Sunny Cinema
What makes a good summer movie? There’s a few things that stick out in my mind when thinking about summer movies and it’s some combination of the following: Water, beaches, sunshine, heat, deserts, adventure, campfires, end of school, at a crossroads of life, vacations and just being set during summer. Are those all obvious? Well yeah, most of them. Still valid though. With those in mind I’ve broken down a lot of my favorite summer films into distinct categories to catalog and praise them as best I can. If you’re looking for something new to watch or are reminded of one you already have, I hope you find movies you like on this list to watch in between making smores, stargazing and propping up your dead friend at their beach house all weekend.
Honorable Mentions:
Avatar: The Way of Water – I’m not an Avatar guy and this movie is a damn near copy of the first one. Military bad, nature good, that shallow schtick. I agree with that sentiment but that’s like making a movie and saying “sex is awesome and stubbing your toe sucks”. Like yeah, no shit dude. They even brought back several characters who bit it in the previous entry, including the main villain. Way to establish real stakes there, Jim. At least I don’t think they say the word ‘Unobtainium’ this time around, guess they let go of the screenwriter who came up with that gem. But by the rules of my own list this one does take place mainly on water and the visuals and effects are downright gorgeous. James Cameron makes at worst very solid and watchable films so if you like these movies I’m sure you’ve already seen it five times. That’s the only way I can fathom how these things have made over 5 billion dollars.
The Goonies – Set in rainy Oregon, I always saw this film as more of a fall movie. But I’ve seen it pop up on several other summer movie lists and it’s a really fun time so yeah I don’t have a problem including it here.
Breaking Away – I haven’t seen it recently enough to extoll about it properly but what I remember is a nice little film about a group of friends and not knowing what to do next after graduating high school. It will make you nostalgic for the friends you hung out with back then and thinking “well at least I’ve got these guys.” It will also make you want to go out and get a road bicycle as cycling is the main character’s passion and the set piece for the competitive racing finale.
The Sandlot – I saw this one several times as a kid but never returned to it. It’s a solid family film with some memorable scenes and phrases that have entered the cultural lexicon (“You’re Killing Me Smalls!”) I really enjoy the James Earl Jones cameo at the end, guess the dude really loves baseball. Just ask Kevin Costner.
National Lampoon’s Vacation and Vacation (2015) – I saw both of these earlier this year. They’re pretty dumb. Which isn’t a bad thing but yeah they just didn’t quite do it for me. Also Ed Helms is no Chevy Chase. He’s not as much of an asshole but he doesn’t have the charm either.
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial – I have three Spielberg movies on the list already. He’s the king for a reason but three is enough. Great movie though, even if they did replace the police guns with walkie talkies in later cuts. Spielberg should probably stop hanging out with George Lucas so much.
Sex Drive – Watch this movie for James Marsden. He’s hilarious in it. Let James Marsden do more weird shit goddammit! We are wasting this guy’s career. Also the Unrated Cut actually swaps out different takes and lines in certain scenes and gives it a much weirder, meta flavor instead of adding the usual 12 extra expletives and a couple nipples. Have more fun with alternative cuts, Hollywood. And get James Marsden out of Sonic movies, he’s better than that.
The Shallows – The only one of the Jaws descendants that I actually routinely return to and greatly enjoy, this movie finds Blake Lively as a surfer at a secluded beach who finds herself battling the tide and a hungry Great White as the clock ticks against her. It works super well and you’re in and out in under 90 minutes. That’s a great time investment. We need less bloated 3 hour epics and more 90 minute slugfests. This one will go on my 100 minutes or less awesome films list. Expect that one by 2027.
Little Miss Sunshine – This is a great movie. What a cast. Greg Kinnear, Toni Collete, Steve Carrell, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin (who won the Oscar for this role.) That’s a fucking stacked cast and they are all bringing the heat including Dano in a mostly mute role. Wikipedia describes this movie as a “2006 American tragicomedy road film” and that’s a pretty apt description. While I love it, I don’t really think of it when I think of summer movies. But it’s shown up on other summer lists, it’s got a road trip at the center of it and sunshine is in the freaking title so I’ll include it here.
500 Days of Summer – I don’t think of this as a summer movie, despite the title. The film takes place over the course of 500 days, obviously. But even if it does include at least two summers in those 500 days, that would mean the rest of the movie is set outside of summer. Am I weird for thinking about it analytically like that? Definitely. Is the title not meant to be taken that way because the girl the protagonist is interested in is literally named Summer and they’re talking about her and not the actual season? Absolutely. But I still see this movie popping up on a lot of summer films lists and so I had to make my issues with that assessment clear. While I liked this movie a lot when I was younger, I don’t think it’s aged that great. Guy falls in love with manic pixie dream girl, they date for a bit, she dumps him and he’s butthurt and dejected that she refuses to love him back. Just kind of gives a bit of incel vibes now.
Miami Vice – This is a very 2006 movie. Its teaser trailer featured the Linkin Park and Jay-Z “Numb/Encore” mashup. Colin Farrell is sweating cocaine every second he’s on screen. Jaime Foxx, coming off an Oscar win for Ray, was described as “unpleasant to work with” which is industry speak for being a giant asshole. They even had to scrap shooting the entire planned finale for the film after he heard gunshots on set and flew back to the United States and refused to return. What a shit show. But this film did give us a scene where one character invites Colin Farrell to join her for mojitos and then proceeds to take a speedboat from Miami to Havana just to drink, dance and bang in the middle of the film. God we used to be a real country.
Superhero Films – I didn’t want to put any superhero films on this list since that’s the majority of what we’ve gotten now for a solid decade. Not that I don’t enjoy a good number of them but I wanted to highlight other films that have been overtaken by the cape genre. Some that give me distinctly summer vibes are: Iron Man, Aquaman, The Avengers, The Suicide Squad (not the Ayer one, yeesh), Logan and Wonder Woman 1984 but only if you want to laugh at that last one.
