Movies: Summer Rituals Revisited

I like summer in the Midwest...mostly.  I like bonfires and camping (in tents. like a man. do it right.) and being a river rat with my dad.  The days when the weather is unbearably hot, wet, and sauna-like?...not so much.

Coincidentally, my last few summers at home have kind of sucked.  Last summer started with the tragic funeral of my favorite teacher from high school and wrapped up with a final summer funeral count of 4, including my cat.  The summer before was a balance between my part-time job and spending 40 hours a week (including my 20th birthday) in a hospital room waiting for my grandma's death...which never came, oddly enough.

Something about my mindset formed by the events of summers past led to the formation of my annual summer tradition: watch weird movies.  I guess weird/unpredictable movies that forced me to pay attention were a sufficient distraction from reality.  I think it started with A Clockwork Orange and snowballed from there.  I leeched ideas from user-created weird films lists I found online and rented movies (in a real, live movie store!) in bundles.

Not including some of weird films that I had already experienced beforehand, this is the list of films I made it through (that I can remember off the top of my head):
• Waking Life
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Rosemary's Baby
• Being John Malkovich
• Synecdoche, New York
• Requiem for a Dream
• Jesus Camp
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
...and then somewhere along the way Sleeper, Manhattan and Blade Runner fell into place.
and I've always loved Howl's Moving Castle.

...Wow, that's a sad little list when it's down on paper.

Since I suspect I'll be moderately bummed about this "next chapter" of life beginning after graduation, I've been mentally building my list of things to watch while sitting in my parents' basement consuming pints of Ben & Jerry's.  I have a few things I left to check off my Stanley Kubrick list that I'll begin with, follow by a much needed re-watching of the Star Wars Trilogy...on VHS.

Dear summer that may very well suck like so many others have: bring it on.