Focus Features

Just as everyone should have a light summer viewing list, all directors should offer a light(ish) summer film. Martin Scorsese gave us After Hours in 1985. This black comedy makes one squirm and root for poor Griffin Dunne who, because of an incredible string of events, cannot get back home to uptown Manhattan from downtown after a date with Roseanne Arquette gone horribly wrong. Catherine O’Hara is hilarious as a crime-watch-crazed citizen patrolling the streets of SoHo in her ice cream truck. And Teri Garr was tapping into a higher power when playing this fragile and awkward cocktail waitress. This film offers a brilliant blend of laughter and suspense.

The spirit of Anne Bowman lives in “Chicklet” (Lauren Ambrose), who blacks out when she sees hypnotic spiraling patterns. She wakes each time and finds to her horror that a gruesome murder has transpired. Charles Busch (who wrote, directed, and acted in the off-Broadway play) is hilariously campy as Captain Monica Stark. There’s plenty of suspense, innuendo, and surfing—all the finest ingredients for fun summer fare.

Most of Woody Allen’s films have somewhat autumnal sensibilities, but even Mr. Allen can kick back for a summer weekend (at the turn of the last century) with friends Mia Farrow, Jose Ferrer, Mary Steenburgen, Tony Roberts, and Julie Hagerty. Neurotic sexual hilarity ensues.

Everyone needs a good road film in his or her summer viewing repertoire. You simply can’t go wrong with the warped whimsy of Pee Wee Herman under the twisted direction of Tim Burton, serenaded by the fever-dream-induced carnivalesque music of Danny Elfman. It’s just undeniable pure fun, unless you’re not a Pee Wee Herman fan. I am. “Merci beaublah.” You’re welcome, Pee Wee.

Burt Lancaster relives past events as he travels from neighbor’s pool to neighbor’s pool through the backyards of his wealthy suburb on his way home, socializing and cocktailing with the pools’ owners along the way. His idea is to literally swim home. It is strange and fascinating, and the viewer can’t help but feel lost along with Mr. Lancaster when the fun idea starts to turn. Perhaps this film is best viewed toward the end of summer, when melancholy twinges of fall start to appear. Music by Marvin Hamlisch. Co-starring Janet Landgard, Kim Hunter, Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Joan Rivers (who looks eerily human in 1968).