Seek respite from the scorching sun with these frost-themed streaming movies.
The scorching summer sun is getting even hotter – or at least it is for the British. While we can’t waft arctic air into your living rooms and gardens, we can provide some icy fresh movie recommendations from Amazon Prime Video for you to enjoy as you shelter from the sweltering heat.
Best of all, Vodafone UK mobile Pay Monthly customers can add Amazon Prime Video to their plans for a low monthly fee.
The Revenant
If there was ever any doubt about Leonardo di Caprio’s acting chops, they were dispelled in this bracingly brutal drama. Di Caprio plays a 19th Century fur trapper who has to survive not only the stark cold of the Dakotas in winter, but also other frontiersmen – and a hulking bear of frightening ferocity.
Arctic
While Mads Mikkelsen has been somewhat typecast as a villain following his breakthrough English-language role in Casino Royale, he’s more than capable of playing a range of characters. Here, he plays a stoic yet determined survivor of a plane crash in the Arctic who has to rely on his grit, spit and bile to get home.
Iceman
If you can’t get enough of snowy solitary survival dramas, Iceman should be up next on your watchlist. The film is a fictional imagining of the life of a prehistoric man found startlingly well-preserved in the Alpine ice back in 1991. Told with almost no dialogue, Iceman nonetheless holds your attention with deceptive ease.
Enemy at the Gates
English-language dramas about the Second World War rarely depict the horrific fighting of the Eastern Front. Enemy at the Gates bucks this trend with its depiction of the remorselessly bitter Battle of Stalingrad, told through the eyes of duelling Soviet and German snipers. Although stuffed with English- and American-accented thespians, the performances are nonetheless easily a match for the action. The late, great Bob Hoskins is good value as Nikita Khrushchev, while Ed Harris delivers a frosty portrayal of the stony-faced German antagonist.
The Ice Road
While this action flick about truck drivers on a treacherously icy journey to deliver life-saving supplies is nothing special storywise, it does have action movie legends Liam Neeson and Laurence Fishburne. The Ice Road isn’t the best example of either star’s talents as unlikely latter-day action heroes, but it’s diverting enough while you’re cooling your heels in the garden.
Wind River
Marvel stars Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner take a break from superheroics in this murder mystery. The two play a pair of US Federal agents investigating a murder on a Native American reservation that’s as cruel and bitter as the wintry weather. Combining film noir with post-modernist Western vibes, Wind River is unexpectedly thought provoking.
Hateful Eight
This Tarantino western starts in the wintry Wyoming wilderness, but soon moves the action to a snow-encrusted log cabin lodge. There, an unruly gaggle of predictably foul-mouthed, untrustworthy and violent critters attempt to outfox each other. The all-star cast includes Kurt Russell and Channing Tatum as well as a host of Tarantino regulars from Samuel L Jackson to Tim Roth.
King of Texas
If you need a sun-drenched interval from all these frost-covered films, try King of Texas. This retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear transplants the familial tragedy from ancient Britain to the parched plains of 19th Century Texas. While this film doesn’t quite make the most of its new setting, this is still a worthy reimagining due in large part to the searing central performance by national treasure Sir Patrick Stewart.
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