Summer Flix

I don’t know about you, but for me some movies are seasonal – it just doesn’t feel like I’ve experienced that season unless certain movies are part of the routine.

I think most people feel this way about winter and Christmas: movies like It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol (the Muppet version), A Christmas Story, White Christmas, Home Alone, Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas…  OK, that last one is a stretch, but you get what I mean.

But what about summer movies?  Is it just me, or do others of you have perennial summer movies that put the ‘cherry on top’, so to speak, of your summer?  That it kind of feels like you skipped something if you don’t watch that movie every summer?

Maybe it’s because these movies came out in the summer and I have fond memories of my skin slightly tingling with sunburn, dodging the 90+degree heat with my cousin at the Crossroads Mall in Omaha.  Or walking the 3 blocks from my grandparents in Hastings to the local cinema with that same cousin in the sweltering July heat.  Sure, some of it is nostalgia, but not all of it.  I mean, I clearly remember waiting in the summer heat of 1983 to see Return of the Jedi for the first time, but it’s not a movie that I feel like needs to be a part of my summer.

These are the movies I feel like are a necessary part of my summer… for whatever reason, but in no particular order:

-       The Goonies
(“’nice’ is my middle name Mrs. Walsh”)

-       The Karate Kid
(“wax on. Wax off.”)

-       Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
(“strange things are afoot at the Circle K”)

-       Back to the Future
(“I am your density”)

So… is it just me? Or do you have perennial ‘summer’ movies too?  If so – list ‘em below – and the first quote you can think of from that movie….