10+ Amendments to Your Winter Movie Watchlist
The winter season is a particularly festive time of year rife with traditions, and huddling indoors to live vicariously through an annual intake of standard holiday classics is a common one. But maybe your umpteenth screenings of such seasonal standbys is finally starting to wear thin, and you’re beginning to wonder what dozen or so other films you could or even should be watching instead. Well look no further than the following list of personally selected winter-related movies to watch in addition to or in place of other popular picks.
While in no particular order, I’ve prominently placed here at the top my highest recommendation of them all, as if there’s one wintery watch you partake of this year (or any) and especially if you haven’t already seen it, please Santa let it be:
1. "RUNAWAY TRAIN" (1985)
It’s mention likely to spark vague recollection of the late, great Tony Scott’s vastly derivative and forgettably inferior Unstoppable (2010), Runaway Train is maybe THE all-time greatest unsung action/thriller gem of the 1980s. Based on an original script by Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai), it’s one of the most masterful films put out by The Cannon Group during the legendary Golan-Globus era, earning director Andrei Konchalovsky (Tango & Cash) a nomination for the 1986 Palme d’Or. Jon Voight and Eric Roberts (possibly Hollywood’s most highly prolific and underrated actor) were both academy award-nominated for their roles as two convicts escaping from an Alaskan maximum security prison only to get stuck on a snowy runaway train speeding for disaster. With it’s excellently often achromatic wintery cinematography and spine-tingling stunts it seems only Cannon could provide, it’s a distinguished character drama wrapped in a Speed-like thriller that comes from both me and Roger Ebert as an immediate recommend.
2. "FROZEN" (2010) instead of "FROZEN" (2013)
Before studios began rigorously discriminating against any movie that isn’t a two-hour tentpole about (as We Hate Movies puts it) seventy-five 9/11s, films much smaller by comparison were customary. Sometimes these detailed the events of a singular situation (and occasionally did so to much acclaim, e.g. Rope, The Breakfast Club, Reservoir Dogs, etc). Nowadays this story structure has been almost exclusively relegated to the “budget horror” genre (Cube, Open Water, Saw) as it seems to prove divisive to modern audiences continuously accustomed to big-budget, globe-trotting/world-hopping epics. Frozen (2010) is one such single-setting thriller about three twentysomethings stuck alone after-hours on a chairlift halfway up the slope at a ski resort. It’s a “chilling” and excruciatingly agoraphobic entry that is in if nothing else its suggestions as cutting and taut with high-tension as the cables of a ski-lift; a far cry from Disney’s 2013 family film of the same name.
3. "THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS" (1960) in addition to "THE REVENANT" (2015)
Fifty-five years prior to DiCaprio’s award-winning, fur-laden performance in Inarritu's intense, instant classic The Revenant, a similarly adorned Anthony Quinn traipsed the technicolor tundra of Nicholas Ray’s Palme d’Or-nominated The Savage Innocents. Leaving the mid-fifties Americana of Ray’s renowned Rebel Without a Cause for the frigid far north, this Nanook of the North-like dramatization depicts a slice of Inuit life through the exploits of Quinn’s one such “eskimo”, Inuk – Bob Dylan’s inspiration for his chart-topping tune Quinn the Eskimo as initially made famous by Manfred Mann. But as drama creeps forth with the encroachment of modern civilization, a clash of culture lands Inuk pursued for murder by two Canadian troopers cavalcading out of their element – one of them a dubbed and strangely thereby uncredited Peter O’Toole. With their duty to subjugate him endangered by the deadly harsh climate, the tables are turned when without the help of their bounty they may not survive to succeed.
4. "SNOWPIERCER" instead of/following "THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW"
As additionally evidenced by Runaway Train and Kenneth Branagh’s recent adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, something about trains and frigid temperatures go hand in hand. Quite possibly it’s the dichotomy between unlivable conditions and our industrious perseverance; a rather precise analysis of the themes at play in this Orwellian graphic novel adaptation by Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, Ojka). Foreworded by a synopsis of events approximately explored in repetitive disaster film director Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, Snowpiercer follows Chris Evans in conspiring with respected elder John Hurt to lead Jamie Bell and a motley crew of others in revolt against an authoritarian class system to the front of the titular train – which perpetually circumnavigating the globe to escape the frozen hell of future Earth harbors the last survivors of man! As Joon-ho’s first English-speaking film, Snowpiercer brought or brings his effectively unparalleled directorial deftness to American audiences who may had or have condemnably missed or eluded his previous films. NOTE: This man’s work should not be missed!
5. "VERTICAL LIMIT" (2000) in addition to "CLIFFHANGER" (1993)
Following in the snowy footprints of Renny Harlin’s arguable opus Cliffhanger (1993), Martin “Hit-or-Miss” Campbell (Casino Royale – hit; GoldenEye – miss) took sport climbing to new heights in the adrenaline-fueled action/adventure Vertical Limit (2000). Swapping the volatile unpredictability of John Lithgow and his gang for a slew of temperamental canisters of nitroglycerin, the premise of this survival thriller plays out like Friedkin’s Sorcerer on ice. When a snowstorm-induced avalanche kills a team of climbers and traps namely Bill Paxton and Robin Tunney in an icy crevasse, Chris O’Donnell is forced to tackle Earth’s second highest mountain with the aid of Scott Glenn and a cache of nitro in an extreme rescue mission to save the stranded survivors. Pushing the (vertical) limits of plausibility, it’s is an over-the-top (of a mountain) action pleaser that like many of the genres popular standbys suspensefully teeters on the edge of realism.
