You have two options this summer: You can take Hollywood’s nostalgia bait and buy a ticket to one of its myriad sequels, prequels, reboots and spiritual successors to your favorite movies. Or you can call their bluff and just enjoy classic films on your own time, free from all the retconning and desperate self-parody. Here are five movies guaranteed to feel fresh every summer.
Dazed and Confused
Its cultural references are as dated as its wardrobe, but Richard Linklater’s meditation on the last day of school in a small Texas town has a uniquely long shelf life by tapping into universal themes that face teens of all generations. The specifics of youth culture might shift, but every American teen can relate to the rebellion of this age group. Featuring star-making roles by familiar faces such as Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey, its leisurely pace and charming cast of characters will keep you coming back every year.
Do the Right Thing
One of the most powerful statements on racism, property and dignity is Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Sweltering summer days in New York City can feel like living in a pressure cooker, an apt metaphor for the racial tensions that exist on Lee’s fictionalized block in Bed-Stuy. Funny, insightful and instructive without being didactic, the way in which tensions come to a boil is unique among films about racism; its villains are not frothing at the mouth, its heroes are not always on the mark.
Lee’s depiction of institutional and economic racism, beyond individual prejudice, is one of the most sophisticated ever committed to film, and its incisive commentary on bemoaning property damage over the loss of an unarmed black man’s life hits every bit as hard today as it did 26 years ago.
Point Break
It took a few decades, but Point Break has risen from a largely forgotten cops-and-robbers-and-surfers yarn to a full-blown genre classic. An early offering from now-celebrated director Kathryn Bigelow, this proto-bromance between conflicted cop and free-spirited criminal has now spawned tributes, parodies and even an onstage adaptation. (Let us not speak of the coming remake.) Intentionally silly, beautifully shot and breezily paced, it’s the perfect feel-good antidote to today’s yearly offering of spastic, CGI-plagued action disasters.
Mad Max: Fury Road
The summer of 2015 was doomed as soon as Mad Max: Fury Road hit theaters, because no matter how good the new Marvel or Jurassic movie manages to be, you’ll be left wondering why you didn’t just see Mad Max again. Director George Miller’s resurrection of the series he created nearly 40 years ago is perfect on every single level; exciting, technically and narratively bold, socially aware and the most rewatchable movie in decades. Perhaps most spectacularly, it revived our CG-overloaded brains with wonder at how effects were achieved. At only a few months old, Mad Max: Fury Road is an instant classic that demands to be seen multiple times in the theater.
Jaws
Steven Spielberg’s breakthrough shows the artist as a young man, full of creative energy and inspiring recklessness, as well as a finely tuned instinct for crowd-pleasing that would come to define his output for the following decades. After a nightmarish production, Jaws was rescued by excellent editing and musical innovation, both of which helped create the modern cinematic language of horror movies and blockbusters, and remains a mandatory big screen experience to this day.
Playing this week
Amy
Ant Man
The Gallows
Inside Out
Jurassic World
Magic Mike XXL
Max
Minions
Mr. Holmes
Self/Less
Spy
Terminator: Genisys
Trainwreck
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213
