Every month, our contributors will be putting together a list of ten films on certain topics. Each month will be different and will feature an alphabetical list of our selections, commentary from each of us on our picks, and an itemized list showing what we each selected.

This month, instead of focusing on just Christmas films, like every other list likely to come out this month, we’re going with a more general winter theme. While there are some obvious Christmas movies on our list (It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street), the rest of our selections all have a winter or snowy setting to them even if not Christmas-themed.

As our contributors have shown every month, we have a wide array of film styles and periods on display in our list. Our earliest entry is the 1922 documentary Nanook of the North, a film that looked into the life of Inuits; and our latest is 2014’s Force Majeure, a film about rebuilding a life after tragedy. We have foreign language films, documentaries, horror films, dramas, comedies and everything in between.

Ang Lee is our most represented director with two films on the list: The Ice Storm and Brokeback Mountain. The Ice Storm has two mentions on the list as do Doctor Zhivago, Fargo and The Gold Rush. No film received four citations, but two received three, both of which are almost the complete opposite of one another: It’s a Wonderful Life and Snowpiercer.

Now, let’s take a look at what our contributors chose and briefly why they chose them.

Alive (1993)

(dir. Frank Marshall) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – This 1993 film about the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed into the Andes twenty-one years earlier is as harrowing a tale of survival as has ever been put on the screen. Having survived the crash, the freezing temperatures, and the diminished food supply, the survivors turn to cannibalism to survive. Ethan Hawke, Vincent Spano, John Hamilton, Jack Noseworthy and Daniel Nucci are among the up-and-coming stars of the film. Sixteen out of forty-five survived the seventy-two day ordeal in the middle of winter.

Arthur Christmas (2011)

(dir. Sarah Smith) Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – It was a big debate between this and Frozen, as I wanted to include one animated film. Frozen was the more beautiful to look at, but Arthur was surprisingly inventive and fun, and that ultimately swayed me. Santa’s two sons are competing to take over the family business, one high tech and one bumbling, and of course the clumsy son wins the day. You always know how it will end, but it was still fun to see how it gets there.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

(dir. Ang Lee) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – Winter is often used a metaphor for the end of life, but can also be used as a symbol of change. Breaking down old barriers and building a different life is precisely the kind of metaphor Ang Lee loves to use and it’s most subtly evinced in his drama about honest love and the dishonest society that hinders it. Heath Ledger should have won an Oscar for his brilliant performance as Ennis Del Mar, a conflicted ranch hand forced to live his life apart from the man with whom he shared such tender passions. Jake Gyllenhaal is also superb as the man with whom he spent the winter.

A Christmas Carol (1951)

(dir. Brian Desmond Hurst) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – Alastair Sim’s portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1951 version of the Charles Dickens classic makes this the best of many screen versions of the tale of the old miser who is transformed by the Christmas Eve visit of three spirits who guide him through the past, present, and future. Although watchable any day of the year, a nice, cold, blustery night late in December is the best time to view it. The excellent supporting cast includes Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns, Hermione Baddeley, Michael Hordern, George Cole, and Brian Worth.

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

(dir. David Lean) Commentary By Tripp Burton – There is perhaps no more iconic shot of winter in film history than Zhivago and Lara walking into their ice and snow-covered home. With snow-wrapped icicles hanging from the eaves and windows so frosted over you can’t see through them, the house captures the simultaneous beauty and danger of a harsh winter. Throughout Doctor Zhivago, though, David Lean does for snow and ice what his previous Lawrence of Arabia did for desert sand: it makes the neverending landscapes serene and the lack of color striking. Plus, no one ever made heavy winter clothing sexier than Julie Christie.

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – It may not always have been winter in this Russia-set film, but a feeling of winter’s cold permeates through the film. No one directs an epic film like David Lean, and Freddie Young’s Oscar-winning cinematography captured the magnificent winter landscapes beautifully.