With those out of the way, we’re doing the next part category style cause I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.
End of School, Start of Summer:
Superbad/Booksmart – These movies are two sides of the same coin. I enjoy Booksmart too much to simply call it “the female Superbad” but the similarities are striking. They both feature the classic introvert/extrovert best friends who are finishing up high school and are unsure of the future away from each other and want to have one crazy night and try to warm up to the popular kids as a last ditch effort to be cool. They’re also reflections in that Jonah Hill and Beanie Feldstein who play main characters in each are real life siblings.
Superbad is a certified classic by now and has spawned dozens of well known catchphrases and cultural touchpoints. I still see the McLovin driver’s license on t-shirts here and there. The cast have gone on to win Oscars, Emmys and create the Amazon superhero universe. It was lightning in a bottle for 2007 and if you haven’t seen it by now why are you still reading this?
Booksmart on the other hand is a movie that I don’t hear many people talk about. Helmed by Olivia Wilde in her 2019 directing debut, the film was seen as her entrance into the pantheon of possible Next Big Directors before she was publicly derided for divorcing Jason Sudeikis at the peak of Ted Lasso’s popularity, turning in a critical bomb as her next feature and banging one fifth of One Direction. Still, those have nothing to do with this film which actually features her now ex-husband as the protagonists’ well meaning principal and maligned uber driver. It has an excellent young cast that all feel lived in and I hope this one eventually reaches a similar regard that Superbad currently holds.
Dazed and Confused – Before Superbad and Booksmart, there was Dazed and Confused. Much more of an ensemble than those films, this Richard Linklater classic highlights the various ongoings of a Texas small town on the last day of school for its student body. Which is mainly get high, try to score booze, avoid hazing and ponder what’s to come. I really enjoy all in one day movies like these three. Some of its cast have gone on to do great things like Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey. Others have made total shit, like Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey. Both Oscar winners now though, pretty alright alright alright if you ask me.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – Set in the final stretch before graduation, this movie finds Matthew Broderick and writer/direction John Hughes at their most likable. I’ve watched this movie at least fifty times and some of the line readings like “NINE TIMES” are singed into my brain. It’s got everything. The fake phone calls, the 4th wall breaks, the downtown musical numbers, the Ferrari, the suicidal machinations of the titular character’s depressed best friend. It’s got it all.
Eurotrip – Did you forget about Eurotrip? I didn’t. It’s still a lot of fun and Scotty Doesn’t Know remains a top 10 all time fictional movie song. Which is helped by that incredible cameo. I go back to this movie every couple years and keep expecting to not like it as much but no it’s still funny and stupid and moves along well. And that’s good enough for me. Doesn’t make me want to go to Bratislava though. The winters can be very depressing.
Animated Bangers:
Porco Rosso – There’s several Hayao Miyazaki films that could fill this slot. A lot of them give a sunny warmth that emanates through the screen. Kiki’s Delivery Service has the nice seaside town setting, Ponyo covers the journey of an evolving goldfish and Spirited Away will forever stick with me for its melancholic sunset train ride over the water. But Porco Rosso is my pick here for simply being a really great time. Voiced in the English Dub with affable surliness by Michael Keaton, Porco is a former fighter pilot who was turned into a pig and is now a jaded bounty hunter. I went in not expecting much and now I think it’s my favorite Miyazaki film.
Moana – I think Disney adults are weird. If you’re in your 30s and you’d still rather spend an arm and a leg to walk around fucking Florida with Mickey Mouse ears for the same price you could go visit and stay in another country then I think you’re insane. Still, I understand being an adult blows and escapism is important. That’s why I’m still glad I can still enjoy the occasional Disney movie. I really like this one. The soundtrack is phenomenal, Dwayne Johnson is at least kind of not playing Dwayne Johnson for once and it all just looks terrific. Animation has really come a long way.
Finding Nemo – What a fun movie. Remember when we all liked Ellen Degeneres before finding out she was kind of awful? Good times. This movie totally holds up though, Pixar was really cooking with gas in the 2000s. Now not so much. Are we all excited for Toy Story 5? Can’t wait for that corpse to get propped up one more time. Especially since the last good one was a quarter century ago. Also, Finding Dory is a perfectly fine if much more forgettable sequel.
A Goofy Movie – I admittedly haven’t seen this one in a while but rented it a ton when me and my siblings were kids. This and Dumb and Dumber were the road trip movies for me growing up. The film comes to a pretty big emotional crescendo between Goofy and his son near the end and those were not words I thought I would ever write. The pizza in this movie also looks anime-level good which is quite an achievement.
Coming of Age Angst:
Adventureland – From the director of Superbad! I saw this one by myself at the Embassy theater in high school and fell in love with it immediately. While Superbad is all Apatow Era dick and weed jokes, this one is much more reserved, telling the story of Jesse Eisenberg’s character who’s home from college for the summer and gets a job at the local theme park to pass the time and save some money. It’s got a way better cast than anyone remembers. Kristen Stewart actually gets to act in this in between shooting Twilight films and Ryan Reynolds actually gets to not play a smartass for the only time in his career. Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are unsurprisingly scene stealing every time they’re on screen. As funny as it is, this one is much more real and somber than a lot of coming of age movies and it’s aged great. I love the ending too.
Stand by Me – This might be the best Stephen King adapted film and I say that as someone who’s never read a Stephen King novel. IT: Chapter 1 is great (Chapter 2 not so much), the Shawshank Redemption is a classic, The Shining and Doctor Sleep are excellent, especially in tandem and 1408 is underseen and underloved. But yeah this would be my choice. Following four boys on a quest to find a dead body in the woods, the chemistry here is off the charts. This was one of the first films I saw where the interplay and dialogue between the boys actually sounded like how me and my friends would talk. Director Rob Reiner deserves a lot of credit and started an incredible run here. His next 4 films are The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery and a Few Good Men. Are you shitting me!? What an incredible 5 movie run. Put it in the hall of fame.
