Only a few weeks after our most recent Snowmageddon, another blizzard is brewing for the Northeast. Since that may mean a snow day for many of our readers — and we bet no small number of you got your yearly snow-playing out of the way last month — we’ve devised a way for you to frolic in a winter wonderland without ever leaving the cozy comfort of your couch. The films we’ve rounded up aren’t just set in cold climates; they’re full-on sensory experiences that immerse you in a world of snow and ice.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a Western, but like all Robert Altman’s films, it transcends its genre. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie play the titular pair in this wintry tale of a frontier town on its way up, its prostitutes, and the shadowy, menacing figures who will do anything to take over its lucrative mining operation. (Watch out for the clip above — it’s very snowy, but it’s also a spoiler.)
Temperatures aren’t all that’s frosty in this tale of upper-middle-class ’70s family dysfunction, adapted from Rick Moody’s novel of the same name. As New Canaan, CT weathers a major ice storm, parents and their teenage children drift ever farther apart — and into ill-advised adventures of their own.
Le Notti Bianche (White Nights)
Marcello Mastroianni is as romantic as ever in Luchino Visconti’s tale, adapted from Dostoyevsky’s short story “White Nights,” of a lonely man and woman who chance to meet on a bridge and fall into a troubled love affair.
This fantastical, Swedish tale of a child vampire and the boy she befriends takes place in the appropriately dark and bleak, but also icily beautiful, world of Scandinavian winter.
The Coen brothers — with the help of a great cast, including Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, and Steve Buscemi — manage to make a husband’s plot to murder his wife funny in this off-the-wall crime tale that takes place in the dead of winter in one of America’s chilliest cities.
This documentary, adapted from a book of the same name, tells the story of a pair of climbers who nearly died trying to scale Peru’s Siula Grande. The tale may be harrowing, but the snow-covered mountain proves to be as beautiful as it is treacherous.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
In Michel Gondry’s epically depressing film, ex-lovers can erase all memories of each other through (deeply flawed) neurological technology. But we’ll never forget those images of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, on the snowy beach of Montauk and scrambling to escape the icy recesses of their own minds.
In the second installment of Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy, White may refer to marriage (and the protagonist’s inability to consummate same) — but the color also appears in the snowy, icy, Eastern European weather that provides the setting for this dark comedy.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
No actor has ever personified snowy weather like White Witch Tilda Swinton in this sumptuous screen adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ classic children’s novel. And while we can see why a 100-year winter may not be desirable, at least Narnia’s is breathtakingly beautiful.
You hear a lot about the Mexican-American border, but Frozen River reveals the rarely told story of Americans who earn their living transporting illegal immigrants from Canada. Cold and ice play such a large role in the plot of this film, set in New York’s rural North Country, that they practically become characters.