Stream This: Escape the winter with ‘A Summer’s Tale’

‘A Summer’s Tale’
Netflix Instant

Once again the East Coast has been pummeled with a relentless, bleak winter, one that finally appears to be abating. If you need a way to long for the carefree, sunny days ahead — or if you just want to torture yourself — there’s few better ways than this typically breezy 1996 chat-a-thon from French legend Eric Rohmer. Reissued to great fanfare last year, it’s another of his precise studies of the diverse neuroses of love, with a self-serious scruffy-haired collegiate (Melvil Poupaud) dealing with multiple girls while on seaside holiday. And as ever, no one is better at navigating the complexities and absurdities of the human heart like Rohmer.

‘The Secret of NIMH’
Netflix Instant

The latest ’80s nostalgia item to get repurposed by uncreative movie execs is Don Bluth’s faithless take on Robert C. O’Brien’s novel, about super-intelligent mice who’ve escaped the lab and created their own realm. It was a milestone at the time — the first film from a group of disgruntled Disney animators who decamped and formed their own rival company. They never had the same success, but this remains one lovingly crafted toon.

‘Three Days of the Condor’
Netflix Instant

The ’70s teemed with paranoid, pessimistic, usually downer conspiracy thrillers. Compared to “The Parallax View,” this Robert Redford-starrer is almost upbeat. Redford is a CIA analyst who finds himself the target of the CIA itself, and even finds love with the innocent woman (Faye Dunaway) he forces to become his protector. Things can never be that bad for Robert Redford.

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