Moonrise Kingdom – The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson’s Magnum Opus. It’s also a definitively winter film and if I make a winter list that one will definitely be on it. Moonrise Kingdom is a much less bombastic film for the most part, chronicling a probably doomed romance between its young leads who run away from their respective families to be with one another. It’s really cute but not played as silly or juvenile. It’s an awesome setting too, taking place on a remote New England island with a storm heading its way. In typical Wes Anderson fashion the film is coated in little stylistic flourishes, musical cues and bullseye casting. I never thought I’d see Bruce Willis in a Wes Anderson movie but he’s really endearing here. This is another movie I hope people find and watch if they haven’t already, it definitely deserves more love.
Licorice Pizza – High school boy develops a crush for a twenty something girl. She might like him back. Will they end up together? Classic conceit minus the age gap. There’s no other real plot to speak of, just an excuse to spend a couple hours in the 1970s San Fernando Valley hanging out with movie stars, selling some water beds and trying to capture young love. It’s not an all timer for me but Bradley Cooper’s completely unhinged second half performance sure is. He’s electric in this, we need more movie stars to get whacky parts and just let them loose.
The Big Chill – A different kind of coming of age film, this one brings back together a group of baby boomers to reconnect and commiserate after a member of their old friend group commits suicide. I know that’s a very somber reason to reunite everyone but they quickly fall back into a loving groove with one another and reflect on where they’re at in life, if their once hopeful inner lights have gone out and whether their friendships are as real as they think or just products of their shared college years. This is one of the great “people in rooms talking” films which is anchored by the terrific, lived in dialogue and one of the best casts assembled for this kind of thing. The standout for me is Tom Berenger, the guy just exudes movie stardom in this film. Why he didn’t become a bigger one is beyond me.
The Graduate – This is a tricky one. I doubt I’m the right person to talk about it. There’s been hundreds of critical analyses of this movie and its themes and whatnot. That’s not what this list is, I just dig movies. If you’re unfamiliar, The Graduate is about Dustin Hoffman’s character returning home after college and finding himself aimless about what or where to go next in life. He’s soon seduced by an older married woman and begins a sordid affair with her before eventually catching feelings for the woman’s daughter. Buoyed by an enduring Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, the film was a huge commercial and critical success. Also maybe one of the best endings ever.
4th of July Movies
The Rock – The only film in this section not explicitly set around the 4th of July, the Rock’s explosions, car chases and shootouts are so vehemently American that you can smell the Red, White and Blue coming off the screen. The premise is a group of ex-Patriots steal chemical weapons and take over Alcatraz as a way to strongarm the US government into paying a ransom so they can honor their former fallen comrades who never received proper burials or payments to their families. Meanwhile, Nicolas Cage and a very game Sean Connery must infiltrate the island, disarm the weapons and overcome the odds to save the day. Fuck yeah. I want to buy this movie a beer. Michael Bay also never passes up an opportunity to pepper his films with shots of the American Flag. This guy definitely cums in his pants a little every time he hears the Star Spangled Banner. I consider this his best film but that’s not super high praise. People love the Transformers movies but those just look like toaster ovens having a gang bang to me, I can’t comprehend who could possibly like that art design. You could also place Armageddon here as another Michael Bay, Bud Lite patriotism movie. That one’s at least a lot of fun if you can get past Ben Affleck trying to get in Liv Tyler’s pants set to a ballad sung by the actress’s father.
Independence Day – C’mon, do I really need to explain this one? Yeah it’s silly. They win the day with a computer virus. But it’s still a heck of a good time. This was back when Will Smith was Will FUCKING Smith and Jeff Goldblum was everyone’s favorite weird line delivery king. Also points to Bill Pullman for playing one of the greatest on screen presidents ever. The guy actually fights in the final battle, no bone spurs crap for him. Great speech too.
Live Free or Die Hard – I feel like I only ever hear people talk about the first three Die Hard movies. I get that, those are the OGs. But this one is great too. Another all-in-one-day film, this one takes John McClane all over Washington DC and the surrounding areas to stop a cyber terrorist who’s bringing down the entire US infrastructure on 4th of July for ego and financial gain. Of course McClane don’t know nothing about no cyber stuff so his more analog solution is just to shoot a lot of people until the job is done. Solid plan. The film gets a lot from its supporting cast with Mary Elizabeth Winstead playing his perpetually pissed off daughter and Justin Long as the put-upon sidekick who’s job is to explain the 21st century to him. The best performance though comes from a pre-Justified Timothy Olyphant who’s a total star in this and the best villain of the series outside of Alan Rickman. Also make sure to watch the theatrical cut. It just works better.
Fun Romantic Comedies
Forgetting Sarah Marshall – This one came out of nowhere but was such a pleasant surprise at the time. This was the first time I’d seen Jason Segel or Russell Brand and it’s easily the best film for both, the latter fizzling out after being the surprise star of this. The same can be said of Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell who both turn in career best work. Jack McBrayer, Bill Hader and Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill round out the stellar supporting cast. A movie about being miserable in the most beautiful place on Earth, it finds its footing early and keeps a good pace the whole way through. While Segel never became a full fledged star, he deserves a lot of credit for writing and getting this one made, it’s honestly incredible that anyone’s first screenplay turns out this good.
