Ice Cream and Ashes.

Summer movies aren't about summer and they don't have to open during the summer movie-theatre doldrums. For me, they're the movies that come up in conversation at night with friends on the porch or during a long drive, or even late in bed when somebody says, "What was the name of that movie where the cow falls down a well and everybody's looking for that famous old Irish tenor who's disappeared and--wait a minute, it's, it's--" And you say, "Oh, my God, yes, it was--I know this--it was Ned Beatty!" And the first person says, "Yeah, got it now--Ned Beatty, can you believe? In 'Hear My Song.' I think it was English or maybe Irish but, you know, not Irish. Great movie, remember?"

Summer movies aren't classics and don't always make money, but they make friends. Some of them are counter-classics, like "Remember the Night," the 1940 Barbara Stanwyck–Fred MacMurray thing that isn't "Double Indemnity." This time, Fred is a young New York prosecutor who's about to send Barbara away for a jewelry-store shoplifting rap when the trial goes into Christmas recess. Barbara has no place to stay for the holiday, and so Fred, what else, takes her along to his Indiana home, where Mom (Beulah Bondi) and the tree and popcorn and songs around the piano and love and tears are waiting; the script is by Preston Sturges, so not to worry. Other summer movies--I'm thinking of "Tremors," that 1990 Kevin Bacon-vs.-underground-monster-worms battle--start off small and end up in multiple sequels and play all year round on back-channel TV. "Trees Lounge," by contrast, opened and disappeared in a nanosecond in 1996, leaving only a handful of fanly conservators to recall Steve Buscemi (who wrote and directed it as well) as a shaky alcoholic slowly driving an ice-cream truck around Valley Stream, Long Island, and making out with the junior-teen Chloe Sevigny.

Another summer movie that sneaks into mind--one of its devotees was the late Saul Steinberg--is pre-suburban by about eighty thousand years. Without access to Con Ed, members of the Ulam tribe have to carry their light and power around with them in a small basket containing smoldering coals. When a careless elder Ulam slips while crossing a swamp and drowns the spark, there's a crisis. Three strong pithecan homeys are dispatched to find and grab off a fresh ...