Review: ‘The Best Summer’ is like watching the coolest home movie ever
2026 / Dir. Tamra Davis
Rating: 4/5
Watch if you like: 1991: The Year That Punk Broke, The Punk Singer, daydreaming about what it would have been like to see Dave Grohl scream along to “Sabotage” with the Beastie Boys to a bunch of rabid Jakarta teenagers in 1995.
While fleeing the 2025 Palisades fire, director Tamra Davis—who has directed everything from The Smiths music videos to Billy Madison—rediscovered a box of camcorder tapes from summer 1995, where she had gone on tour with her then-husband, Mike D. of the Beastie Boys. Minimally edited and contextualized, The Best Summer is like watching the coolest home movie ever.
Unlike Summer of Soul, there’s little to offer anyone who’s not already a fan of the many incredible bands that joined the Beastie Boys on tour, like Sonic Youth, Pavement, Bikini Kill, and the Foo Fighters, who had just recently formed after Kurt Cobain’s death. For alternative rock fans, this is a punk holy grail combining surprisingly good quality performances for a pre-HD camcorder from every band on tour, goofy interview segments where Kathleen Hanna asks Beck what his New Year’s resolution is (to wear more shorts, of course), and your favorite rock musicians singing karaoke or doing water aerobics.
From shots of Thurston Moore getting a malaria shot to Kathleen Hanna and Ad-Rock clearly falling for each other, The Best Summer is a wonderful artifact and time capsule of the post-Nirvana rock golden age.