Crazy Rich Asians – I’d heard this one was good but never sought it out and ended up watching it on a Southwest flight on a whim. Really glad I did because yeah everyone was right. Everything works in it, you’re rooting for the main characters the whole way and the third act complications don’t bother me as much as they do in other films like this. It even makes Awkwafina bearable in this. I find her blasian shit pretty grating for the most part but it’s tolerable in this one. They apparently low balled the writer of this and the sequel is stuck in development hell but hey at least this one worked out really well.
Palm Springs – I like Andy Samberg more than most, I’ll admit that. While I think Popstar was a bit of a misfire, I think all the Lonely Island albums are good and Hot Rod is totally unassailable. So going in I figured this one was going to work for me and it totally did. Set in, you guessed it, Palm Springs, the film follows Samberg’s character who’s stuck in a Groundhog’s Day cycle and has resigned himself to never escaping it and just getting drunk and numbing himself to the realities of his situation every day. Things are thrown for a loop (haha) when another character finds herself stuck in the same every day cycle with him and he basically teaches her how everything works which is a novel twist on the Groundhog’s Day formula. JK Simmons is also killer in this in a role I love but won’t spoil and is the kind of role guys like Giancarlo Esposito should get instead of being typecast again and again. Also this movie is nice and breezy and made for only $5 million. This is what we need more of, we should get 20 of these a year easily.
Silly Ass Good Times
Tropic Thunder – This movie is a miracle. I think if you tried to make a major studio movie today that prominently features blackface and the fallacies of “going full retard”, you wouldn’t make it past the studio lobby. Co-written and directed by Ben Stiller after his star had already been fading for a years, the film follows a fictional cast trying to make a war movie in and about Vietnam and end up chewing off way more than they bargained for. There’s action, there’s comedy, there’s Tom Cruise looking like a Jewish gorilla. Everyone in this is super up for the material and making it sing. Cruise and Downey Jr are definitely the highlights for me, with the latter scoring the first and probably only mostly blackface Oscar nomination. Don’t see that one happening again. Also the Full Retard speech and Satan’s Alley trailer are both 10/10.
Wet Hot American Summer – I love genre parody movies. Airplane, Scary Movie, Blazing Saddles, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Not Another Teen Movie. Give me a few a year that are actually decent and I’ll see them all. This one features a supremely stacked ensemble cast from The State comedy troupe and has remained hilarious since it came out in 2001. Taking place on the last day of summer camp with full grown adults playing the camp counselors, you’ll be surprised at how many people you recognize who have gone on to other great things. I can’t really go into it very much without just talking about bit after bit but I will say that my favorite is their brief excursion into town for the afternoon. If you like dumb parodies as much as I do you’ll really get a kick out of this.
Piranha 3D – Should I be ashamed that I like this movie? Probably but eh. This came out during one of the many times movie studios tried to restart the 3D movie craze. I always hated them and found the glasses distracting but hey at least you can make a drinking game if you look for all the times in these movies where there’s an obvious 3D moment. The movie itself is a classic ‘monsters kill people’ film. Ancient piranhas are accidentally set loose at an Arizona lake bed during Spring Break and proceed to munch on all the horny teenagers and adults dumb enough to be partying and having sex during a horror movie. It’s never scary but always fun. This is very much a light beer of a movie. You might forget it the moment it’s over but you’ll enjoy the time spent with it.
22 Jump Street – A vastly superior sequel to an already good first film, this movie killed every audience I saw it with back when it was in theaters. I mean there were tears being shed. The standouts for me are the prison visit, the drug hallucinations, the slam poetry open mic and every moment Ice Cube is on screen. If you haven’t returned to this one in a while, you won’t regret it. I’m seriously bummed we never got a third one of these. It also features the single best closing credits in the history of filmmaking, I will be surprised if it’s ever topped.
Club Dread – People love Super Troopers and Beerfest but almost no one talks about this one, the movie Broken Lizard made between those two films. Set on an island getaway for party guys and gals, the movie parodies slasher films as the body count rises and everyone tries to guess who the killer is. It’s a movie that really knows what it is and is having a lot of fun with itself. It also features one of the last really fun Bill Paxton performances as the island’s proprietor and Jimmy Buffet stand-in, Coconut Pete. You know, the guy who made big hits like Piña Colada Burg. That’s the high IQ level of comedy we’re dealing with here.
The Lost Boys – From Joel Schumacher, the guy who brought you Bat Nipples, comes a much better movie about vampires feeding on a beach town and the newly arrived family who become involved with them. One brother joins them, the other tries to kill them. It’s a solid setup and while nothing about the movie is really standout aside from maybe Keifer Sutherland who was born to play a vampire at some point, it’s an enjoyable time from start to finish and another 100 minute and under gem.
The Rundown – So you’re gonna have to trust me on this one but there was actually a time where Dwayne Johnson used to actually act instead of just playing himself in everything. I think this is back when he wanted to be an actor instead of a brand. He’s really good in this, playing a bounty hunter trying to get out of the game and open his own restaurant. To do that he needs to track down his client’s son in a south american mining town, played by Seann William Scott. After the typical meet cute they’re forced to flee into the jungle, chased by Christopher Walken and his goons. This one kind of gets forgotten about but it’s so much fun and the final wild west showdown goes stupid hard. If you haven’t liked a Rock movie in a while, you’ll like this one.
Crawl – A hurricane is about to hit Florida. Our protagonist heads into the storm to make sure her father’s okay. He’s not. He’s trapped in his basement and being set upon by gators. Big, angry gators. And the water’s rising from the flooding. And shit’s hitting the fan. And people are getting ripped to shreds. Are you fucking in yet?
