The Best Movies to Watch in the Summer

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This Week

I’m on vacation! (Oh! Ah! I read a book!) My esteemed, beloved colleagues helped me answer a prompt: What is your favorite movie to watch during the summer? Hopefully you’ll get some good inspiration from their responses. After all, it’s hot as hell. Who actually wants to be outside?

Armageddon

The only correct answers to this are either Mamma Mia! or Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Unfortunately, choosing one is akin to picking a favorite child. (I assume. This is my super-gay version of parenthood.) Instead, I’ll choose the title tied to one of my favorite summer movie-watching memories. When I was a kid, my whole family—aunts, uncles, cousins, grandma—shared a beach house for a week. Our big movie night was renting Armageddon. At the most intense point of the movie, when the team was about to drill into the asteroid, a caravan of four military-grade helicopters buzzed past our windows, just feet from the sand. About 20 Fallon relatives shrieked so loudly, it’s a miracle those windows didn’t shatter. We still don’t know why those helicopters were there that day, other than to make us think we were under attack while watching Armageddon—a hilarious memory so cherished that I rewatch the film at least once a year. — Kevin Fallon

Clifford

Bright, sunshiny summer is the ideal time for a lighthearted comedy, and none brings me greater joy—or elicits more laughs—than Clifford, director Paul Flaherty’s 1994 box-office dud in which the peerless Martin Short plays a scheming, maniacal 10-year-old boy and Charles Grodin embodies the selfish, kid-hating architect uncle who winds up agreeing to care for him in order to impress his fiancé (Mary Steenburgen). Short’s juvenile-devil performance is a one-of-a-kind tour-de-force, highlighted by more weirdo faces—all bug-eyed glares, devious smiles, and demented expressions—than should be legal. Grodin’s smug, grouchy disdain is the perfect foil for Short’s adolescent mischievousness, and their rapport is a thing of absurdly hostile beauty. Lovers of dinosaurs, tabasco-spiked drinks, amusement parks, chocolate, hairpieces (“I said it was the bestest-looking wig I ever saw!”) and riotous ridiculousness won’t be able to resist making it an annual viewing tradition. — Nick Schager

Spirited Away

I could have gone with any Studio Ghibli film, as each one is perfect for every season, every day, all the time, always. But I saw Spirited Away (for the millionth time) recently, so I’ll pick that. I saw it as part of Studio Ghibli Fest, an annual summer tradition at New York’s IFC Center; the excellent repertory theater screens a number of the animation house’s finest works from May to August, which is a treat for any cinephile. Like many Ghibli movies, Spirited Away is one of the greatest films ever made, and its visceral wistfulness plays a large part in its success. Much as summertime is for children (like our protagonist, 10-year-old Chihiro), Spirited Away takes place in a liminal space. Every inch of the movie presents fantastical possibilities, as Chihiro explores a lawless new world where her parents are pigs and her best friend is a personified river. Take a break from the punishing heat to rewatch the film, then go back outside and appreciate the beauty that is our natural world—as Spirited Away reminds us to always do. — Allegra Frank

Any and All Mary-Kate and Ashley Movies

Just like fall and winter belong to Nora Ephron, I’ll admit that my summers have long been property of the Olsen twins. It started when I was a kid stuck at home between summer camps, sitting on friends’ couches and drinking their juice boxes while we joined our favorite pals, Mary-Kate and Ashley, to such posh destinations as Paris, Rome, London, and Sydney. How could we forget the time they terrorized a French chef with McDonald’s, or the time they wound up in witness protection (?!), or the time they accidentally stole a boat because of a couple cute boys? (Like so many of us, Rory Gilmore apparently learned from the Olsens.) With their many montages and full embrace of late-nineties, early-aughts fashion (tiny sunglasses! capris! Bleached highlights!), these movies were an undeniable staple. Nowadays, they’re a breezy trip down memory lane that usually ends in me calling an old friend. — Laura Bradley

Plus One

As a major romantic comedy fan, I’ve always assigned different rom-coms to different seasons in my head. Classics like When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail live in the autumn months, whereas Bridget Jones’s Diary and The Holiday are for sipping hot cocoa under a fuzzy winter blanket. In just the past four years since it was released, Plus One has quickly become my favorite summertime rom-com. Longtime pals Ben (Jack Quaid, the rom-com nepo baby of Meg Ryan) and Alice (Maya Erskine) agree to become each other’s go-to wedding date for the summer while all of their friends get married. Though things are meant to stay platonic, they can’t resist the lovey dovey vibes at each different wedding. Plus One is as predictable as every other rom-com, but what makes it stand out is how light and breezy it is. A friends-to-lovers story set to beachside parties and Real Estate songs—it doesn’t get as summer-y as this. — Fletcher Peters

