My Top 13 Summer Films To Watch This Labor Day
Nothing beats the heat like watching one of the best summer movies of all time—with the air conditioner blasting, of course. Luckily for us, some great summer-themed movies are currently streaming on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and beyond.
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)-In late 1950s New York, Tom Ripley, a young underachiever, is sent to Italy to retrieve Dickie Greenleaf, a rich and spoiled millionaire playboy. But when the errand fails, Ripley takes extreme measures.
Marge Sherwood. The second best-dressed Marge in pop-culture history. Fact. If you're not familiar with the name, chances are you haven't watched the exquisite film, The Talented Mr Ripley, starring a young Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge Sherwood. Directed by Anthony Minghella, the 1999 film was adapted from Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel of the same name. Gwynnie stars alongside a devilishly dishy Jude Law as trust-fund baby Dickie Greenleaf, and a sinisterly messed-up Matt Damon as the shape-shifting Tom Ripley in a story about mental and physical violence within the depths of unrequited love. It is a chilling journey through Italy's Ischia with a cat's cradle murder-mystery plot, but the main focus does, at several moments, give way to a truly phenomenal Mediterranean-chic wardrobe. Actually, come to think of it, the entire plot hangs on a single garment – the Princeton blazer – that Tom Ripley steals in order to be mistaken for an old Princeton pal of the super wealthy Dickie Greenleaf. It is a mistake Tom purposefully negates to correct after Dickie's father offers to pay for him to visit Italy and return his rogue son to the States. And so begins Tom's journey into living as a member of the other half, with inky evenings wasted at jazz clubs, sizzling afternoons squandered on yachts and long, drunk lunches on the terrace. It's the Oscar-nominated blue-blood wardrobe designed by Gary Jones and Ann Roth that steals these languid summer scenes. Gwyneth's role as the elegant, all American girl-abroad, Marge, has produced an archive of signet rings; alice-bands, knotted-shirts, leopard print pill box hats, linen buttoned skirts and '50s swimwear.
Do the Right Thing (1989)- A Spike Lee favorite….On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence. Do The Right Thing was Spike Lee's opus on racism and police violence in America so this is a great one too to continue your homework of being privileged. Plus Barack and Michelle Obama saw Do The Right Thing on their first date. Rosie Perez' dance sequence at the beginning of the movie is second to NONE. It perfectly captures what a New York summer is like with no air conditioning. The color palettes throughout the film are fucking beautiful too!
Summer with Monika (1953)-A pair of teenagers meet one summer day, start a reckless affair and abandon their families to be with one another.
The erotic portrayal of young love in Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika (1953) remains powerful to this day. It is a courageous film, fighting for Harry and Monika, who rebel against their drab lives in Stockholm for one passionate summer together on the Swedish archipelago. It is also a key film in Bergman’s career, solidifying his move toward an increased focus on women’s perspectives—the attention given to Monika’s dreams provides a fresh challenge to the themes of escape and compromise he’d been developing in his work. Although modestly made and received originally, the film steadily acquired a reputation through the 1950s, becoming a sensation internationally. At first, in America, this was due largely to exploitation pioneer Kroger Babb’s 1955 re-edited version, released as Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl! and boosted by an advertising campaign featuring provocative images and captions. But Summer with Monika would soon also create a stir in critical circles across Europe and America. Rediscovered amid the mania generated by Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) and The Seventh Seal (1957), and fueled by praise from French New Wave critic and filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard in 1958, it was hailed as an early example of Bergman’s artistic vision. Audiences were struck by the film’s urban realism, inspired by Italian postwar filmmaking, which captured the smoky restrictions of Stockholm’s port on the teenagers’ lives, and by the free camera work that celebrated the vast open spaces of the Swedish wilderness.
The Green Ray- §0. It is summer. A young woman and a young man are sitting side by side at a beachfront, looking out toward the vast sea that is facing them. They aim their gaze westward, viewing what seems like an infinite stretch of water that reaches all the way to the darkening horizon where the sea finally meets an infinite sky. As they watch the sun sink slowly into the sea, the young woman starts weeping. Then, suddenly, at the very moment when the glowing orb finally goes under, it gives off a subtle green flash. This is the green ray, which is a literal translation of the French words le rayon vert. The moment I am describing takes place in a film directed by Éric Rohmer, which actually bears the title Le Rayon-Vert. It originally appeared in 1986. But Le Rayon-Vert is also the title of a romantic novel by Jules Verne, which appeared over a century earlier, in 1882. The novel was in fact the original inspiration for the film, though the stories differ radically. In the film, the story ends on a seemingly happy note: once she sees the green ray, the young woman who was weeping a moment earlier is now smiling as she cries out: oui ! Le Rayon Vert, which was distributed in North America under the title Summer—and which was at some point remastered as a new 35 millimeter print.