The Hangover – Remember how hard we all laughed when we saw this in theaters? Remember “not at the table Carlos”? Remember Tyson punching out Alan? Remember the other great closing credits montage on this list? What a movie, this shit was a moment. Just don’t talk about the sequels, we don’t acknowledge them.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou – Hey another Wes Anderson film! This one’s about a marine biologist on a quest to find and kill the Jaguar shark who devoured his best friend. Not your typical Wes setup. So of course along the way he has to grapple with his crumbling marriage, his dire financial situation and finding out that he has a (possibly) biological son in Owen Wilson who just wants to bond with his father and joins the crew despite zero nautical experience. This one is divisive. Some people hate it, some people love it. It’s on this list so you can guess which camp I fall into. The set design, music and stop motion sea creatures are all fantastic and worth the price of entry alone.
The Parent Trap (1998) – Haven’t seen it in a while but had a ton of fun with it and my sisters when we were younger. Drugs really robbed us of a great Lindsay Lohan career. But she’s great in this pulling double duty, as are her parents played by Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson (RIP). Even better are there excellently cast housekeeper and butler, who walk away with every scene they’re in. It’s a Nancy Meyers movie so everything looks expensive and enviable and she makes sure to give you all the California homestead porn you can expect from her films.
George of the Jungle – I think I saw this like 7 times in theaters. I remember we went in like week 6 for a matinee showing and it was sold out. Can you imagine that happening now with any film? No shot. This and The Mummy (we’ll get to that) made Brendan Frasier a superstar and he earns it with excellent comic timing, great chemistry with Leslie Mann and genuine pathos that is missing from a lot of roles like this. This movie just slayed me when I was younger, I thought it was the funniest thing ever. Again, I wish they still made movies like this.
Fast Five – I have to put one Fast and Furious movie on the list and this one is the most summer-y one and also my favorite. It’s the first in the series to bring in cast members from all the other films and create the ongoing structure that the rest of the films in the series would ape off of. Come for the train heist, the favela shootout and the Rock vs Vin Diesel throwdown and stay for the absolutely bonkers bank vault getaway in the film’s climax. I don’t know how they did that.
Glass Onion – I got to see this in theaters for the one week it actually played there. Fuck you Netflix. This movie was a blast to see with an audience but apparently got only a lukewarm reception from people watching it at home. Not super surprising, movies tend to be worse when you’re only half watching them in between Tik Toks on your phone. Especially a whodunit where details, especially visual, really matter to the proceedings. Knives Out was great, this is a worthy follow up and I’m very excited for the next one. Hopefully I’ll get to see it in theaters again. Seriously fuck you Netflix. No shit it looks like I’m not at home, it’s not my account. You think that’s gonna make me pay for my own? No chance in hell, I’ll just pirate what I want to watch like a normal person.
Isolation and Immolation
Cast Away – Great film, there’s really nothing like it. I can’t watch the Wilson scene without bawling. I can’t do it. I can barely look at volleyballs the same way. Hanks delivers excellent work again with Zemekis after working with him on Forrest Gump. This is a real emotionally excruciating film, especially the last half hour. Bring some tissues.
A Perfect Getaway – This one’s so underrated. It stars Milla Jovovich and Steve Zahn as a honeymooning couple in Hawaii who set off on a cliffside hiking trail despite news of serial killers possibly being in the area. Along the way they meet two other couples featuring Timothy Olyphant as a well meaning Army Vet and a rugged not-yet-Chris Hemsworth Chris Hemsworth. As stories begin to unravel and doubts creep in, you’re looking for signs about who the real killers could be. Everyone’s good and Zahn gets to play against type a bit but Olyphant owns the film. Dude is just a king, he should’ve been a major star twice over by now. Anyway, great Hawaii thriller.
Midsommar – The movie Ari Aster made after Hereditary, this one starts with what might be the darkest and most fucked up opening scene I’ve ever seen. Not shocking from the guy who gave us the telephone pole scene in his previous film. After suffering a tragedy, Florence Pugh’s Dani goes with her boyfriend and his friends to a midsommar festival in Sweden. Already on shaky ground, her romantic relationship is further strained by what they witness there and since this is an Ari Aster film, it’s safe to say that it’s not good. Praised for being one of the few sunny and daylit horror movies while still being messed up and scary, the film’s ending is very divisive with reactions ranging from ghoulish disgust to “YAS QUEEN”. I don’t know where I fall on that topic but I do know it was a memorable time seeing this one in theaters.
Sweetheart – I don’t think this is streaming anywhere now but I caught it back when it first came on Netflix after hearing good things about it. The premise is basically what if we made Castaway but with a monster plaguing the protagonist at night? That’s a good enough setup for me. The other aspects aren’t as strong but the central conceit is and it has one of the coolest original movie monsters I’ve seen in a while.
Apostle – You’ve seen the Raid movies right? If not you should see them, they’ve got the best action fight choreography around. Anyway, the director of those films made a horror film set on an island where Dan Stevens must infiltrate a religious cult in an attempt to rescue his sister who has been taken by them. Pretty dope premise. There’s a lot of bloodshed and really sick gore and effects. I hated the villain as much as any I can remember in recent times. And I love Dan Stevens, he’s my favorite actor working today. Make sure to see The Guest too if you haven’t.
Shutter Island – I don’t know why this one is seen as one of the lesser entries in Scorcese’s filmography. It really holds up for me, even after knowing all the information on subsequent viewings. I really love the first hour where the setting of the asylum on the island is established and a tropical storm is rolling in. Give me a movie where there’s a killer setting and a storm about to hit it and I’m in every time. The movie oozes atmosphere from its pores and the gradual shift it makes between the first and second halves of this are really why Scorcese is one of the best.
Infinity Pool – I’ve sung this movie’s praises already when I named it the favorite film I saw last year so I won’t go into it too much. I also think it’s better viewed when you know less about it. But it’s got thrills, chills, sick performances and a really inventive visual style. It’s stuck with me still today and I hope more people experience it.
