Films To Watch During Summer

What's better than staying in during a really, really hot day and watching movies that you don't really have to think about while lying in a nicely air conditioned room? Nothing. Well, maybe going to the pool, sipping a margarita, eating a vanilla frosty, walking along the beach. But you get the idea.

Greece, Italy, Spain, Australia, Montenegro, Texas, Cape Cod, California, Arizona; where do you want to go on summer vacation this year? I've compiled a list of my favorite summer movies to watch if you've got a case of wanderlust but can't do anything about it.

1) Adore

Who wouldn't want to live in this movie!? Those colors! The landscape! The houses! The clothes and hats and sunglasses! The boys! Naomi Watts and Robin Wright are fabulous cougars living in some fantastic seaside Australian version of suburbia in this movie. They fall in love with each other's sons and yeah, you can guess that it doesn't go down well.

2) Casino Royale

Nothing says summer like Daniel Craig rising from the greenest of oceans in the tiniest of swim trunks! Casino Royale makes you want to visit Montenegro even more than you did before. But leave it to Eva Green to vamp up a summer setting. If you're not feeling chiffon, linen, and cotton in pinks, whites, and soft blues for summer fabrics and colors, Vesper Lynd makes it okay to wear silk and black and deep red and purple.

3) The Kings of Summer

If you're not feeling the beach or exotic getaways, and are instead feeling summer vacation in the suburbs, give The Kings of Summer a go. It's got deadpan humor, cute high school boys, wanderlust, teen angst, life lessons. It's summer in suburbia and sometimes that's just as captivating as summer in Monte Carlo.

4) Little Children

My favorite summer in suburbia move features a frumpy Kate Winslet and hot dad Patrick Wilson. The movie focuses on three different stories in the same neighborhood and their corruptness in a seemingly pleasant area. One of my favorite affair/romances ever is Kate and Patrick's character hooking up in the laundry room after they take their kids to the community pool. Doesn't get anymore middle America than that.

5) Thelma and Louise

I'm pretty sure everyone has dreams of a summer road trip with their best girlfriend (I know I do). The only way to do it is like Thelma and Louise. Grab an old Chevy, some Levi 501's, band tees, cowboy boots and hats and your sunglasses and head west. Fingers crossed you run into a Brad Pitt cowboy, too.

6) The Way Way Back

Covering all summer vacation spots, The Way Way Back takes us to the east coast to a water park. I love the main character in all his awkwardness and loneliness. It's all strangely relatable. But I love Sam Rockwell wearing a tank top and swim trunks even more, to be quite honest.

7) Dazed and Confused

School's out for the summer. I find that Richard Linklater films are good to watch during the summer because, probably just like you, the characters are always just bumming around, living life and having a good time. The difference from Dazed and Confused and other Linklater movies? This is set in 1976 and features a blonde Matthew McConaughey and the inception of "alright, alright, alright."

8) The Sandlot

Nothing screams summer in America than 4th of July, the 1950s, swimming pools and baseball. As a kid, I wasn't one to go play outside (especially growing up in southern California when the temperature gets to be around 105 degrees at times). But The Sandlot always made me secretly want to take up a sport and have a bunch of friends and play in the dirt.

9) Martha Marcy May Marlene

I've always wanted a summer home on a lake, preferably one that looks like Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy's character's home in Martha Marcy May Marlene. While I love the story and the acting in this, for this list's purpose, I'm looking solely at the setting and wardrobe: a big clean house with open windows facing a big blue lake, a massive deck sitting right on the water, trees and trees galore. And you've got to wear crisp whites and crisp baby blues and jean shorts and flip flops. Oh and how does Sarah Paulson get her hair like that??

10) Vicky Cristina Barcelona

A few summers ago, all I wanted to do was go to Barcelona. I wanted to wear khaki shorts, white blouses, espadrilles and not wash my hair. I wanted to carry around a cognac tote and wear tortoise shell glasses and stroll around Spain's capital. Since I couldn't do that in real life, of course I decided to live vicariously through Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The cinematography alone will make you crave some summer sun if the costumes and setting don't do it for ya.

11) Before Midnight

Probably my least favorite movie in Linklater's Before trilogy. I don't think I liked it because it was too real. These characters are perfection and seeing them fight was too much for me to handle. It was like watching two people I hold so high come tumbling down. But this isn't a review of the film. It's a mini-review of the Grecian setting on which it takes place on. A review on Julie Delpy's blue sun dress and how it matches Ethan Hawke's blue button down and how that matches the blue sky and sea.

12) And While We Were Here

I felt this movie was a little try-hard but my god Kate Bosworth knows how to wear clothes. Probably because she's a tiny thing but nonetheless, her wardrobe in this is stunning. Not to mention how stunning the Italian island of Ischia is and how I just want to stroll around a foreign city and meet a cute boy!! (See a pattern here?) This movie has all of your summer plans in one: wear chiffon everyday, go swimming in the Mediterranean, eat authentic Italian food outside by the sea, wander around an island at night with a crush, stay in a fabulous and comfy hotel room. Take me to Ischia!

