BEST SNOW MOVIES
I can’t guarantee a White Christmas, but we can slump in front of the TV to watch a snow movie.
Snow movies inspired the main story of my psychological mystery thriller Room 15, which takes place over 24 hours in a snowbound London.
So, if you fancy a winter chill on your screen to heat your blood, try these.
7. The Hateful Eight (2015)
Quentin Tarantino’s eighth movie as director (is the title a coincidence?) is as hot as the weather is cold. A bounty hunter seeks shelter from the Wyoming winter with his prisoner in a cabin filled with some very oddball and evil types. He announced that it was to be his last film. It wasn’t.
6. Alexander Nevsky (1938)
Alexander Nevsky is one of the pinnacles of early Soviet cinema, by the great innovative director Sergei Eisenstein. Made in the eve of the Second World War to celebrate a great Russian hero, who fought off the Teutonic Knights, the black and white visuals are dazzling, while the climactic Battle on the Ice has influenced epic movies ever since. (Ironically, Eisenstein had to shoot the battle in the height of a blazing summer, with great difficulty).
5. Force Majeure (2014)
A skiing holiday in the French Alps turns a family upside down when an apparent avalanche seems to reveal the husband’s true character. Intelligent, unusual and absorbing drama.
4. The Thing (1982)
Forget the 2011 “prequel”, if the John Carpenter original doesn’t chill the bejeezus out of you, then you need an amygdala transplant. The “Thing” is an alien parasite that preys on a group of American researchers in Antarctica and has the worrying ability to imitate each of them. Any of them could really be the Thing. Very, very scary.
3. Spellbound (1945)
Hitchcock at his most Freudian. Snow – indeed almost anything snow-like – forms a running theme in this psychological thriller where the director of a mental hospital in Vermont turns out not to be who he seems. But who is he?
2. Insomnia (1997)
Again, ignore the Pacino remake, go straight to the Norwegian version, starring the great Stellan Skarsgård. OK, it’s not winter, it’s summer, but north of the Arctic Circle, where the 24-hour daylight leads to a sleep-deprived investigator to make a fatal mistake.
1. Fargo (1996)
Possibly the most influential film by the unbelievably influential Coen Brothers, Fargo set the standard for tongue-in-cheekerie. While most noirs are set at night in the city, this story of an inept crime that turns sour is set in the bright wide-open snowy spaces of Minnesota – a blanc if you like. It inspired an equally acclaimed TV series (up to season 4 at the last count).
So… what’s your favourite snow movie?
4 Comments
December 23, 2021 at 5:58 pm
I’d have to add Ridley Scott’s Legend (1985) as a classic fairytale. Tim Curry is brilliant as darkness.
December 24, 2021 at 4:54 pm
Hi Kathryn
Thank you for the suggestion. I have to say, I’ve never watched the movie, so must put it on my TVL.
Very best
Charles
December 25, 2021 at 9:08 am
Well my favourite snow movies are a long way from being in the same category as the ‘best’ snow movies but here they are. Frozen because there is nothing quite like the spectacle of hundreds of small girls singing at the tops of their voices about how they are going to leave the useless love interest and save their sister. The Holiday for the scene where the elderly Hollywood screenwriter explains a ‘meet cute’. Finally Chalet Girl would always have been in the list but then I found out the male lead has been done for lots of sexual harassment on set so that has somewhat taken the shine off!
Now of course, I would have had Fargo in there if you hadn’t got there first Charles so I’m not entirely a lost cause!
December 27, 2021 at 5:20 pm
Maureen, anyone who liked Frozen is definitely not a lost cause. I’ll have to check out the The Holiday, as you’re not the only person to mention it. And delighted you’d have included Fargo – that would have been a deal-breaker!