Rear Window – You watch movies like this and realize Old Hollywood was really special and we’re never getting that back. The technicolor of it all makes the film sing and I adore that you can really see and feel that this movie was made and shot on a backlot. The set design is so built and that really works in its favor. The story itself is good, you know the gist. Photographer is stuck at home with an injury and begins spying on his neighbors to alleviate his boredom and learns more than what he bargained for. This was later updated with Disturbia if you remember that one. I think this is one of Hitchock’s best and many others do too.
The Summer Blockbusters
Raiders of the Lost Ark – Did you start playing the Indiana Jones theme song in your head when you read this title because I did. Another miracle of a movie, this is what happens when you bring in the best director, the best screenwriter, the best movie star, the best composer and one of the best producing teams to make an all time CLASSIC that totally holds up and bests most modern films despite being made over 40 years ago. When I think of adventure films I think Indiana Jones and this is the best one of the series, easily. Temple of Doom is meh, Last Crusade is unquestionably second best, Crystal Skull is bad and Dial of Destiny was fine but unnecessary. Raiders is still the adventure film that all others must measure up to and is still at the top of the mountain.
Jurassic Park – Wow, another Spielberg movie. Shocking. This will not be the last time one of his films is on this list. But it will be the last one that ends in ‘ark’. A movie so good it spawned two alright sequels and one okay to bad trilogy reboot, Jurassic Park was a high water mark for CGI and spectacle when it came out in 1994. In addition to the dinosaurs themselves and the fun cast of characters who will partially be devoured, the film features one of my favorite tropes in that a giant storm is set to hit an island and throw things into chaos. But do I really need to sell you Jurassic Park? No I don’t but credit where credit’s due.
Point Break – I actually didn’t get around to seeing this one until a few years ago but what a slick ride. Keanu’s Reeves’ FBI Agent and former college football star Johnny Utah must infiltrate and gain the trust of a group of bank robbers known as the Dead Presidents who are California surfers by day, led by their enigmatic leader played by Patrick Swayze. That’s a hilariously over the top premise, I need it injected into my fucking veins. The chemistry between the younger Reeves and Swayze is the strong backbone of this film which features chases, shootouts, beach football, skydiving, surfing and campfires and screaming while shooting a gun in the air. This movie runs on sun tan lotion and red bull. It’s got a fantastic ending too, one that could only work in a film as over the top as this one.
Speed – Speed rules. An LAPD SWAT officer played by Keanu Reeves is being toyed with by a terrorist who tells him he must keep the bus he’s on at high speed, otherwise it will instantly explode if it falls below 50 miles per hour. That’s a killer premise. In lesser hands you can only get maybe an hour out of that premise before it starts to fall flat. Not here, as it keeps things sizzling for two hours of nonstop thrills. That’s an impressive feat by first time director Jan de Bont who’s next film, Twister, can be read up on further down this list. And it’s not just action that holds this one together. Keanu and Sandra Bullock have some dynamite chemistry going on here, you truly believe they’re about to jump each other’s bones as the film concludes.
The Great Gatsby – This could also work as a 4th of July film, given the amount of fireworks and bombast that pours out of the first act like champagne across Gatsby’s extravagant mansion. While I never really held any great love for the book it’s based on after reading it in school, the movie works much better for me by highlighting the things that work and minimizing the things that don’t. Toby McGuire excels as Nick Caraway in the best fitting role he’s ever been cast in and his on screen chemistry with real life best friend Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby is a big part of why this adaptation works so well. But this is Baz Lurmahn’s movie and he only knows one way to do things which is make everything larger than life. I love how he creates this fictionalized roaring 20s New York, with the opulence of Wall Street and East Egg contrasted with the grimy blue collar Valley of the Ashes. It’s a movie of high and lows, haves and have nots, great joy and utter despair. I rewatched it again recently and it’s aged like wine.
Forrest Gump – I don’t know why this is a summer movie. To most people it’s probably not. But for a while when I was a kid we watched it at the beach every year so that’s how I associate it. Played deftly by Tom Hanks not going Full Retard, Forrest becomes an instantly iconic and beloved character from the moment he shows up on the bus stop in a white suit. There’s been several re-evaluations over the years of this film with people claiming it’s cheap nostalgia or outrageously silly or has fake sentimentality. I’ve never gotten that. To me it’s still as strong as it was when I first saw it and has characters you root and care for like Bubba, Lieutenant Dan, Momma Gump and Jenny who all come in and out of Forrest’s life as we catch up to modern day Forrest on the bus stop. I’ve made it through this film without crying a couple times but it’s not often.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – It kind of sucks that only a couple guys left get to make hundred million dollar movies anymore that aren’t sci-fi, action, superhero or established IPs. Because these movies are really fun! What’s the plot of this movie? Does it even have one? It’s Rick Dalton’s career being on life support, Cliff Booth supporting him and Margot Robbie showing her bare feet while Tarantino rubs one out behind the camera for 3 hours. But that’s enough and it’s a great time. Sure it has an action scene at the climax but this is still Tarantino, he wasn’t gonna finish things off without someone getting their clock cleaned. The highlight for me is Dicaprio’s breakdown in his movie set trailer, that’s career best stuff on the level of the stairs scene in Wolf of Wall Street. Please let other people make big, weird movies.
The River Wild – Meryl Streep attempts to save her strained marriage by going on a white water rafting trip with her family but are held up by Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly as armed fugitives who take them hostage. That’s a pretty unique setup for this kind of film and they get the most mileage they can out of it. I don’t think I’ve seen another river set thriller before. Streep almost drowned during one take during shooting. There’s no CGI on this film, they did this shit for real and it shows. It’s an underrated gem, I never hear anyone talking about it but they should.