Jaws (1975)-I watched Jaws this past Fourth of July, as I do every year, in view of its timelessness as well as its seasonality. Jaws, which is specifically set during Independence Day, also generally invented the “summer blockbuster,” a detail which makes its 1975 premiere on midsummer’s eve seem quite significant, in hindsight. Like the shark that arrives off the coast of Amity Island in the film’s famous opening scene, Jaws arrived unassumingly at the start of the season and caused a frenzy that would ripple out far past Labor Day. It became one of our greatest filmmaking touchstones: a marvelously intellectual monster movie, an arbiter of cinematic summer, a technical origin story for the boy-genius director who would become Steven Spielberg.
Y Tu Mamá También (2001)-In Mexico, two teenage boys and an attractive older woman embark on a road trip and learn a thing or two about life, friendship, sex, and each other. Like that quintessential '70s cult movie, "Y Tu Mama Tambien" is a picaresque tale that depicts the sentimental education of an adolescent boy with an appropriate mixture of hilarity and sadness. But writer-director Alfonso Cuaron has chosen to infuse his version with some unexpected elements, adding another boy and making "the older woman" not so very old. He also sets his story in his native Mexico, and the film pulses with the colors, textures, heat and smells of that ever-changing landscape. Undergirded by Cuaron's own observations about his country's economic and political life, "Y Tu Mama Tambien" is far more than a sexual coming-of-age movie, although as such it is a warm and welcome antidote to Hollywood's sophomoric doodlings. Part travelogue, part road picture, part meditation on class, mortality and intimacy, this extraordinary little movie might be the perfect harbinger of summer, as astute as it is steamy.
Summertime (1955)-A lonely American woman unexpectedly finds romance in Venice, Italy. 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.
Stranger by the Lake (2013)-Summertime. A cruising spot for men, tucked away on the shores of a lake. Franck falls in love with Michel, an attractive, potent and lethally dangerous man. Franck knows this but wants to live out his passion anyway. “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 ….
Stand by Me (1986)- The screenwriters, Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans, have seen this trek by four tight buddies, about to move into junior high school, with the greatest clarity. It will be a pivotal two days in which matters closest to the bone are revealed, but it’s not treated Importantly. Instead, the atmosphere is full of the great, crude, cruddy, ripe banter of four 12-year-old boys--pre-girls, post-cigarettes and full-on to the mysteries of life. And death.
“Stand By Me” is told in the form of a memoir, as established writer Richard Dreyfuss, stunned by a local newspaper item about the death of a close friend, sits in his car, remembering back to 1959. Then, in the fullness of late summer, he and his three friends had an instant of absolute perception: Who they were, what was around them, where they were going. Before the world blurred all the outlines. “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.
Céline and Julie Go Boating By Jacques Rivette (1974)- (the graphic has a typo..so sorry)
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.
The Parent Trap (1998)-Identical twins Annie and Hallie, separated at birth and each raised by one of their biological parents, later discover each other for the first time at summer camp and make a plan to bring their wayward parents back together. Which version of The Parent Trap did you grow up with? I love them both but have a particularly special memory of watching the remake when I was a little girl. If you haven’t seen The Parent Trap, it isn’t only a fun summertime movie, it’s a must-watch you’ll love!
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)- Devastated Peter takes a Hawaiian vacation in order to deal with the recent break-up with his TV star girlfriend, Sarah. Little does he know, Sarah's traveling to the same resort as her ex - and she's bringing along her new boyfriend. It's the hysterically funny look at how far one man will go to forget a girl and all the fun he finds along the way! ... 100% · Jazz on a Summer's Day ... With ample laughs and sharp performances, Forgetting Sarah Marshall finds just the right mix of romance and comedy!!!
Blue Crush (2002)-As a hard-core surfer girl prepares for a big competition, she finds herself falling for a football player. ”Blue Crush,” an end-of-the-summer revel in beach, sun, surf, pretty faces, and buff bods (hey, there aren’t even any serious bad guys — just a few bad bellies), is an engaging, formulaic sports drama that carries a charge of genuine excitement. Powered by Blestenation’s hip-hop remix of Bananarama’s great ”Cruel Summer,” the movie has a purely sense-orama dimension, yet John Stockwell, who cowrote and directed it, proves that it’s more than possible to use thrill-ride techniques in a supple, nonbombastic way.
ENJOY!