8 Women (2002)

(dir. François Ozon) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – Set during the Christmas holiday, this unusual François Ozon film takes place in a large manse wherein eight women are equally suspected of murdering the patriarch of the family. This French musical extravaganza features some of the most prominent French actresses working today, each delivering stellar acting and musical performances. If you aren’t already familiar with the likes of Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier and Firmine Richard, you need to rectify that now with this mesmerizing confection.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

(dir. Irvin Kershner) Commentary By Tripp Burton – The rebel base on Hoth, and the ensuing attack on that base, takes up the first considerable chunk of The Empire Strikes Back. The remote, barren snow-capped planet contrasts sharply with the deserts and spaceships of the first Star Wars movie, and prove itself to be just as much of a threat. Characters come close to freezing to death on Hoth, while also dealing with dangerous new creatures, and the stability of a base carved beneath the ice and snow. By the time we get to the Battle of Hoth, with lumbering AT-ATs pounding through snow and snowspeeders zipping above it, we understand the danger of a winter landscape no matter how technologically advanced you may be.

Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

(dir. Werner Herzog) Commentary By Tripp Burton – Werner Herzog has made a career out of the dangers and wonders of the natural world, and his Oscar-nominated documentary Encounters at the End of the World is one of his most dangerous. His early narration makes clear that this isn’t a happy movie about cute penguins, and the most striking sequence in the movie is when a lone penguin makes a wrong turn and the camera follows him off to what will surely be his death. Herzog’s Antarctica is as dangerous for its animal inhabitants as it is for the humans who migrate down there, even as they riff on their electric guitars atop blocks of ice and snow. Here, Antarctica is scary, deadly, energetic, and astonishingly beautiful.

Fargo (1996)

(dir. Joel Coen) Commentary By Tripp Burton – There is a moment in Fargo, after one character buries a briefcase of money in the snow, when he and the camera look to their left and their right. In all directions, all we see is a neverending expanse of flat snow, divided by an equally expansive fence, and we realize that this money will never be found again. That is the power of the snowy landscape of the Coen Brothers masterpiece. It can literally swallow you whole. Beyond the snowy expanses, though, Fargo also gets a lot of mileage out of the parkas, snowblowers and whiteouts that make living in the winter so cumbersome. The Coens have fun with the idiosyncrasies of Minnesota life, and it gives the film a flavor of life. By the end of the film, when one character’s dismembered body starts painting the snow red, the twisted worldview and humor of the Coen Brothers truly comes out.

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – It is not exactly a bright cheerful holiday movie, but there is a lot of humor in this film by the Coen Brothers. Set in the winter in Minnesota, the plains are always covered with blowing snow as wild and often wildly inappropriate antics occur. There was no way that it was going to win over The English Patient, but it did deservedly win for original screenplay and for Frances McDormand’s hilariously deadpan and very pregnant police chief. And one will never think of wood chippers the same way after seeing this film.

Force Majeure (2014)

(dir. Ruben Östlund) Commentary By Tripp Burton – The central avalanche of Force Majeure, which gives the film its title and its central conceit, is a terrifyingly hilarious cinematic moment. It alone could put the film on this list. However, it is the small details of ski resort life, and the way they manipulate the central families’ lives, that make the snow so memorable. Whether it is riding up and down excruciatingly slow ski lifts, or moving almost like aliens in the layers of ski clothing, snow infiltrates every moment of this family’s life and may eventually lead to their downfall.

Frozen (2010)

(dir. Adam Green) Commentary By Tripp Burton – If this small horror film from a few years ago doesn’t make you stop skiing forever, nothing will. When three friends get stuck on a ski lift at the end of the day, and realize that it will be five days until the ski lift gets moving again, panic starts to set in. The characters must deal with the various threats around them: the freezing air, the frostbitten skin, the long jump down to the ground and the hungry animals waiting for them in the woods. What is most frightening in Frozen, though, is the silence of the winter air, when nothing is moving and you have no idea what could be coming for you next.

The Gold Rush (1925)

(dir. Charles Chaplin) Commentary By Tripp Burton – No one has made snow funnier than Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush, where The Little Tramp manages to weather his way through multiple blizzards. Although the most famous sequences in the film aren’t weather specific, namely the teetering cabin and the dancing bread, the importance of the climate around Chaplin fuses everything in the film. It drives the Tramp through each adventure, and while the Arctic wilderness is dangerous, Chaplin finds a way for it to be light and prosperous too. We often think of The Tramp as an urban figure, but outdoors in the Arctic cold he is still as funny, and warm, as ever.

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – I remember seeing this with my father something over 40 years ago, and the scenes of Charlie Chaplin traipsing through the frozen Yukon and being stranded in a remote cabin in a blizzard are firmly etched in memory. Chaplin did a wonderful job of finding both humor and pathos in his films, and this one is no exception. The scenes of freezing and hunger set in the cabin are both nightmarish and hysterical.