6. "INSOMNIA" (1997, 2002) in addition to "FARGO" (1996)
Like Joel and Ethan Coen, Christopher Nolan’s crackerjack competence in filmmaking was squarely established with his directorial debut. But since his mainstream success from Batman Begins and beyond, his third film Insomnia often falls to the wayside in fans’ frequent citation of his earlier works. Nolan’s reiteration of the foremostly commendable 1997 Norwegian psychological thriller of the same name trades Stellan Skarsgard for Al Pacino as an insomniac investigator flanked by Hillary Swank in pursuing murder suspect Robin Williams in the perpetual daylight of the “land of the midnight sun”. Although thus technically a summertime flick and nearly without a flake of snow to be seen, the foggy, bleak atmosphere of small town Alaska is a cold crime alternate to the Coen’s frigid Fargo that’s reminiscent of those wet winter days we unavoidably get slightly closer to the equator. While I recommend both (even consecutively in chronological order), I list Nolan’s originator-approved remake for running half an hour longer with semantic elaborations throughout that make it as Roger Ebert put it “a re-examination of the material, like a new production of a good play.”
7. "WHITEOUT" (2009) in addition to "THE THING" (1982) / "THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD" (1951)
A lukewarm September release and previews that insinuated a dangerous derivation of John Carpenter’s The Thing granted Whiteout a devastatingly icy reception. Although treading the same tundric terrain as Carpenter’s certified classic with its isolated setting at an Antarctic research station, this blizzard-ridden graphic novel adaptation pits US marshal Kate Beckinsale and UN agent Gabriel Macht against a snow masked murderer at the bottom of the world. With it’s ultimately few self-evident similarities aside, it’s an intriguing crime thriller (with an oddly good score) that’s more effective than the similarly unsuccessful (and ironically imitative) 2011 The Thing “prequel” and is furthermore even less derivative than the much-lauded X-Files episode “Ice”. As such it’s an entertaining take-off on the starting point of John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There? that’s thereby a viable at least one-off alternate/compendium for both or either of the Carpenter and/or Nyby adaptations.
8. "THE SPIRIT" (2008) in addition to "BATMAN RETURNS" (1992)
Largely perceived as iconoclastic by fans of the late Will Eisner’s celebrated source material, Frank Miller’s creative liberties as licensed by his longtime friendship with Eisner additionally seemed to dissatisfy filmgoers expectant of a spiritual Sin City successor. Instead, The Spirit’s quasi-monochromatic exploits ventures largely away from the grit of the aforementioned for nearly tongue-in-cheek throwback overtones revisionistic of the golden age of comics and the black-and-white crime/superhero serials of the 1940s. Lateral to Tim Burton’s Batman Returns as a dark and snowy winter-set comic book adaptation about a masked vigilante, it further illustrates some fun and appropriate use of CGI and post-production manipulation that in the wake of Burton’s heyday has arguably become the bane of his creative career. Gabriel Macht stars as the titular post-mortem avenger who navigating the various femmes fatales of his beloved city (Sarah Paulson, Scarlett Johansson, Jaime King to name a few) must stop his arch-nemesis The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) from obtaining immortality. But the real star of the show is Miller’s stylized compositions and panache for dialogue that make this movie (contrary to popular belief) both classic and essential – especially among today’s incessantly rising sea/cesspool of formulaic comic book adaptations.
9. "ICE STATION ZEBRA" (1968) in addition to "THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE" (1972)
From Great Escape and Magnificent Seven director John Sturges comes this Cold War thriller that retroactively transplants Ernest Borgnine from the sinking Poseidon into a watercraft meant to slip beneath the waves: the Rock Hudson-helmed US nuclear attack sub, Tigerfish. Joined by frequent British spy Patrick McGoohan (Secret Agent Man, The Prisoner) herein at it again for queen and country, this tense, espionage-infused adventure based on an amalgamation of true events follows the icy escapade of the USS Tigerfish crew on a rescue cover operation to an ever-moving weather station atop a drifting ice pack. It’s Oscar-nominated special effects and cinematography lead to footage being reused for over a decade in various films and television series including The Six Million Dollar Man, Clint Eastwood’s Firefox, and the non-Eon Bond picture Never Say Never Again. A personal favorite of both John Carpenter and Better Call Saul’s fictional Kim Wexler, it’s a brilliant intrigue that gives proper meaning to “cold” war conflict.
10. "PALE RIDER" (1985) in addition to "DJANGO UNCHAINED" (2012)
While only a stretch of Tarantino’s Django Unchained takes place in winter, it’s in addition its Christmas day release that at least in my mind cemented it as a contender for the holiday season sort. Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider however is a more thoroughly wintery western that’s thereby more agreeably admissible, and as such is one to watch (at least once in your life) with or without an annual intake of Tarantino’s pseudo-blaxploitation classic. The highest-grossing western of the 1980’s, Pale Rider details the conspicuous arrival of a mysterious preacher (Eastwood) to a small gold-panning community in the throes of increasing harassment as conducted by a wealthy strip-miner gunning for their land. Also featuring the late Chris Penn (Reservoir Dogs, True Romance) and Richard Kiel (The Spy Who Loved Me, Happy Gilmore), it’s a somber, moody western with ghost story undertones and some spectacularly scenic, snow-capped Boulder Mountain backgrounds.
