There's a lot of air conditioning in town, but which dark chilly room to choose for two hours of blissful coolness? It's easy. Before you do anything else, including lunch, dinner, sleeping, work, or lemonade (you can bring the lemonade into the theater), immediately go to:

1. Crash. (Or why America needs Valium in its drinking water and a lot fewer guns. Not to mention that Don Cheadle and Matt Dillon [!] are big, craft-focused actors plus hot movie stars who make you say "And why does Brat Pitt matter again?" And Sandra Bullock will surprise you.) Link: Review by David Denby, New Yorker.

2. Mad Hot Ballroom. (Or how the foxtrot of fifth-graders will make you laugh till you cry, the kids in Tribeca are like tiny psychiatrists, and the teachers in Bensonhurst and Tribeca know how to get things done.) Link: Review by Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post.

3. Howl's Moving Castle. (Or why Disney has become the Gaston of American animation—all vanity, no wild beastlike beauty. Lucky them that they could ride Hayao Miyazaki’s magnificent house into town.) Link: Review by Gene Seymour, Newsday.

It's easy! See you in six hours, and you'll have forgotten all about this steamy carnival of smells. When you get out, perhaps after a waffle at Petite Abeille to get into the spirit of Belgium, which according to Mrs. Favell Lee Mortimer is an "industrious, honest" country unfortunately damned by idol-worship, it'll be time for Clumsiest People in the World author Todd Pruzan, at the Chelsea B&N at 7. That's air-conditioned, too.

Categories: Movies, NYer, Denby, Critics, Pruzan