Twister – Twister? I barely even know her. (I’m sorry). Directed by Jan de Bont in between Speed movies, Twister is probably the best humans vs. natural disasters movie of the genre. Which isn’t saying much but is a little ironic that a Roland Emmerich movie doesn’t hold that title since he’s made a career out of them. Anyway, scientists want to be able to study tornadoes more thoroughly and the only way to do that is to launch their custom made tracking devices directly into them. The problem is that by getting so close they’re also very much risking their lives. It works really well and they even layer a love triangle over the proceedings to give everything a little more pop. Everyone in the main and supporting ensemble are great and we’re getting a sequel this year that I hope recaptures some of the magic this one had. Watch out for cows.
Con Air – Convicts take over a prison plane and the only one with a moral compass on board has to try to stop them by working with authorities on the ground. Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, John Malkovich, Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo, Steve Buscemi and even Dave Chappelle. Are you sold yet? The villain’s name is Cyrus the Virus. Okay, now you’re sold.
Mad Max: Fury Road – The further we get down this list the idea of trying to sell some of these movies just seems silly. So I’ll just stick to praising them. You know what this one is. It’s Mad Max where Tom Hardy mumbles, Charlize kicks ass and it features the best stunts and practical car crashes of maybe any film ever. The colors are also incredible like in the day for night scene where they fight the Bullet Farmer. Shots like that just stick with you, it’s gorgeous. Between moving and work I haven’t gotten the chance to go see Furiosa yet but given that it’s made by the same team, I wouldn’t doubt it will belong on a 2.0 version of this list.
The Mummy – This is how you make a summer blockbuster. This movie doesn’t have any right to be as good as it is. A Mummy remake? The guy in bandages who walks like he’s stuck in mud? Sure that could be good, maybe. Try phenomenal. Brendan Frasier is a full blown star here and Rachel Weisz becomes one over the course of the film. Their chemistry carries this film and its excellent sequel. It’s got great action scenes, it’s got a great villain, it’s got Ardeth motherfuckin’ Bay, one of the coolest supporting characters ever. And it’s scary, one scene in particular gave me nightmares as a kid. It’s just got it all and more and still absolutely rips today. It’s a shame they never made a third one.
Casino Royale – Oh yeah. This is the best Bond movie. To me this movie is 1A and Skyfall is 1B. Either can make a claim for the title but it’s gotta be Casino Royale for me. The excellent opening scene, the dynamite parkour chase in Madagascar, the eye candy in the Bahamas, the Miami airport cat and mouse, the poker scenes in Montenegro, the cock and ball torture, the Venice finale. This one’s got the juice and then some. All that alone would make for a top tier Bond film but it’s the addition of Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd that takes things to an entirely different level. In the final two Daniel Craig 007 films they try to set up Léa Seydoux as romantic foil for Bond. That shit looks like a tepid high school play compared to the chemistry that happens between Vesper and Bond. It really sizzles, you can feel them eye fucking each other through the screen. The shower scene alone, which isn’t played for sexiness at all, really drives home the stakes of their relationship and how well this was thought out and played out on screen. It’s the best Bond movie, it’s a killer summer movie, I want to rewatch it right now after typing this out.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl – Just banger after banger. My god. The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie and still the only great one (fight me), Curse of the Black Pearl was cooking with gas, charcoal, rum, all of it. Like how do you make a film based on a theme park ride and it’s this freaking good? I don’t know and I don’t care. I would put Captain Jack Sparrow’s character introduction up against any and all others. It works flawlessly every time I see it. While the film can get a little loopy late in the runtime with going to and leaving the island several times, it’s a minor complaint when everything else is working so good. And while the younger cast including Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley and Zoe Saldaña are all doing fine work, it’s the interplay between Sparrow and Geoffrey Rush’s Barbosa that gives the film so much life. There’s a reason they brought him back for the sequels. Which again aren’t the best but hey this one was always gonna be hard to top. Someone break Gore Verbinski out of director jail already.
Top Gun: Maverick – Hey it’s the movie that brought us out of a pandemic and gave us hope we could still have amazing summer blockbusters in the modern age! Yes it’s true that its finale is basically the Star Wars trench run. Who cares? I don’t. If you’ve seen this thing you don’t either. This is a far superior film to the original film. That one’s not bad but they are not even on the same playing field. Tom Cruise actually gets to have chemistry with his romantic partner this time around and having him go from student to teacher works wonders. And even with a young and eager cast surrounding him, he doesn’t even pretend for one second that he’ll let them get the spotlight. This is his film and in my opinion one of the top 5 in his filmography. With a resume as long and illustrious as his, that’s really saying something. Crank the sound up, grab a beer, and let art and dogfight football flow over you.
The Best One
Jaws – Oh yeah, this is the one. Jaws is without a doubt in my mind, the best summer movie of all time. It’s the movie that created summer blockbusters and reset the playing field when it came out in June 1975. Up until then the big movies were released in the winter and summer was seen as the dumping ground for movies the studios expected to take a loss on. Not anymore. The following year in 1976 Rocky would follow Jaws’ lead to box office glory and in 1977 the field was once again reset when a little film called Star Wars came along and changed everything. That three year run turned summer from the dumping ground to the blockbuster factory. And it all started with Jaws. Unless Despicable Me 4 comes out and really blows me away, Jaws will enter next summer having reigned as the premier summer movie for 50 straight years. Just incredible. This is the one that put Steven Spielberg on the map. He was hired on to direct the adaptation of the best selling book when he was just 26 years old. TWENTY SIX YEARS OLD!?!? That’s legitimately insane. In addition to creating the summer blockbuster, this film also propelled Spielberg onto the biggest stage possible and from there he rips off Close Encounters of the Close Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Temple of Doom, The Color Purple and produced Poltergeist and The Goonies all within the next 10 years. I don’t think I need to explain how good of a run that is.
