Kicking Off Summer With Hiland Dairy
This post is sponsored by Hiland Dairy but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.
Where is this year going?! Summer is here. Temperatures are rising! And I cannot believe it’s time to start planning some spring/summer back-yard parties for this coming season as well as those summer road trip adventures!! School is out in 3 days! Vacations will be taken! Fun will be had! Summer is a magical time, not only because the days are longer, but also because there's just so much more to do when it's warm out. Plus, let's be honest, doesn't it kind of feel as though anything is possible in the summertime?!
So pour yourself some lemonade, scoop up that delicious bowl of ice cream (currently loving Hiland Dairy’s new Time Traveler Ice Cream-French silk ice cream with marshmallow bonbons, chocolate flakes and thick fudge sauce. ) and kick back with these 10 timeless films that remind me of how special the summertime really is. These movies make me want to head to the beach, explore new destinations or just throw up my hands and ride the rollercoaster that is… summer vacation! I mean it doesn’t get better than summer holidays, ice cream and roller coasters in my opinion!
(I am giving you a chance to win a family trip to Silver Dollar City this summer too so find details at the end of this post)
Summer MOVIE LIST
1. The Talented Mr Ripley
Anthony Minghella (1999)
There’s a certain kind of sunshine that kisses everything with gold. And Anthony Minghella’s slick adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith thriller captures it perfectly – that gilded easy privilege of the in-crowd, slumming it during a long, languid summer on the Italian coast.
2. Do the Right Thing
Spike Lee (1989)
“Whoo-ee, it’s gonna be a scorcher today!” During the hottest day of the summer, tensions come to the boil in a pressure-cooker Brooklyn neighbourhood. When first released, Spike Lee’s electrifying drama alarmed some conservative critics, who shrieked that the film was an incitement to riot – a claim previously made of such accepted classics as The Blackboard Jungle (1955). Brilliantly capturing the scorching atmosphere of a Bedford-Stuyvesant district heatwave, Do the Right Thing is as thrillingly edgy today as it was nearly 30 years ago.
3. Summer With Monika
Ingmar Bergman (1953)
People only casually acquainted with the work of Ingmar Bergman wouldn’t think of him as an especially summery film-maker: chilly despair may seem the characteristic temperature of his oeuvre, until you get to the spry, glinting warmth of Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), the serenity of Summer Interlude (1951), and, best of all, this airy, tender and finally bittersweet seasonal romance between two beautiful working-class kids.
4. The Green Ray
Éric Rohmer (1986)
Let’s face it. Summer can be shit. Like New Year’s Eve, the annual holiday comes with such an expectation of enjoyment that a bad day feels like a personal failure. For Delphine (a largely improvised performance by Marie Rivière), evicted from her friend’s holiday plans and miserably adrift on the periphery of other people’s trips, the summer vacation is a source of acute anxiety. Shot on super 16mm, the film looks as grainy as a beach picnic on a windy day.
5. Jaws
Steven Spielberg (1975)
Steven Spielberg’s visceral adaptation of Peter Benchley’s voracious best-seller scared a generation out of the water and into the cinemas. The story – a cross between Melville’s Moby-Dick and Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People – finds a seaside resort terrorised by a great white shark as the 4 July holiday draws near. Roy Scheider is perfectly cast as the police chief who fails to close the beaches, with terrible results.
6. Y Tu Mamá También
Alfonso Cuarón (2001)
A vibrant performance by Maribel Verdú drives this rip-roaring road movie. Abandoned by their girlfriends for the summer, two hot-headed youths (Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna) team up with Verdú’s more worldly Luisa on an often chaotic journey of discovery.
6. Summertime
David Lean (1955)
Crammed with waddling tourists and hideous knockoff carnival masks, the canals of Venice in midsummer are about as viable a place to find love these days as the gardening-tools aisle of B&Q. Sixty-odd years ago, however, David Lean painted a far more swoonsome picture, with this iridescent Technicolor tale of an impermanent holiday romance – every bit as lovely and as heart-stirring as his more routinely celebrated Brief Encounter (1945). Katharine Hepburn, in one of her best screen roles, is the buttoned-up Ohio singleton who temporarily gets to live her best life under the Venetian sun, in the arms of dreamy antique dealer Rossano Brazzi.
7. Stranger By the Lake
Alain Guiraudie (2013)
“Hitchcockian” was the word routinely and not inappropriately hauled out by critics to describe Alain Guiraudie’s slinky, sinuous and increasingly dangerous erotic thriller, though much of the onscreen action here would have turned the Master of Suspense pale. Set on an idyllic lakeside cruising ground in rural France, the film’s serial-murder mystery bleeds through its otherwise joyously candid exploration ….
8. Stand By Me
Rob Reiner (1986)
“In all our lives, there’s a fall from innocence…” Adapted from Stephen King’s story The Body (published in the same 1982 Different Seasons novella collection as Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which itself became a hit film), Rob Reiner’s masterpiece finds young friends facing up to matters of life and death over the 1959 Labor Day weekend – marking the end of the summer and the significant start of the autumn.
9. Céline and Julie Go Boating
Jacques Rivette (1974)
In the balmy, near-deserted streets of Paris in summer, two young women – a librarian and a stage magician – become friends, or possibly lovers, and embark on a bizarre, freewheeling adventure that involves occult sweets, a mysterious old house and a little girl held captive by ghosts. French New Wave veteran Jacques Rivette devised the film together with his cast, headed by Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier. The result is a joyously rule-breaking experimental feminist fantasy that tips its hat to the surrealist tradition, and the magic of silent-era serials.
10.The Parent Trap
Nancy Meyers (1998)
Nancy Meyers is America’s greatest working classicist. Best known for her romantic comedies (and her detailed attention to middle-class interior design), her family-friendly remake of The Parent Trap (1961) doesn’t abandon that format entirely. The film stars Lindsay Lohan as a pair of twins separated at birth who meet on holiday at Camp Walden aged 11, and swap lives in a bid to reunite their divorced parents (the late Natasha Richardson, and my favourite vineyard-owning hot dad, Dennis Quaid).
So now it’s time to get some summer road trips planned because that’s truly the best way to kick off summer!
Hiland is sending one lucky family on an ADVENTURE to Silver Dollar City.
Enter here for a chance to win!
Giveaway Prize Includes: 4 Multiple Admission Trailblazer and Show Lover’s Passes to Silver Dollar City, hotel accommodations, a $150 prepaid gas card for the road trip, a $50 coupon pack for Hiland Dairy products, and a cooler to keep your farm-fresh Hiland Dairy snacks cool on the ride!
How exciting!!!!! Good luck everyone!!!
And next time you are at Walmart be sure to grab Hiland’s Outlaw Run Ice Cream and The Time Traveler Ice Cream that I mentioned at the top of this post!
They were named after the thrilling roller coasters at Silver Dollar City!!!!
For Your Own Ice Cream Party, Shop Below: