4 MOVIES YOU SHOULD ACTUALLY WATCH THIS SUMMER

No dinosaurs.

Jul 11, 2025

Around this time of year, plenty of New Yorkers flee the city and shell out too much for charming (or not-so-charming) little hotels in the countryside. A few years back, Zach and I started our own tradition of doing the same, treating ourselves to a nice stay instead of crashing at my parents’ house. Over time, I’ve gathered a small running list and strong opinions on these lodgings upstate where I am famously from.

I’m actually away for that very reason right now and taking a break, so consider the above hotel guide a bonus to this list riveting movies to see this summer, the antidote to the wan sequels and big-name disappointments (Eddington). I highly recommend each and every one!!

TO A LAND UNKNOWN

Mahdi Fleifel, UK/Palestine/France/Germany and more

Chatila and Reda (played by (Mahmood Bakri, Aram Sabbah) are Palestinian refugees marooned in Athens, hustling to secure funds for passports to Germany, or as they call it, the real Europe. They dream of one day opening an Palestinian restaurant but until then scrape by on fried potatoes, rudimentary cons (pinching handbags from the elderly and fencing brandname sneakers at a humiliating discount), and for one of them, the occasional trick. The scantness of their earnings, $30 euros at most dribbling in here and there, only heightens the injustice of their situation and anguish of exile.

The classically mismatched cousins—one a hardheaded striver with a family back in Lebanon, the other is a jittery addict, stumbling toward the next small disaster, together a Lenny and George—are united in the unlikelihood they will find work or bootstrap success in lowly accommodating Greece. Escape is urgent, but the horizon of opportunity feels insultingly beyond reach—until they meet a thirteen-year-old boy from Gaza. The originally well-intentioned plan to smuggle him to Italy mutates into something far more ethically treacherous. But Fleifel doesn’t judge, and these moral cracks are what make the film compelling, more than any noble immigrant narrative could be.

Hardboiled and tense, dosed subconsciously on Midnight Cowboy (1969), the film has the rough urban pulse of Hollywood dramas of the 1970s, the gritty, unbathed energy of men on the verge of collapse in a new city. So it only makes sense that I was reminded of the hyperventilating sprint of the Safdie brothers, when, from time to time, the camera pushes slowly into the blank stare of an impatient and desperate man caught while a low electronica (with Arab influences ℅ Cairo-born artist Nadah El Shazly) hums in the background.

For all its slick taut style, To a Land Unknown remains deeply humane and empathetic. Coming from a documentary background, Fleifel brings a neorealist rigor to the story, weaving in vivid textures along with the occasional bit of humor—a cold frappe passed back and forth between the cousins; a plate of mujaddara conjured as a distant taste of home; a drug dealer/ poet (Mouataz Alshaltouh) with the same stylings as Ben Schwartz providing comedic relief and sobering reminders of the present condition with his chilling recitation of Mahmoud Darwish. Mandatory viewing. In theaters now.

CLOUD

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan

Who are these people on ebay selling lots of medical equipment alongside memorabilia and designer knock offs? Cloud, Kiyoshi Kurowawa’s unflaggingly weird, delightfully fun portrait of an online reseller doesn’t give you any realistic answers. Instead the J-Horror master uses the loose environs of this niche subculture, if you can even call it that, to stage an action picture that further combusts into a hellish fable of capitalism.

Share MOVIEPUDDING

Our protagonist Yoshii (Masaki Suda) works a day job in a factory but quickly graduates to his lonely hustle, flipping all manner of oddball junk online—so successfully that he ditches the grind and scurries off to a quiet little town outside Tokyo with his girlfriend in tow. He has the kind of face I file under overwhelmingly slappable. His vacant bulging eyes hide neither anger nor longing, only a deadened drive to profit by the laws of supply and demand. After uploading listings onto his internet storefront, he stares long and hard at the computer screen of auction boxes blinking in front of him, like he’s willing the items to sell by sheer concentration or magic. The actual spoils seem inconsequential to him and more important to his girlfriend.

Because Kurosawa shoots everything with such eerie focus—the suspiciously loud computer hum, the cold surfaces lit inside joyless, faceless buildings—each scene ripples with dread and menace. You almost believe something larger is at play, especially when the anonymous threats start rolling in and his young assistant all-too eagerly pledges fealty to Yoshii. There’s something comic-book coded (not derogatory!) about the way the final scenes unfold, which potentially open up a portal to another dimension. Thankfully, Kurosawa’s smart enough not to lean into that. In theaters July 18.

HARVEST

Athina Rachel Tsangari, UK/US

If you’re in the mood for something slower-paced and more sensorially transportive, there’s Harvest. The only non-thriller on this list, it still feels epic in its landscapes and themes—rivaling the spirit of a summer blockbuster in its own poetic way. The capacious myth of a story that considers colonialism and capitalism is rendered in gorgeous Terrence Malick–level beauty, all captured on grainy, mostly naturally lit 16mm by Sean Price Williams—the DP-auteur of our time. I just filed a piece about it that I’ll share soon.

Arrives exclusively at Metrograph on August 1 and streams on MUBI starting August 8. You can get a free month using mubi.com/elissa.

LURKER

Alex Russell, US

If you want to stay plugged into the zeitgeist, this is the one you’ll want to see as soon as it drops on August 22. This debut feature from Alex Russell—a producer and writer on Beef and The Bear—follows a retail store clerk who essentially stalks his way into the orbit of a rising pop star. Imagine Talented Mr. Ripley if Matt Damon radiated Nathan Fielder levels of awkwardness and it took place in the age of social media. It’s just as stylish as the Ripley films, too, but the cultural milieu is 2010s avant-garde R&B music scene. I’ve desperately tried (and failed) to pitch a story about it, so you’ll eventually have to hear me out here next month! In theaters August 22.