Cinematic Style: Elizabeth Berkley in 'Showgirls'

Showgirls was named one of the worst movies of all time. It has a 4.5 out of 10 rating on IMDB and a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was also the first and only movie with an NC-17 rating to be released in mainstream theatres across America. But this is one of the movies that I keep going back to again and again because I love it so much. I don't love it for the acting (everyone is 100% over acting everything in this), I don't love it for the writing and not even for the directing. I love the cheesy Las Vegas glamour, the neon lights, the bad 90s clothes, the over use of lip liner. I love the bad dialogue and the annoying colors. I love Kyle MacLachlan's bad haircut and I love Gina Gershon's overly sexually charged demeanor. But most of all I love Elizabeth Berkley's wardrobe in this and, on a deeper level, I love the fact that this movie is what movies should be about: we take a step into a character's life and we watch them go through the trials and tribulations of life.

Nomi Malone walks right into Vegas and makes it her bitch. We have no idea what she was doing before she hitchhiked a ride to Nevada with an Elvis Presley look-a-like. She works her way from stripper to showgirl and does it with passion. At the end of the movie, she decides that she's done with Vegas so she hitchhikes back out and continues towards Los Angeles. It's just amazing to me that she arrives in Vegas, says she wants to be a dancer, gets her shit stolen, finds a friend and ends up living with her, makes it as the star showgirl in one of the biggest shows in one of the huge hotel and casinos Stardust (what a perfect name), gets caught in a sticky situation and then finally picks up and leaves it all. A "young drifter" is what she's referred to on IMDB's synopsis of the film.

Isn't that what Vegas is about though? Drifters? People gambling, not just with money but with their dignity? Their imagination and their emotions? I love the lack of comfortableness and the lack of a home in Vegas. I know people who actually live there and to have a house on the outskirts of Fabulous Las Vegas seems strange to me. It's a town built on losers and glitz and glamour. New York is supposed to be the city that never sleeps but for me, Las Vegas is the city that never sleeps. There's no concept of time when you're in one of the hotel/casinos. There's never any windows to see what time of day it is, where the sun is at. It's that reckless, youthful, crazy, hedonistic energy that makes it so exciting.

I could use the same exact words to describe Nomi Malone's wardrobe: reckless, youthful, crazy, and hedonistic. I mean, what the hell is she wearing half the time! Her collection of ugly blouses are envious as well as the fringed leather jacket (I like to imagine she picked it up from some guy she was sleeping with). Her mixing of colors is just as spazzy as she is. A pink bra with a purple cropped, long sleeve blouse that she tied above her ribs paired with Levi's cut off shorts and black cowboy boots? It's so wrong it's right.

I also want to take the time to acknowledge the makeup in this movie. Whoever was the makeup artist on set did a kick ass job. Showgirl makeup is insane for obvious reasons (which is why I appreciate the shots of the girls slathering on what I assume to be Pond's Cold Cream post show as they take their hair and makeup off). The eye makeup, the heavy eyeshadow "everyday wear" makeup, the caking on of lip liner and lipgloss/lipstick (that often don't match) add to the glitz, the schizophrenic nature, and the Vegas-like nature of it all.

Just like listening to Christina Aguilera's album Bionic (arguably her worst album) or eating a burger, fries, and a soda (Nomi's favorite meal), sometimes we need a cheesy movie to watch. Sometimes we need a little Las Vegas. That's probably what Nomi thought when she ran off to Nevada. "I need a little Vegas."

Cinematic Style: Julia Stiles in '10 Things I Hate About You'

Likes: Thai food, feminist pros and angry girl music of the Indie Rock persuasion.

I have always found Julia Stiles' portrayal of Katarina Stratford to be the most relatable character I've come across in my life. She's angsty, goes against the current, reads Sylvia Plath, thinks prom is stupid (but went anyway), likes "Thai food, feminist pros and angry girl music of the Indie Rock persuasion" and I mean, c'mon, look at that room. I had the same theme going on when I was in high school. When I first saw 10 Things I Hate About You, I thought her "bitchy" attitude, masculine meets feminine wardrobe and attraction to Heath Ledger was groundbreaking. I was (and still am) the same way.

What's fantastic about her wardrobe is that it's not as repelling as her attitude. It's actually very approachable and quite feminine despite her masculine aura. First of all, that hair. How on earth do I get a head of hair as thick and has luscious as Julie Stiles' circa 1999?! She wears it in soft waves, girlish braids and that color is the perfect honey blonde. Second of all, the fact that she manages to stay trendy wearing platform sandals, maxi skirts and spaghetti straps also contradicts her stand-out-from-the-crowd persona. Also, she's the only person I've ever seen make the three former garments mentioned actually look cool. But she also wears some interesting pieces like the vintage looking blouse in the last pictures (she wears this giving the most beautiful poem, ever). She also makes smoking slippers and 50s style cardigans look slightly grunge/punk rock if that's even possible. Her wardrobe is a collection of a lot of different pieces but they're all light weight, neutral, and most of all, fit her comfortably. An important concept especially in the late 90s.