Memorial Day occupies its awkward corner at the end of May as a time both to honor our fallen heroes and to celebrate the unofficial beginning of summer. To that end, both war films and summer films are called for to while away the long weekend before we can start preparing our out-of-office emails. Here are five movies on HBO Max worthy of any post-barbecue evening — three movies about summer and two about war.
We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.
Mystic Pizza (1988)
Mystic Pizza, the story of three waitresses at a real-life Connecticut eatery the summer before college, does everything movies of this type are supposed to do in creating an impossibly bucolic world: everyone owns waterfront property, it’s perpetually a beautiful New England summer, and townies look like Julia Roberts.
Also, everyone survives exclusively on pizza, though it is Connecticut-style pizza, which proves you can’t have everything. With a script co-written by Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Alfred Uhry, Mystic Pizza has a pedigree far more prestigious than its (forgive me) cheesy reputation.
Stream Mystic Pizza on HBO Max.
Seven Samurai (1954)
For any other filmmaker, Seven Samurai would be a career-defining masterpiece. For Akira Kurosawa, it was merely an entry in his impossibly illustrious 1950s, alongside Rashomon, Ikiru, and Throne of Blood. Takashi Shimura (also a co-star of Rashomon and Ikiru) leads a band of mercenaries contracted to engage in a great battle to protect a village from bandits.
Seven Samurai was made in the rubble of Japan’s recovery from World War II, and it is, unmistakably, a war film. It is a portrait of what makes a society both at peace and at war — its organization, discipline, fears, entertainment, and weaknesses — and its selective need for those who can protect it in a crisis, only to discard them once that crisis has passed.
Stream Seven Samurai on HBO Max.
Aftersun (2022)
Aftersun, a Charlotte Wells film loosely based on a summer trip the director took with her own father as a child, feels like a memory. Set at a low-grade beach resort in Turkey, the film follows Wells’ counterpart, 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio), and her 30-year-old father, Calum (Paul Mescal).
Calum’s youth gets him confused for Sophie’s brother more than once, and the keen sense that his childhood was interrupted by Sophie’s arrival pervades the film. Mescal received his first Oscar nomination for this achingly gorgeous memory play.
Stream Aftersun on HBO Max.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
Forty years of British war-making are soaringly summarized in this superb film by the prototypical British wartime filmmakers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes). Roger Livesey is Clive Wynne-Candy, who climbs from enlisted man in the Boer War to major general during World War II, guided by a sense of stereotypically English honor that becomes more archaic as the century winds on.
There is something unique about the way Powell and Pressburger use Technicolor. Their films, especially this one, have a texture and richness almost nothing can match; one wants to lick them off the screen.
Stream The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp on HBO Max.
A Tale of Summer (1996)
Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) has a problem. He’s waiting patiently by the seaside in the north of France for his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Lena (Aurélia Nolin), but he’s also being pursued by Solene (Gwenaëlle Simon) and nursing a will-they-won’t-they friendship with waitress Margot (Amanda Langlet).
This, if you’re curious, is what passes for a problem in France. Éric Rohmer’s exquisitely French romance, lazy and contemplative as a perfect summer’s day, never ceases to delight as the years go on.
Stream A Tale of Summer on HBO Max.