Great Summer Movies You Can Stream
Watch these to recapture that summer feeling
Ask anyone and they will tell you this is the strangest and most disappointing summer they’ve ever had. With many trips, concerts, camps, and other events cancelled or postponed, this hasn’t felt at all like a typical summer. Fortunately, we still have the movies to give us that summer feeling.
In order to remind you what summer is supposed to look like, we’ve recommended a couple movies below that make us nostalgic for different times. Pour yourself a cold beer or an iced tea, crank up the A/C, and enjoy these summer movies.
Billy recommends…
American Graffiti (streaming on HBO)
If you were to have seen American Graffiti in a normal world you would find that it ages like the fine wine you expected to be amazing, but are slightly disappointed with. In this COVID pandemic it is a nostalgic paradise that hearkens back to a time most of us would love to go back to: The final summer night with your buds before everyone went off to college.
American Graffiti brings up so many different paths that Hollywood could have taken. Could George Lucas have had a different, but equally iconic career? What if Ron Howard became more of a leading man? (Thank goodness he didn’t.) Would Harrison Ford have continued to be a star after this breakout side performance? Director George Lucas with his second film shows he is a master at creating a unique cast of characters with endless relatability. Howard being used as an archetype Luke Skywalker personality, always dreaming of something better somewhere else. Then using Harrison Ford in a much smaller role, but as a similar mysterious and wise-cracking ruffian. All of these aspects create a wonder for what Lucas’ career would have been like if Star Wars didn’t take off. Most likely less iconic, but just as legendary.
Besides the characters he does a wonderful job of showing the aimlessness of hanging out during the summer. More relatable than ever right now. The only thing we can do is wander in a hope to find something that seems familiar. The aimlessness teams well with the anxiety of each of these characters. About the future, their relationships, and the desire to fit in.
Turn on American Graffiti to feel two types of nostalgia. One that makes you remember a time where we had almost no responsibilities and the dreams were endless. The other is for a time that was just a year ago where the best nights were the nights we had no plans and could wander to our hearts desire.
Drew recommends…
The Kings of Summer (streaming on Amazon Prime)
The coming-of-age comedy has seen many variations over the decades, but The Kings of Summer finds its own peculiar place among the field. This offbeat indie dramedy has a classic coming-of-age setup: Sick of their mundane and oppressive lives at home, three teenagers decide to head out into the woods at the start of the summer to build a house and live off the land. Of course, the trio discover that independence isn’t as blissful as they had hoped.
Before arriving at that realization, though, there is much carefree fun to be had. The Kings of Summer does a very good job of capturing that adventurous, anything-is-possible spirit that only summer can present to a kid. As our main characters figure out how to construct their house and hunt for food in the suburban woods, there is a youthful, freewheeling tone that overtakes the film. These joyful scenes make scavenging for materials at a construction site or wandering through the brush with a machete seem like a rite of passage for every kid.
The Kings of Summer premiered to rave reviews at Sundance in 2013, but it hasn’t left much of a footprint since. However, debut director Jordan Vogt-Roberts must have shown enough promise to land the big-budget Kong: Skull Island just a few years later. I was impressed with his arsenal of stylistic maneuvers in The Kings of Summer, especially for a first-timer. Not everything Vogt-Roberts tries totally works, but you can see him finding imaginative and arresting ways to tell this coming-of-age story that could’ve seemed redundant in lesser hands.
Certainly he was fortunate to have a deep bench of comedy talents on hand. While the three teenagers are capably played by mostly unknown young actors, the supporting cast is filled with well-known funny people. Nick Offerman is a stern and sarcastic father, and Alison Brie plays his college-age daughter. Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson play loving yet hilariously lame parents. Thomas Middleditch, Kumail Nanjiani, and other familiar faces also appear in funny bit parts as well.
While The Kings of Summer is a tad uneven -- the comedic and dramatic moments occasionally seem like they are happening in different movies -- it successfully bottles that essence of youthful summer rebellion. It works equally well as both a nostalgia trip and a genuinely funny and moving dramedy. The Kings of Summer can certainly be classified as a coming-of-age movie, but it often sidesteps the conventional story beats you might be expecting and it avoids unearned saccharine moments, opting for a slightly quirkier sensibility somewhere between real life and a Wes Anderson movie. I found The Kings of Summer to be an impressive little-seen gem, a sweet and enjoyable entry into the summer coming-of-age genre.
Links
Emmy nominations are out! Netflix broke the record for nominations in a single year, with shows like Ozark, The Crown, and Stranger Things leading the way. HBO’s Watchmen and Succession did very well, as did Disney+’s The Mandalorian.
In what could be a sign of the future for theatrical movies, Universal Pictures and AMC Theaters have signed a deal that allows the studio’s movies to “premiere on premium video on-demand within three weeks of their theatrical debuts.”