Groundhog Day (1993)

(dir. Harold Ramis) Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – Poor Bill Murray is seemingly set to relive February second day after day. The misanthropic weatherman is not thrilled to be spending time with Punxsutawney Phil, the weather-forecasting groundhog, but it turns out that there are things he needs to learn. Through trial and error and even suicide attempts, he does finally learn what will get him to the third. It is a funny film, but also has a surprising amount of heart to it as well which surfaces despite Bill Murray’s cynicism.

The Ice Storm (1997)

(dir. Ang Lee) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – Ang Lee’s use of winter as metaphor is most obvious in The Ice Storm, a film where the deadly precision of winter symbolizes not only the crumbling marriages of the film’s characters, but the literal death of one of the members of the families. In its sumptuous beauty, the film deftly hammers home the idea that sometimes it takes tragedy to bring selfish and miserable people together and to help them realize that life is too precious to wallow in misery.

Commentary By Tripp Burton – The Ice Storm is a very interior-driven film. The greatest drama happens in dining rooms, living rooms and basements in suburban Connecticut, yet the central ice storm looms over all of it with a feeling of impending doom. The events of the film could only happen on a cold, frozen weekend. The characters almost seem to be sliding towards disaster through the entire film, propelled by both their own weaknesses and the ice around them, sometimes literally. Lee and cinematographer Frederick Elmes film the ice storm as a beautiful, glimmering presence looming over the heat of sexual awakening. One shot, of one son on an icy diving board over an empty pool, has remained etched in my memory for almost two decades as perfectly capturing the danger of Ang Lee’s world.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

(dir. Frank Capra) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – There’s a reason this film has endured for almost 60 years, its empowering glimpse at depression touches the heart of any who see it. The simple story about a miserable father who believes his death would enable his family to live a better life without him, has inspired countless stories across the generations. When we discover that there are those around us whose lives would be irreparably harmed by our departure, we come to realize that even at our darkest emotional nadir, there is always somewhere we’ll be missed. This uplifting Christmas-set film has rightly found its prominence in the holiday season as a film shared between generations during a time when we should be spreading love and not hate.

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – Frank Capra’s beloved classic has often been imitated but never equaled and certainly never topped. James Stewart, Donna Reed and Henry Travers all deliver career-high performances here as a man who is shown how the world would have been less well off without him, his faithful wife and his perplexed guardian angel. Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, H.B. Warner and many others contribute unforgettable portraits of small town folk, good and bad, as well. If the ending doesn’t make you cry, there’s something wrong with you.

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – Although not a commercial success when it was first released, this has become arguably the most popular Christmas-set film of all time. Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey is having a bad day and is contemplating suicide in the icy river. His guardian angel shows him what life would have been like without him and he realizes that it is a wonderful life after all. Bedford Falls really is a nicer spot than Pottersville, and this is heartwarming and schmaltzy tale. It is well cast and has held up well.

Kill Bill Volume 1 (2003)

(dir. Qunetin Tarantino) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – There are few more visceral filmmakers working today than Quentin Tarantino. The first film in his two-part Kill Bill series culminates in a winter scene that is as beautiful as it is fatal. Tracking down her groom’s assassins after a four-year coma, The Bride (Uma Thurman) arrives at the Japanese headquarters of O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), one of the five people responsible. After a gloriously bloody battle with dozens of opponents, the final scene is set in an exterior courtyard covered in snow while it continues to accumulate, capturing the imagination superbly. This gorgeous segment merits inclusion on this list on its own merits even if the film surrounding it weren’t so damned good.

Kwaidan (1964)

(dir. Masaki Kobayashi) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – For me, the best of the four stories that comprise Masaki Kobayashi’s collection of ghost stories is The Woman in the Snow (Kwaidan) in which a woman sucks the life out of an elderly fisherman attempting to recover from the cold while a younger fisherman watches in horror. She lets him live if he promises never to speak of the incident. He later fails to recognize her when she beguiles him into marriage, giving him children and then becoming upset when he tells her the story not knowing she is the woman in the snow. It’s poetic horror at its best.