No one would’ve guessed he’d go on to have such an incredible career and many within the crew thought he may never work again, given the litany of problems the productions of Jaws was plagued with. Let’s start with Jaws himself, the shark, nicknamed Bruce by the crew early in production. He was actually made up of three full size prop sharks and they all either stopped working, came apart or sank to the ocean floor and had to be retrieved by divers. Basically the shark of the shark movie didn’t want to work. Shooting on the ocean also caused problems as unwanted boats and ships would routinely come into frame and ruin shots and cameras would get soaked and destroyed. The budget ballooned from $4 million all the way to $9 million and disgruntled crew members even nicknamed the film “Flaws.” It got so bad that near the end Spielberg didn’t even show up for the final day of shooting, fearing that the crew would toss him in the water once filming had wrapped.
So did a shark movie that featured scarce shots of the shark, completely went over budget and was a miserable experience for everyone involved actually turn out to be a good movie? No, it turned out to be an all timer. A surefire Hall of Fame unanimous decision film. The shark not working well and being visible much? It totally worked in the film’s favor. Seeing less of it early on and mainly just the dorsal fin created a deeply unsettling and powerful visual of a predator that piled up the body count underneath the surface from the first scene on. Propelled viciously by John Williams’ stomach churning score, the combination of the two made for a terrifying movie monster and legitimately made people scared to go into the water for that summer of ‘75 and many more after that. The first time I saw this movie as a kid I was scared to even go into a pool which doesn’t make sense except that getting devoured alive looked so vigorously unpleasant that I was fine not taking my chances in any body of water.
Let’s keep the praise going. The New England town of Amity Island looks fantastic and lived in, shot in and around Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of ‘74. The aforementioned music is iconic, even outside the main theme. The choice to shoot on the actual sea instead of a water tank in some backlot gives the film an enduring authenticity and it just looks fucking great because of it. The cast are all tremendous. Roy Scheider exudes anxiousness as the NYC transplant cop Martin Brody, whose move to a rural island to chaperone as the police chief quickly becomes much more than he bargained for. His boozy, flirty wife played by Lorraine Gary adds much needed levity early on and you really buy their spousal dynamic. The movie shifts into a higher gear once Richard Dreyfuss’s Hooper shows up on the island, pairing well with Brody as the more scientific voice of reason and one of the few friendly faces he comes into contact with. The movie shifts again with the reintroduction of Quint, played with an unfakable contempt and surliness by Robert Shaw. You can smell the alcohol sweating off of him through the screen as Shaw was binge drinking constantly during production but hinder his performance it does NOT. While the first half of the film is a cat and mouse game and trying to convince the rest of the island’s residents of the shark’s danger and even existence, the second half of Brody, Hooper and Quint setting out to hunt down the shark is where things go to the next level. It’s magic. Shaw’s electrifying monologue about the USS Indianapolis is the best part of the film. The music, the lighting, the line readings, it’s indelible. It’s so good that several different writers all came out to try and take credit for it afterwards, including Shaw himself.
Let’s talk about the film’s legacy. Where do you want to start? I still get goosebumps when I hear the theme. Williams and Spielberg would go on to work with each other a dozen times over, with the former creating additional iconic themes for Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, etc. The shot on the beach of the camera zooming on Brody’s face as he realizes another victim is currently being maimed by the shark? It’s a dolly zoom which means the dolly is moving on the track at the same time the camera is zooming. It has been used in other movies, most notably a couple from Hitchock like Vertigo, but if your shot later gets called “The Jaws Shot” then it belongs to this movie.
I already talked about how this helped create the summer blockbuster but it practically created a new genre itself and spawned a hundred imitators. Fuck it, let’s list some: The Shallows, The Meg, Deep Blue Sea, 47 Meters Down, Open Water, The Reef, The Black Demon, Shark Night and Sharknado if you want to count that. Think it’s limited to just shark films? No chance, we’ve got more. Barracuda, Piranha, Grizzly, Orca, Lake Placid, Anaconda even fucking Tremors. Hell, Speilberg even rips himself when he made Jurassic Park by using the T-Rex sparingly early on until it’s time to ramp up the scares for maximum effect.
Want to talk about the Jaws sequels? Me fucking neither but let’s do it. Jaws 2 is the only decent one with Brody returning to fight another shark that’s terrorizing Amity. It’s fine but doesn’t add anything to the proceedings, everything here is a little worse and overall it sorely misses Spielberg’s deft hand. Jaws 3D is outright bad and tries to capitalize on the early 80s 3D glasses craze which makes for a badly aged and pretty terrible movie. Now Jaws: The Revenge is…hilarious. Like this is a movie you see and say “oh yeah, the cocaine must’ve been awesome back then.” Chief Brody’s wife is terrorized in this movie by another Great White shark which kills one of her sons in Amity and somehow knows the other one is working in the Bahamas and goes after him next. How does she or the shark know? Because they have a psychic link. Her character has visions and nightmares of the shark which again follows her family from New England to the Bahamas. I am not shitting you. That’s a real plot point. What the fuck. The film concludes with her son blasting the shark with sonar impulses which causes the shark to rise up out of the water like a fucking genie at which point she is able to ram the front of the ship into the shark, piercing and spontaneously exploding the creature while the film flashes back to the original film’s explosive finale. WHAT THE SHIT. THAT SHIT IS BANANAS. Watch the finale here, I beg you. It’s so dumb.
But yeah, just watch the original Jaws. If you only watch one film this summer, make it this one. I mean it’s going to be between 90-110 degrees for most of it here in Texas so you should definitely be able to watch more than one movie. What are you going to do otherwise, watch Grey’s Anatomy again? C’mon, expand your horizons a bit. I hope you do at least. But I just wrote roughly 10,000 words about movies so I’m gonna take a break. If you liked anything or want to reply with your favorites or what I forgot, I’d love to hear any and all feedback. Happy movie watching!
