormy, and beautiful.

Alex lives in East Berlin. It’s 1989. His mom falls into a coma for a few months, and in that time the Berlin Wall falls. Mom wakes up, and because she’s a true believer in Communism, he painstakingly recreates all the aspects of East Berlin that are quickly evaporating in front of his eyes.

Turns out that prolonging the Iron Curtain isn’t that far-fetched. Around the time of this movie, Travel + Leisure covered the trend of bars in Berlin with Communist-era decor and themes. More recently, someone opened a Stasi-themed bar. Yikes. (For more on the Stasi–the East German secret police–see the excellent and depressing film, The Lives of Others.)

I understand the appeal, though. When I visited L.A. last year, I had a blast with friends at Bar Lubitsch, a red-tinged, white-tiled, retro-themed Communist-era bar. Under Constructivist posters, I socked back my share of Polish potato vodka. A retro patina makes anything fun to visit. I’d want to have a snack at one of these restaurants when I was in the former Eastern Bloc.

Plus, sometimes when I look at Dwell magazine, it resembles the Brutalist architecture of the Eastern Bloc more than anything else, as in this example from UnhappyHipsters.com. Everything becomes hip again, I guess.

“The Motorcycle Diaries” is the film adaptation of Ernesto “Fuser” (Better known as Che) Guevara’s journals that recount his amazing motorcycle South America road trip right before college graduation.

Beginning in Buenos Aires, Che and his buddy Alberto Granado spend months making their way up the continent on their beloved but beat-up moto, “The Mighty One.”

It’s a great tale of friendship and Latin America, brilliantly displaying Che’s budding disillusionment with capitalism. While actor and major dreamboat Gael García Bernal did a great job depicting Che, it was his partner-in-crime played by Rodrigo de la Serna that stole the show for me.

This film made me want to explore South America immediately. While I’ve now really only seen the eastern part of Argentina, in order to trace their track I must go over the Andes and along the coastline of Chile, through Peru and into Venezuela. Che and Alberto’s route took them 5,000 miles. Imagine that journey today, even with modern motorcycles and mobile phone coverage. Che was a travel revolutionary.

Buenos Aires: Where Che started his motorcycle diary.