The best movies for a cold winter night

A cold winter night is the natural home of the film. It's dark by five, too cold to go out, and the evening stretches long ahead of you — the exact conditions a good film was made to fill. The only question is which one.

The best winter-night films share a certain warmth, whether they're set in the snow or just radiate comfort from the inside out. Here's how to choose, plus a set of reliable picks for whatever kind of cold evening you're having.

Films set in the cold

There's a specific pleasure in watching snow on screen while it's cold and dark outside — it doubles the atmosphere and makes your warm sofa feel even warmer. Fargo, The Revenant, The Shining, Frozen, The Grand Budapest Hotel and the Narnia films all put winter front and centre, each in a very different register.

Pick the intensity to match your mood. A snowbound thriller suits a night when you want tension; a snow-dusted family film or a wintry romance suits one when you just want to feel cosy and held.

Long films and marathons

A cold winter night gives you something a summer evening never does: hours, and no temptation to be anywhere else. It's the ideal time to start something long — the trilogy, the box set, the four-hour epic — that you'd never begin on a shorter, busier evening.

• The Lord of the Rings trilogy — the definitive winter-night marathon
• The Harry Potter films, watched in a run
• A long, immersive epic you've been saving
• A full season of a comfort series in one sitting
• A director's back catalogue, one film a night across the week

When you want warmth, not weather

Some cold nights call for the opposite of cold on screen. When the dark is getting to you, reach for something bright and warming instead — a feel-good comedy, a musical, a Paddington, a Studio Ghibli film. The contrast between the warmth on screen and the cold at the window is its own kind of cosy, and a good feel-good film is the best antidote there is to a long, dark winter evening.