Little Women (1933)

(dir. George Cukor) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – Louisa May Alcott’s oft-filmed tale of Civil War-era New England sisters has never been better than in George Cukor’s Oscar-nominated 1933 film which begins one Christmas as the war drones on. Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Frances Dee, and Jean Parker embody the March sisters with Spring Byington as Marmee, Edna May Oliver as Aunt March, Paul Lukas as Professor Bhaer, Douglass Montgomery as Laurie, and Henry Stephenson as Mr. Laurence, all providing wonderful characterizations.

Love Actually (2003)

(dir. Richard Curtis) Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – A bittersweet set of tales of people in love or at least wanting to be in love as Christmas approaches. Not all the stories end happily, but it does have a sense of the wishes one has to have to be involved at the holidays. There may be too many storylines, but it is a wonderful cast.

Margaret’s Museum (1995)

(dir. Mort Ransen) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – Set in the bleak, icy cold winter of Nova Scotia, Canada, this 1995 Canadian film (1997 in the U.S.) begins with a shocking scene in which a woman visits an out-of-the-way museum run by Helena Bonham Carter and leaves with a piercing scream. The rest of the film tells the sad story of a town in which half the men die in the coal mines before letting the audience in on the woman’s shocking discovery. Bonham Carter, Clive Russell as her miner husband, and Kate Nelligan as her sharp-tongued mother all provide extraordinary performances.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

(dir. Robert Altman) Commentary By Tripp Burton – We don’t often think of Westerns as containing snow, but leave it to Robert Altman to upend that idea. McCabe and Mrs. Miller may be one of the coldest Westerns in the canon, and that is before the snow starts to fall at the end of the film. Legend has it that the snow was unplanned, but it is hard to imagine the climactic hide-and-seek shootout filmed any other way. With snow piling up and a church burning in the background, Altman makes us reconsider what we think a Western shootout should look like, and creates a classic along the way.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

(dir. George Seaton) Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – This 1947 charmer makes a case that Santa Claus is real, and certainly there has never been a better portrayal of Kris Kringle than Edmund Gwenn’s Oscar-winning role. A cynical girl, a very young Natalie Wood, is almost convinced that Kris Kringle might be real, but her equally cynical mother, a wonderful Maureen O’Hara, is not so certain. It may take liberties with the court system, but the story is so heartwarming that one cannot but take it to heart. It is still an absolute winner.

Misery (1990)

(dir. Rob Reiner) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – Sequestered for the winter to write the final novel in his beloved series, a popular novelist (James Caan) crashes his car in the snowy mountains where he’s rescued by his biggest fan (Kathy Bates). As she discovers the death of her favorite character, Annie Wilkes (Bates) becomes unhinged and holds Paul Sheldon (Caan) prisoner while he completes a novel that will resurrect the fallen character. Delivering one of the fiercest and best performances by an Oscar winner in cinema history, Bates is so unrepentently evil that it makes up for some of the film’s weaker elements. Still, there are few better adaptations of a Stephen King novel than this one.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

(dir. Sidney Lumet) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – Sidney Lumet’s star-studded train-bound adventure follows legendary Agatha Christie sleuth Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) as he attempts to uncover the murderer of a passenger on the Orient Express as he slowly uncovers countless motives. Starring a Who’s Who of acting royalty including Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Widmark, Sean Connery, and several others, this superb adventure, which culminates in a snow-bound revelation, is one of the finest adaptations of a Christie novel ever filmed.

Nanook of the North (1922)

(dir. Robert J. Flaherty) Commentary By Tripp Burton – Using primitive black-and-white, silent cameras, Robert Flaherty’s innovative 1922 documentary remains perhaps the most naturalistic encapsulation of Arctic conditions on film. It might be the simplicity of the black-and-white: the white snow looks like blank space and the blacks and grays are a frightening contrast. The Arctic world of Nanook has a lot of danger to it, but more importantly it also has a lot of life, joy and smiling you don’t normally find in these winter films. There is a lot of power in Nanook of the North still, almost a century after it was filmed, and the other-world that Flaherty unmasks holds a lot of that power.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

(dir. Stanley Donan) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – One of the best original screen musicals of all time based on Stephen Vincent Bent’s short story The Sobbin’ Women, this exuberant film has many classic scenes, not the least of of which is the avalanche that stops the angry townsmen from following the brothers and the young women they’ve kidnapped until the first thaw of spring. When the girls’ fathers finally arrive and hear a baby crying, they agree to spare the baby’s father so all the girls naturally claim to be the baby’s mother. The sparkling film stars Jane Powell, Howard Keel, Russ Tamblyn and Jeff Richards.

