Summer Movie Roundup

📝 Thanks for reading Fran Magazine, a blog by Fran Hoepfner (me). This month, I’m on vacation, so I’m pleased to run a series of guest essays by Friends of Fran Magazine™. Thank you to Fran Magazine summer intern Ishikaa Kothari for steering the ship (Fran Magazine is a boat, in addition to a blog) and please enjoy a month of other people’s writing.

Claire Cohen is a writer and longtime (longest time?) Fran Magazine guest contributor, who previously covered her shift to healthy eating and dog movies. They lived together for six weeks in 2022.

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What makes a movie great needs no definition. But what makes it “summer”? I’ve identified three core criteria:

• Are the characters hot? (Literal)

• Could this story happen in a different season?

• Are the characters bored and/or free?

In childhood, summer represents the ultimate freedom, and while most adults are unbound from the school year, that association––a relaxing of the rules, ambivalence towards obligations, perhaps an itch to do something out of the ordinary––may carry through the rest of our lives. But freedom has a dark side. Boredom is the feeling of desperately wanting to do something, but there is nothing to do, whether that’s because the structures that usually keep you occupied have fallen away, or because, for instance, it’s too damn hot. The tension between freedom and boredom is, to me, the defining emotion of summer: the wasted potential of time spent bored is doubly frustrating, compounding into an urgent restlessness, and yet the ephemerality of the freedom, that it will soon end, is what makes it so precious. A great summer film will explore at least one of these themes, ideally the dichotomy.

With that in mind, I gave each movie a score out of 10, with five possible points for greatness (enjoyment) and five for summeriness (seasonality). Here they are, listed in order of aggregated Great Summer Movie score.

Enjoyment: ⚾️⚾️

Seasonality: ⚾️⚾️⚾️⚾️⚾️

My first watch of the festival was, unfortunately, a disappointment; I thought that The Sandlot was supposed to be Stand By Me with baseball, but in practice I found it nowhere near as moving, a lot less wholesome, and also, there was not enough baseball! These boys talk about baseball, they practice baseball, sort of, but they only play one game against another team, in which they are completely dominant. Turns out that baseball isn’t really the point. So what is? Summer. Everything I did enjoy about The Sandlot comes back to this. Though it was not the sports story I hoped for, it presents a serene and honest slice of life. The kids kill time, make up their own games––who cares if it’s “real” baseball?––goof off, and get in trouble. It all feels familiar, authentic, and inextricably specific to the moment it depicts. But this is “boys will be boys” the movie, for all the good and bad that comes with that. I found the boys in question, maybe with the exception of Rodriguez (the one who’s actually good at baseball) annoying, bratty, gross, and flat. I have no sense of a genuine bond between them, though maybe this is part of the film’s authenticity; the sandlot games are a ritual of convenience, the friendships based on proximity. The back half of the film is also hijinks-focused in a way that failed to charm or delight me––maybe because it’s essentially 20 minutes of children harassing a dog.

Enjoyment: 🍺🍺🍺

Seasonality: 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺

I watched this as it was meant to be watched: with good friends and a tableau of beer and edibles. I had a fantastic time, but I attribute that more to the aforementioned than the film itself. This is a hangout movie through and through, with no discernible plot or moral except “do not sign away your right to fuck around and smoke weed, even symbolically,” and that’s not a bad thing. The boredom level is off the charts here, the way the kids drive around aimlessly, knowing not what they want except to be “out,” a perfect encapsulation of youth. A few of the chillers harshed my vibe, though, with their insane violence and humiliation rituals, which upset my delicate sensibility. I also considered docking the seasonality score because in the beginning of the movie it’s not ~technically~ summer yet (it’s the last day of school), but the scene where all the kids run out and throw their papers in the air made me so achingly nostalgic for a period of my life I actively hated, I just had to hand it to ‘em. Unimpeachable soundtrack, also.

Enjoyment: 💰💰💰💰

Seasonality: 💰💰💰

What a wild ride! I really enjoyed this. The character performances are excellent, and the energy is so zany and fun. The fact that it’s all based on a true story makes it even crazier. There are many thematic layers to unpack––capitalism, police brutality, and the media all come under fire. Regarding seasonality, I’m conflicted. Could this story have happened in another season? I think so. But are the characters hot? Oh yes. The robbers and hostages are holed up in the bank for hours on end, and we are repeatedly reminded that the police have cut off their AC. Confinement plus heat equals tangible claustrophobia and a stir-crazy, boiling tension that screams “summer,” but I don’t feel that this penetrates beyond aesthetics and mood. Sonny, our loveable criminal protagonist, is anything but bored, and the extent to which he is free could be debated, but I read him as trapped on all fronts. The bank heist is a desperate, doomed effort to escape a life into which he does not fit, and its failure marks neither the beginning of a period of freedom, nor the end of one. But let’s not forget that Pride Month is part of summer too.

