Chill Out! Wintery Movies To Forget About the Summertime Blues

It's hard to imagine that summer is nearly halfway over, and in just a few more weeks we'll be into the blissful nature of autumn. This is the point in the year when the temperature can be too hot to go outside and even thinking about the season's inherent stickiness is too much to bear. So crank up the A/C and check out any of these flicks that will help you forget about the dog days of summer.

The Thing (1982)

A group of scientists at a remote base in the Antarctic are forced to deal with a grotesque, otherworldly threat that can imitate any lifeform it wants. As the body count rises, the mystery of who or what 'the thing' could possibly be grows larger and larger, climaxing in an intense showdown that ranks among director John Carpenter's most iconic. It's also got a rightfully bearded Kurt Russell in the lead, an actor you frankly can't go wrong with watching in almost anything.

Cool Runnings (1993)

The true-ish story of the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, in which a Jamaican bobsled team had their national debut and stole the thunder away from many of the events. Cool Runnings is a certified classic of the 90s, with great comic moments and a wonderful performance from actor John Candy (the third to last of his career), and it holds up today, nearly 25 years later.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Wes Anderson's tribute to classic cinema took home four richly deserved Oscars, set in a fictional European country between the World Wars, where a respected yet peculiar concierge (Ralph Fiennes) takes a lobby boy (Tony Revolori) under his wing, and in the process unleashes a madcap adventure involving a prized painting. Packed with an amazing ensemble cast featuring the likes of Saoirse Ronan, Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, and Adrien Brody among many others, its a film that can be rewatched time and time again, while also reflecting the melancholic attitude of winter.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

You can watch David Fincher's English remake or the original Swedish version, but both films connote a chilly, bleak atmosphere surrounding a journalist attempting to solve a decades old murder assisted by a punk computer hacker with an impeccable ability for getting results. Fincher's version runs nearly three hours, but like his previous procedural thriller Zodiac, it's never boring and consistently enthralling, even when the subject matter and scenes get decidedly nerve-wracking and squeamish.

The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick's foray into pure horror, adapted (quite loosely) from writer Stephen King's novel, is easily among the best things he ever made. But it's star Jack Nicholson, playing a recently sober writer attempting to finish a book while staying in an abandoned hotel with his wife and young child, who's star here. Nicholson's creepy performance as Jack Torrence, who slowly unravels and gives in to the power of the spirits who haunt the hotel is iconic in more ways than one, and make The Shining so much fun to revisit, and a staple of the genre itself.

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

A global cooling initiates a modern Ice Age in this destructive Roland Emmerich flick. Paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) attempts to rescue his son (Jake Gyllenhaal) caught in a tidal flood across New York City, that eventually turns into a frozen tundra, several miles above sea level. A warning about the potential dangers of global warming, but captured in a blockbuster atmosphere that delivers sequence after sequence of massive destruction, The Day After Tomorrow is one of Emmerich's biggest hits and for a good reason.

What are some of your favorite wintery movies? Are there any you think should also be on here? Be sure to include them in the comment section below.