The Shining (1980)

(dir. Stanley Kubrick) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – While it might divert a bit from the novel on which it’s based, Stanley Kubrick’s hotel-bound horror feature is one of his most iconic and visually resplendant features he ever directed. Starring Jack Nicholson as a winter caretaker of a remote mountain hotel, he slowly goes crazy, driven mad by the previous denizens of the castle and, subtly, the alcoholic demons within him. Shelley Duvall is stellar as his terrified and terrorized wife while Scatman Caruthers provides able support as the groundskeeper who’s only a short snowride away from the hotel should anything go wrong. And horribly wrong it goes with one of the most stylish horror films ever made whose images have been a constant inspiration for many filmmakers.

Snowpiercer (2013)

(dir. Joon Ho Bong) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – This post-apocalyptic drama is a searing indictment of the oligarchy and its influence on modern society. A group of impoverished humans are kept captive at the rear of a perpetually-moving bullet train slicing through the wintry landscape wrought by a greedy corporate landscape unwilling to combat climate change with any reasonable effort. As the steerage class passengers revolt against their wealthy overlords, we’re exposed to the myriad unique environments on the train as our protagonists push towards the engine room and, to what they believe is certain freedom. Chris Evans has seldom been better and the supporting cast is excellent in this brilliant political drama that’s as stylish as it is significant.

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – It’s always winter in this thrilling 2013 science-fiction film (2014 in the U.S.) in which passengers aboard a never-stopping train are led to believe that they would die if they ever left the train. Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Ed Harris, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer, and a mean Tilda Swinton head an international cast in this fast-paced film from South Korean writer and director Joon-Ho Bong. The film’s detractors were quick to point out the film’s plot holes, of which there are many, but it’s all in good fun as the film hurtles toward its startling conclusion.

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – Set in a frozen dystopian future, a train continues to circle the globe. As the poor workers debate about a revolution against the elite at the front of the train, the ice-covered world continues to flash by their windows. It is a gritty and unforgiving world, but also a fully realized and striking modern film.

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

(dir. Atom Egoyan) Commentary By Wesley Lovell – This poignant story about a paralyzed girl (Sarah Polley), a survivor of a ice-related deadly bus crash, is complicated by a litigious lawyer (Ian Holm) who attempts to help the parents cash in on the deaths of their children by suing the state and the school district. Director Atom Egoyan sets the story against the backdrop of the familiar children’s story The Pied Piper of Hamelin, giving us a glimpse into the dark psyche of a young girl whose friends have left her alone with her abusive father. Egoyan’s bleak film is a powerful indictment of greed, sorrow and self-recrimination. Polley’s performance is undeniably great while Holm delivered dependably solid work.

Titanic (1997)

(dir. James Cameron) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – It may have been early spring, but in the cold, dark, freezing waters in which the great ship went down, it was the coldest winter any of the passengers had known. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as Jack and Rose, the star-crossed young lovers, and Gloria Stuart as Old Rose are sheer perfection. The reconstruction of the ship and the meticulous filming of its sinking are seared in the memory of all who’ve seen it. The film’s eleven Oscars included those for Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, Production Design, Costume Design, Editing, Sound and Score.

A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)

(dir. Todd Strauss-Schulson) Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – This may be a sacrilegious choice for inclusion, but it was a surprisingly funny film. I had not been expecting much as the first installment did not thrill me much, but the humor and heart were more apparent in this one. Santa contrives to bring the two friends together again, but ends up shot for his good deed. As the friends set about trying to find the perfect Christmas tree, almost anything that can go wrong does, but it also includes a hilarious cameo by Neil Patrick Harris. Silly but fun.

Women in Love (1969)

(dir. Ken Russell) Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – Its title might focus on the ladies, but the best remembered scene in Ken Russell’s film of D.H. Lawrence’s acclaimed novel with a screenplay by Larry Kramer is the one in which friends Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestle nude in front of a crackling fire out of the cold. The women they love are sisters, one a sculptress, the other a schoolteacher. They’re played by Oscar winner Glenda Jackson and Jennie Linden. The film’s second most unforgettable scene is the final one played out in the snow as one of the film’s four main characters slowly freezes to death.