I think there's a difference between a travel movie and a movie about living indefinitely in an exotic place that's different from your place of origin.
For example, The Daily Beast includes Out of Africa on its best-travel-movie list, but I view this movie as a story about a woman who lives in Africa, not about travel. Ditto for a movie like Slumdog Millionaire, a movie on several "top travel movie lists," but in which travel doesn't occur, unless we're talking travel between socio-economic strata. It just happens to be set somewhere other than the first world. On the other hand, I agree with its listing of Up, Raiders of the Last Ark, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Borat as travel movies.
So for what they're worth, following are some lists of best travel movies:
The Daily Beast: World's 12 Best Travel Movies
T-Roy at Backpacking.com: Top 10 Travel Movies to Get You Going
SeattleTravels: Top 30 Movies About Travel
Budget Travel's 6 Most Inspiring Travel Films of the Year (2011), via NBC. I would have linked this straight to Budget Travel, but that site is riddled with in-your-face pop-ups.
Based on the above lists, I'm going to check out these two movies I haven't seen:
- Into the Wild
- Eurotrip
Living Rootless' List of Best Travel Movies:
Up
The Wind Journeys. The action is pretty interesting, but the diverse scenery in Colombia is other-worldly. Some day I will go to Colombia, all because of this movie.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Almost all of the IJ franchise movies are good, but this is the best.
Up in the Air
National Lampoon's Vacation
Star Wars
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (how can this not be on any lists of best travel movies?!)
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The African Queen
Little Big Man
What are your favorite travel movies?