Jaws

There is absolutely nothing feel-good about this film, and that is why I love to watch it every summer. If I can’t watch it every summer, I at least think about it every summer—usually around the Fourth of July. It’s a classic, and it’s why so many of your parents (depending on your generation) still fear the beach around that time of year. Nothing sets your spine tingling like John Williams’ terrifying and brilliant score. Yes, the practical effects on this movie may look dated now, but make no mistake, what Steven Spielberg did with this movie was no easy feat. He made, as I said before, an entire generation scared of the ocean with just a two hour film and a mechanical shark. Also the tale of a small town government not closing a beach after several shark attacks because they don’t want to lose tourist money during their busy season is a classic lesson in capitalism. One that keeps repeating itself, too! Add in some excellent performances from Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw (that speech!) and it’s the perfect summer film. Just maybe wait 30 minutes after watching to go in the water. — Shannon O’Connor

Step Brothers

If a movie is fabulous enough, there’s nothing seasonally restrictive about it: You can sling that bad boy up on your Apple TV in any climate and enjoy yourself thoroughly. But Step Brothers, the tale of two dipshit 40-something failures-to-launch (Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly) who mooch off their WASP-y doctor parents and jostle for dominance until they realize they’re soul mates, is both one of the greatest comedies of the 21st century and unavoidably summer-coded. Let’s be real: Summer is not for deep thinking, or for developing your sophisticated cinematic palette, or for suffering through an Italian Neorealism series at IFC. (No offense Bicycle Thieves! I still love you.) Summer is for taking half an edible with your girlfriends as flower-fragrant air whirls through the open window and choking with laughter, for the thousandth time, at Kathryn Hahn pissing in a urinal. – Helen Holmes

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

When I think of summer media, I instantly think of chick flicks, often female-driven beach reads adapted into movies that are critically panned but treasured by young, female viewers. By far, the most appropriate and enjoyable one to watch this time of year is The Sisterhood Of Traveling Pants, which actually earned decent reviews. The 2005 movie, starring Blake Lively, America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn, and Alexis Bledel, follows a group of teenage best friends as they embark on separate journeys during the summer, but stay connected through a pair of jeans that magically fit all of them. In various, familiar environments, we watch them experience heartbreaking (and heart-opening) lessons about boys, friendship, grief, sex, family, and ultimately themselves. Each of the girls have equally compelling arcs, making for a refreshingly balanced ensemble film. But Lena’s (Bledel) is especially fun to watch, as she visits her family in stunning Greece and falls in love with a hot fisherman. It’s a surprisingly insightful depiction of what it's like being a girl on the precipice of adulthood. Most importantly, it reminds you of the value of girlfriends (and good summer getaway). — Kyndall Cunningham

Rear Window

The summer is a strange sauna in New York, both in terms of weather (clammy heat, thunderstorms, sometimes perfect, endless days) and moods, when the theater of city life is extra-loud and on display. The intense NYC heatwave in Alfred Hitchcock’s peerless Rear Window (1954) is, like the New York summer, a character in its own right, alongside James Stewart’s photographer recuperating and watching his neighbors and their silent, moving lives (including the lady who has an imaginary lover), and possibly a killer across the courtyard. An astute animation of urban living, Rear Window still cuts close in sketching isolation, connection, and disconnection. It is also a nailbiter of a thriller. It turns us all into Peeping Toms looking covertly through windows, as Stewart’s character does; we and the camera are his eyes and curiosity as the sweltering weather, and tension, refuses to release its grip on this confined community. And, if the movie’s rainstorm doesn’t cool you down, Grace Kelly provides a refreshing breeze in one of Edith Head’s most gorgeously realized movie wardrobes. — Tim Teeman

Call Me By Your Name

While I don’t necessarily think of summer as an “I’ve got to watch this, or it just simply won’t be summer,” season (that desperation is reserved for the colder months), Call Me By Your Name is my sole essential summer film. Not only are the sweltering temperatures reflected in the film’s lush Italian countryside, but the idealistic naivete of the season finds its way in there, too. Every summer, I tell myself that it will be a life-changing three months, and it almost never is. But watching Call Me By Your Name, I’m reminded of that youthful excitement, which tempers more as I get older. Luca Guadagnino’s tale of ill-fated, manipulative love is both relatable and melancholic, and it envelops you the same way that the humidity does when you’re caught in a summer thunderstorm; it’s suffocating, and strangely beautiful. Best of all, the film ends in the winter, after Timothée Chalamet’s Elio has shaken off the spell of the season, looking back to realize what a mess someone else made of him. Maybe it’s a tad morose, but it’s an authentic look at how we change just as often as the seasons. —Coleman Spilde

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