If you looked outside your window in Ireland or the UK, there's a good chance you'll have seen, well, snow.
Lots and lots and lots of snow. This means there's probably a better-than-decent chance you're staying in from the cold today and now that you've got plenty of time to watch movies, here's eleven snow-featuring movies that you can watch to help simulate the cold outside.
Enjoy!
11. CLIFFHANGER (1993)
Sylvester Stallone and Michael Rooker play two mountain rescue bros who are up against '90s John Lithgow playing a deranged former intelligence agent who tries to steal $100 million of untraceable money. Lithgow's accent and general performance in this is absolutely outrageous, and there's so many scenes where he laughs diabolically that it's kind of a joy to see someone do it without a shred of irony.
10. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)
Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal fight extreme weather and, possibly, science in this terrible weather blockbuster directed by the king of landmark destruction, Roland Emmerich. The story itself is utter tosh and the screenplay's a mess, but the special effects - as you'd expect from the guy who directed Stargate and Independence Day - are top-notch.
9. RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985)
Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most overlooked and underrated films of the '80s, Runaway Train is a bleak thriller about two convicts - Jon Voight and Eric Roberts -who escape a brutal prison run by a sadistic warden and hijack a train being operated by Rebecca DeMornay. The warden, played by veteran character actor John P. Ryan, takes out after them in a desperate attempt to either catch or kill them. Also notable for being Danny Trejo's first film appearance, too.
8. THE GREY (2011)
The Grey's an odd film, as the original trailer and marketing material positioned it as a sort of Taken With Wolves, when in actuality, it's a deeply moving and affecting drama about survival against the odds, be it snow, age, depression, divorce, or murderous wolves. Liam Neeson gives one of his strongest performances, and is by far the best film Joe Carnahan has directed so far in his career. It's a shame this didn't do better at the box office, as it'd undoubtedly have led to more meaty film roles like this for Neeson and Carnahan.
7. SNOWPIERCER (2013)
Look, if the snow keeps on the way it is, we may just have to commandeer a train and drive from Heuston to Cork to try keep ourselves warm or something. Chris Evans leads an all-star ensemble that includes Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris, John Hurt, and Octavia Spencer in this bonkers sci-fi blockbuster set on a train that's circling the globe and housing the few remaining dregs of humanity after a botched attempt at climate engineering massively backfires and plunges the earth into a new ice age. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, who also made last year's excellent Netflix original Okja, there's a lot of ideas going on that'd make you think the film could have been made by Terry Gilliam in the '80s.
6. WHITE FANG (1991)
In the same way Watership Down was one of those films that was way more violent than you'd expect, White Fang's in a similar vein. After all, it's directed by the guy who made Grease, Flight Of The Navigator, and Big Top Pee-Wee and it stars a fresh-faced Ethan Hawke, just off of Dead Poets' Society and Explorers. It can't be that violent, right? Wrong. So wrong. There's man-eating wolves, bear attacks, and the whole film centres around a vicious wolf-dog that Ethan Hawke tries to rehabilitate. Also, you can actually feel the cold coming out of the screen when you watch it, it's that cold-looking.
5. FROZEN (2013)
Come on, obviously.
4. COOL RUNNINGS (1993)
In the same way that the Mighty Ducks introduced a generation of children to ice-hockey, Cool Runnings introduced a generation to the sounds of Jimmy Cliff and the idea that bobsleighing was a state of mind. Leading the ensemble cast was the always gregarious and charming John Candy, in what would sadly be his third-to-last film role, where he played the cynical coach who decides to take the Jamaicans under his wing. In fact, any film nowadays that features unlikely competitors in a sporting event invariably begs comparison to Cool Runnings. Eddie The Eagle, with Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman, was pretty much seen as a British update of Cool Runnings.
3. FARGO (1994)
Yeah, OK. Well, so I'm tending bar down there at Ecklund and Swedlin's last Tuesday and this little guy's drinking and he says, "So where can a guy find some action? I'm goin' crazy out there at the lake." And I says, "What kind of action?" And he says, "Woman action. What do I look like?" And I says, "Well what do I look like? I don’t arrange that kind of thing." And he says, "But I'm goin' crazy out there at the lake." And I says, "Yeah, but this ain't that kind of place." He says, "Oh, so I get it. So you think I'm some kind of jerk for asking." Only he don't use the word "jerk." Then he calls me a jerk. Says the last guy thought he's a jerk is dead now. So I don't say nothin'. He says, "What do you think about that?" And I says, "Well, that don't sound like too good a deal for him, then." Yeah, he says, "Yeah, that guy's dead, and I don't mean of old age." And then he says, "Geez, I'm goin' crazy out there at the lake." -- White Bear Lake? Yeah well, at Ecklund and Swedlin, that's closer to Moose Lake. So I made that assumption. Anyways, he's drinkin' at the bar, so I don't think a whole great deal of it, but then Mrs. Mohra, she heard about the homicides down here and thought I should call it in, so I called it in. End of story.
2. THE SHINING (1980)
Interesting point about these final two films. The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, the southernmost place on Earth, has an annual tradition where it screens The Shining and The Thing. The Thing is apparently shown first when the last plane leaves for the winter, whilst The Shining is shown during mid-winter - right around the time cabin fever would set in for everyone. Do they hide the axes? Who knows.
1. THE THING (1983)
Easily John Carpenter's finest work, The Thing is a masterclass in paranoiac horror. It's also the owner of one of the finest taglines ever written for a film - Man Is The Warmest Place To Hide. Kurt Russell's beard, Ennio Morricone's soundtrack, Dean Cudney's bleak cinematography, the ever-present feeling of dread, the special effects, all of it blends perfectly to create a terrifying and desperately lonely film about being left behind and the horrors that comes when people you trust turn on you.
