I truly do love coming up with movie themes for each month. They help focus my watching in the most interesting ways. Over the last couple of years, I’ve learned that I’m rarely going to really push the bounds of the types of cinema I’m apt to watch. I’m never going to watch a Danish documentary on wooden shoes or whatever, but these themes do help me focus my attention.
They do push me to watch movies I’ve been meaning to watch but keep putting off for some reason. And they help me stumble across movies I might not otherwise discover.
So for January, I thought I’d seek out winter movies. I’m looking for movies where the protagonists are trapped in a blizzard, or lost in some godforsaken wilderness, surrounded by ice and snow. My two touchpoints are John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) in which a group of men find themselves in Antarctica being attacked by a shape-shifting alien, and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015) whereupon a group of travelers are stranded in a snowbound cabin in the woods.
I’m looking for isolation and the cold, cold, winter with characters surrounded by ice and snow.
What could be better to watch during the frozen, lonely days of January?
themidnightcafe.org 
Ice Station Zebra
Oh that’s a good one.
That’s a good and quite creative way to select certain films.
I’m having fun with it. It helps me figure out what I want to watch. It is certainly better than spending hours scrolling through various streaming services trying to find something.
Definitely, it can be quite frustrating doing that.
Adam Green’s Frozen (2010). Adam signs stills from the movie “Don’t ski…EVER!” Definitely covers the winter isolation bases.
I had not heard of that movie until I was searching for films for this theme and someone else on the internet recommended it, so thanks.
Groundhog Day is a must!
That’s one of my favorites.
Mat –
May I make a suggestion for your list? “Wind Chill” (2007) starring Emily Blunt. I don’t want to say too much about it, but there are two people trapped in a car, surrounded by ice and snow, and some pretty weird things start happening. Plus it has a great use of the song “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee.
It’s a movie I stumbled upon in a video store ages ago (gosh, I miss video stores). It’s got so-so reviews online, but I found it gripping and creepy. So much so that I had to buy myself a copy of the DVD shortly after I rented it the first time.
Thank you for the recommendation. Added it to my list.