Enjoyment: 📸📸📸📸📸

Seasonality: 📸📸

Slam dunk, my new favorite Hitchcock without a doubt. The pacing never drags, and the staging is so brilliant we might forget we’re trapped in a single room for the entire runtime. You know who doesn’t forget, though: our hero, Jeffries. Rear Window was definitely my least seasonal movie in a literal sense–– I need more than a shot of a thermostat and a couple sweat droplets to be convinced this is an inherently summer story––but we can interpret Jeffries’ temporary disability as a figurative summer. For a traveling field photographer, there is perhaps no worse fate than being confined to quarters for six weeks, and with limited mobility at that. This period represents a sort of forced summer vacation for Jeffries, where he can’t work, but he can’t do much of anything else either. His cabin fever is what directs him to the hobby of people-watching, much in the same way that the bored children of other summer films get pulled into their own adventures for lack of anything better to do. The film is also fascinated with the mundane. Our gaze lingers on seemingly irrelevant neighborhood fixtures as they mill about, and piecing together the details of their lives is just as addictive as solving the actual mystery.

Enjoyment: 🚗🚗🚗🚗

Seasonality: 🚗🚗🚗🚗

This is a different kind of coming of age story––one of sexual awakening, certainly, but also one which acknowledges that growing up can mean growing apart.1 Here, friendship does not triumph over differences in class, nor transgressions of trust. And Luisa may be the adult in the room, but she is no mentor, or even a chaperone, finding herself suddenly in a hurry to grow up too, finally, before it’s too late. There is a tumult of emotion swirling around the threesome, trapped with them in their shitty little car: a carefree, playful spirit, but also bitterness, tension, lust, and a specter of death, which seems out of place until it doesn’t. You may be wondering why I’ve given only 4/5 for seasonality, when this movie is about a horny road trip to the beach. Well, it takes place in Mexico, which forced me to consider a fourth criteria: Americana. I realized, watching this, that I associate summer with the very specific aesthetic trappings of American suburbia––things that remind me of my own childhood, my own boredom. I make no claim that this is fair.

Enjoyment: 🍕🍕🍕🍕

Seasonality: 🍕🍕🍕🍕

This hit close to home for me in many ways––not least of which because it literally takes place in my neighborhood. Much has changed here in three and half decades, including the fact that I, a white yuppie, now live here, but far more, eerily, has not. Racial skirmishes spark left and right in this film, flaring from not-so-micro-aggressions into the conflagrative police brutality and subsequent riot of the climax. Summer plays its part, oppressive heat stoking the flames, and yes, so does boredom.The day portrayed here should be beautiful in its mundanity: loitering, day drinking, slacking off at work, arguing whether it’s too hot to have sex––it all contributes to the film’s naked honesty, which is why its conclusion feels so honest too, and so sad.

Enjoyment: 🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈

Seasonality: 🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈

I admit this was a rewatch, but I couldn’t bear to submit the list without it. If there were a right answer to the question of greatest summer movie, it would be Jaws. There is not one wasted moment in this two hour film; in the first fifteen minutes we have two shark attacks and know all we need to know about the conflict, setting, and cast. Everything is perfect, from score to gore. It is tense, horrifying, delightful, funny, and not only is Jaws inseparable from summer, but summer is inseparable from Jaws. To the film’s mayor, summer is a finite resource, and one that must be extracted to the utmost, even at the cost of human life––a late-capitalist parable that rings more true with each passing 4th of July, including this one, which marked the 250th anniversary of this evil, evil country. It could represent any number of societal ills, but also… it’s a movie about a big shark that eats people. As my final endorsement, in case you’ve held out on watching it: this is not one of those “important” movies that feels like homework to watch. It’s just really fucking good.

I will now confess something which you may have already guessed: I don’t like summer. Boredom for me is a fast track to depression, and I can’t stand hot weather––honestly, I don’t even love the beach. A movie marathon is therefore my ideal summer activity, where I can vicariously enjoy “summer vibes” without getting sweaty. So, if I skipped your favorite summer movie, let me know so I can keep the festival going, and if you liked the format, let Fran know so we can run it back for a less disgusting season. Oh, and don’t forget to hydrate!

What would be on your summer roundup? How free and boring were your childhood summers? Does freedom require boredom? Wow, I’m on a roll today!

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