DVD Special: Top 5 Completely Inappropriate Summer Movies
The Fly
DVD Special: Top 5 Completely Inappropriate Summer Movies
It happens, sometimes – in spite of the many DVDs typically released each week, every so often there comes a week where you just can’t find a single one to recommend. Good on the pocket book, but bad on DVD columns like mine. So instead of a pick this holiday week, in the style of John Cusack in High Fidelilty, I give you five recommendations on films which are practically designed to shun the good cheer of summertime:
The Ice Storm – Okay, the title makes it seem obvious. However the icy weather conditions in Ang Lee’s bitter family melodrama are the top of the iceburg – frigid upper-middle class marriages, painfully awkward adolescent couplings… and a heartbreaking fatal accident! The joy never ends. Some, it should be noted, might also find some of the 70’s décor pretty depressing. (Me, I kind of like that schlock…)
The Parallax View – At first glance, Alan J. Pakula’s 1974 assassination whodunit seems like a thrill-a-minute candidate for summertime excitement. And the director and star Warren Beatty do deliver a taut nail-biter that keeps you guessing until the very end… then triumphantly bitch-slaps the audience with one of the most downbeat twist endings of all time. Damn! Pwned by Pakula!
Soylent Green – Here’s a film with a twist ending that has more or less become the stuff of legend, but even if you already know what Soylent Green is made of, this 1973 classic is terrible summer viewing. Everyone’s sweating profusely for the entire movie! Okay, except for the bits where Charleton Heston is lounging with Leigh-Taylor Young in her posh penthouse; the rest of the time, though, he and everyone else are sweltering in the greenhouse-gassed metropolis. You can practically smell the B.O.
The Fly – David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of the 50’s camp shocker is one of the most superb reduxs ever made, but despite the quality of the filmmaking it’s pretty much a massive tragedy from 20 minutes in until the last frame. Plus, the worse Jeff Goldblum’s transformation gets, the more he looks like he has the worst sunburn in history. (Thanks for that, Ed!) Ouch, stuff of summer nightmares…
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – What says summertime more than the thrill of the midway, like in the old days of the Atlantic City boardwalk? Except during the Great Depression in Sydney Pollack’s frightening 1969 drama about a dance marathon in which Jane Fonda and a load of other poor bastards starve, injure, traumatize and otherwise exhaust themselves for cash. Frankly, I’d prefer a round of Skee-Ball.
— Nicole Campos
