On VOD: This Fourth of July, Go Swimming with Sharks

It's summertime in the world of on-demand movies, and there's an extra charge that movies get and give from sun-baked seasonal alignment. In other words, you should be as lucky as I am to so vividly remember the summer of '75, when Jaws came out...

Jaws (Encore on Demand)

If you were there, you've got this movie in your DNA. Truly communal movie experiences like it don't happen often -- everyone saw it, twice, and everyone had a new relationship with the beach. Still, put the man-eating giant monster shark aside for a moment, and you've got full-on, real-to-the-touch Atlantic beach community life, back when people listened to transistor radios in the sand and used suntan oil. The actors' clothes even seem creased with sand and salt air. Encore buttresses the Steven Spielberg classic with its three not-so-classic sequels, good only for summer vibe-making.

Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves (Best Buy Cinema Now)

Movies at their old-school movieness, this 1944 mega camp classic is opium-doped on chintzy exotica and frond shadows and turbaned villains and Maria Montez, goddess icon to multiple generations of cross-dressers and kitsch aficionados and underground filmmakers (Warhol, Jack Smith, etc.). Queer and fake and fascinating as a three-dollar bill.

Married to the Mob (Cinemax on Demand)

This is what summer movies could look and feel like in 1988: Jonathan Demme's deliriously silly Mafia send-up, with not a single Italian in the cast and Michelle Pfeiffer, still in her dewy prime, as the mob wife escaping the life to thrive in a sunny, rainbow-hued dream version of Greenwich Village. Dean Stockwell was Oscar-nominated as the most ridiculous don ever, while Alec Baldwin lends the Long Island goombah gist its only authenticity. Matthew Modine is a Rube Goldberg-contriving fed.

Loren Cass (Cinetic Filmbuff)

Chris Fuller's 2006 indie took a few years to find theatrical exposure, but now it's unleashed, a face-slapping drop-down into the lives of bored-into-criminal-mayhem Florida teens that will dissuade you from ever visiting Florida again. Smart and crude and incendiary all at once, it's a sweaty dose of chaos that features real brawls, real (maybe) sex and real news-footage bloodshed.

Art of the Devil III (VOD.com)

This 2008 grue-bath is actually a prequel to Art of the Devil 2, but it's more of the same excessive, nihilistic Thai torture-porn hellspawn, and if you know what that means, you're in. If not, taste with caution.

The Shock Doctrine (Sundance Selects)

Progressive Brit film factory Michael Winterbottom makes his first documentary, illustrating Naomi Klein's book about how modern governments depend upon the traumatic state of disasters and wars to maintain their power. Required and fury-producing and probably the year's most vital political doc, it's for a summer evening you were otherwise afraid of wasting.

Tempest (Best Buy Cinema Now)

Paul Mazursky's idea of a mid-life crisis puts a mid-life-crisis John Cassavetes, overpowered by a renewed zest for life, on a sunny Greek island with new girlfriend Susan Sarandon (this was 1982, keep in mind), tempestuous daughter Molly Ringwald and horny native Caliban figure Raul Julia. Ebullient, crazy and Mediterranean-dizzy -- and no slouch on Shakespearian business, either.