After a fall that was so warm that shorts and flip-flops were not a crazy person’s sartorial option, the holiday is over. Crank the furnace, put on your Panama hat and Hawaiian shirt, pour an icy Mai Tai, and sweat along with some “hot” flicks for the freeze that’ll have you praying for a summer breeze.
“Sunshine”: Danny Boyle’s 2007 outer-space drama stars the superb Cillian Murphy in a close encounter of the insane kind. Space flicks are usually about cold, dark places, but this crew journeys to the heart of the sun in an effort to save Earth. A twist on Icarus’ fabled flight to the hot star, perhaps?
“The Proposition”: This Australian “Western” set in the brutal outback in the late 1800s features a superb cast — Ray Winstone, Guy Pearce, Emily Watson and a gloriously twisted Danny Huston — and a gripping script from Nick Cave, who, along with Warren Ellis, wrote the taut musical score.
“The English Patient”: The desert has never seemed more beautiful and/or more deathly than in Anthony Minghella’s 1996 epic. Still, blistering skin and dehydration can’t compare to the twisted passions of star-crossed lovers, played by the ever-brilliant Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas, whose English cool is blown in the desert heat.
“Club Paradise”: Lighten up with this ’80s romp featuring Robin Williams finding trouble in a Caribbean paradise. Directed by Harold Ramis, the movie features Rick Moranis, reggae great Jimmy Cliff, veteran Brit actor Peter O’Toole and swinging ’60s It girl, Twiggy. Oh, and gorgeous palm tree-lined beaches. Jealous?
“The African Queen”: Mop your brow along with Humphrey Bogart in this 1951 tropical classic. Set during WWI, a drunkard boat captain (Bogart) and uptight spinster (Katherine Hepburn) foil nasty Germans! Bogart was the veritable king of perspiration in other heated John Huston-directed films “Key Largo” and “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” too.
