Summer Is for Subtitles 

Watching movies is a winter sport. When the sun is shining and the temperature rises, sitting inside, staring at a screen for two-plus hours feels borderline illegal. It's like I'm opting in on some sick, twisted version of Plato's Cave. The room is bright, the world is buzzing outside, but I still demand to watch the shadows on the wall.

And demand I do! Because, despite the warm weather, despite all the winter days that I spent complaining about the cold and coming up with grand dreams of what I'd do all summer, at the end of a long day, I usually just want to sit on my couch and watch a movie.

I live in 2026 and nothing is affordable. The money I do have I spend on my one-bedroom apartment. It's a building from the 50s. It's made of wood. It has no air conditioning. No heat control whatsoever. What I'm saying is, in the summer, my apartment, where I do the majority of my movie watching, is blisteringly hot.

What's a guy to do other than open a window? My place has lots of windows. I can get some decent air flow. The windows make my living room very bright.

I live on a busy street. It's a main road for bus routes, emergency vehicles and average commuters looking for a good road out of the city. Cars go by outside of my window 24-7. They've been doing construction on my block for about three years.

My next-door neighbour has two kids both under the age of three. Through those paper-thin walls, I hear many meltdowns. This adds to the cacophony.

With the sun beaming, the windows open, cars zooming by and babies crying, my at-home viewing experience is suboptimal. Does that stop me? Is that enough for me to turn off the TV and go for a walk? Hell no.

Through these summers, I've developed a system for watching movies. Gather around, as I share my secrets.

There are ways to circumvent these conditions and still have a nice night of watching movies at home. Like when writing a script, the most important thing is the premise. The premise, in this case, is what movie you watch.

Watching a Robert Altman mumblecore movie is the worst thing you can watch, in this instance. McCabe and Mrs. Miller is out. In fact, most English-speaking movies are out because following a Noah Baumbach-level dialogue scene is pretty impossible when you have a concrete truck blasting by at 50 kilometres an hour.

I use summertime to catch up on foreign films. Why? Because they have subtitles. I could watch these movies on mute and still not miss much. I could watch English movies with the subtitles on, but I refuse. It makes me feel like my parents and a lesser-than cinephile. It goes against one of my many principals in enjoying a film. That is, if the director had wanted me to hear clearly what the actor was saying, they would have made it clear what the actor was saying. However, when you are watching in a room where you need to shout to just have a conversation, the director's vision largely goes out the window. That's why I turn to foreign films, because I can still honour the vision while keeping my windows open.

Colour movies work fine, but, as you will see shortly, I prefer a black-and-white foreign film, in the summer. With the sun beating down on my television, the picture can sometimes get hard to see. The colour doesn't really pop off the screen. Black and white, however, is pretty much the same, day or night. Yes, the darks are darker in the dark, but, like, it is what it is.

Additionally, foreign films tend to be shot in locations that are hotter than where I am. So, when my city finally gets to those scorching temperatures, I watch movies from other parts of the world where the heat is on much more often. As I sweat on the couch, I watch these characters sweat on screen, and I feel connected to their salty struggles.

If you're like me and live in a suboptimal setting without air conditioning, then have no fear. I have a list of movies that will help you get through the rest of the summer with your windows down, the fan on high, and the engine of the city never ever stopping.

La Ciénaga

This is the only in-colour movie on my list. La Ciénaga is like those summer days where it's too hot to do anything. I think they call them the dog days of summer. All you can do is lay down by a fan and wait for the night.

From Argentina and directed by Lucrecia Martel, I have no doubt that I'm not the intended audience for this film. It feels like a movie made by Argentinians, for Argentinians. The country's response to Fubu, if you will.

Still, it's an amazing movie. Through the screen, you feel the oppressive heat of summer, the oppressive dynamics of family, the oppressive stagnation of generational trauma.

If you like to live like a lizard, drinking by the pool and moving only out of necessity, then this movie is for you.

Güeros

Okay, onto the black-and-white stuff. Yay! As temperatures rise, so do tempers, usually. Güeros is not an angry movie, but there is an underlying tension of anger and disenfranchisement that runs throughout it. This is a movie for those who like to spend their summer attending whatever protest is closest.

Watching these guys steal electricity from their neighbour so they can cool down really resonated with me. I didn't do that, but I do sit in my apartment for no good reason and sweat when I could easily cool off by just taking a walk down to the beach.

Güeros is for the slacker within you. It's not a nothing-happens movie, but it does have that drifting feeling. It's ideal for impossibly hot Sunday nights.

Pather Panchali

I don't know if this one is set in the summertime, but it is set in India and it just looks really hot there. Is it hot everywhere in India all the time? I don't know. They probably have mountains, somewhere. It's a big country. I'm digressing.

Before Christopher Nolan upped this movie's credentials by picking it out in the Criterion Closet, I was learning about it the old-fashioned way — through a Peliplat article.

This movie is drop-dead gorgeous. Every frame is a painting, literally. To be honest, I barely remember the story. I just remember being stunned by the visuals.

Similar to La Ciénaga, this film is about family dynamics. However, where La Ciénaga felt like watching the most bizarre family you've ever met, Pather Panchali feels all too familiar. Despite its setting, the film deals with universal themes like growing up and doing what you must to provide for your family.

It's a friendly reminder. Yes, I'm alone, sweating in my rundown apartment with buses beaming by and a baby crying next door, but it could always be worse.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Summer is a pretty horny time. I think we can agree on that. More skin on the streets. More time at the beach. More opportunities to meet someone new. Tetsuo takes this desire and pushes it to its painful extreme.

A benefit that this movie has over the others is that it's very loud. This movie can cut over the sound of cars and babies. The thumping, metallic score plays through a majority of this film. At times, it feels more like an extended music video than a movie. But there is still a story. It's a dejected, sexually frustrated story — but it's a story!

This is a movie I'd recommend for when the heat becomes unbearable in more ways than one.

Hiroshima mon amour

Every summer, Hiroshima mon amour lies to me. I look at the title and it sounds romantic. I think back on the last time I watched it and I remember the whispered dialogue, the romantic backdrop, the sultry images of grappling bodies. Then I watch it and I remember what this movie really is.

I do love this movie. It is beautifully shot. It does have some wonderful romance. On top of that, it is heavy. I mean really heavy.

I always remember the mon amour part and never the Hiroshima. Prepare to see mutilated bodies, pure destruction, all while being gaslit by some guy saying, "This never happened."

It's remembrance. It's selective forgetting. It's terribly complex and confounding, but still, even now, I can't help but credit its beauty even if I can't remember what I found so beautiful about it. Maybe I need to watch it again. It can't be so awful, can it?

There you have it. Those are my picks for essential summer movies. Summer is for subtitles, because how do you expect me to follow a movie when I'm sweat-stuck to a leather couch while concrete is being chiseled, children are melting down, roadrage jackasses hammer their horn, and the sun is directly in my eyes. Without subtitles I'd have to do something drastic, like go outside. Not today, summertime. Not today.