Robert Frank, the Swiss-born photographer and filmmaker, was six years shy of 100 when he died, in 2019. Now, his film Candy Mountain, a glorious 1987 road movie co-directed with and written by Rudy Wurlitzer, has been restored in a 2K print. Candy Mountain stars Kevin J. O’Connor as Julius, a struggling Lower East Side musician who is hired by a rock star (David Johansen) to track down Elmore Silk (Harris Yulin), a revered but mysterious maker of acoustic guitars. The quest takes the rudderless Julius from New York’s Bowery to Nova Scotia, with unexpected stops along the way: he sips whiskey with Silk’s golf-loving brother (Tom Waits) and is held captive by a guitar-strumming guy named Leon (Leon Redbone). Featuring Dr. John, Rita MacNeil, Laurie Metcalf, and Joe Strummer, the film was little seen upon its initial release. Nevertheless, it has a place within the canon of existential road movies such as Monte Hellman’s 1971 Two-Lane Blacktop (also written by Wurlitzer) and Jim Jarmusch’s 1984 Stranger than Paradise. —David Stewart