Dann Gire counts down the frostiest films ever made

Now that winter has finally moved into the suburbs, it's time to celebrate the season with 10 of the coldest movies ever made.

Robert Flaherty's 1922 silent documentary "Nanook of the North" became the first true chiller. Since then, Hollywood and indie filmmakers have churned out some real subzero motion pictures such as "Dr. Zhivago," "Ice Station Zebra," the original "The Thing," "The Ice Harvest" and "The Man From Snowy River."

But other movies really left me colder.

In a good way, of course.

So, here they are, 10 of the coldest motion pictures ever produced, starting with a recent one that started me thinking about how powerful a movie must be to chill a person to the marrow with mere images.

<b>10. "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (2011): </b>Cold serves as both a metaphor and a character in David Fincher's first installment of the English-language remakes of Sweden's "Millennium Trilogy." Cold are the hearts of the Swedish "aristocracy" personified by Christopher Plummer's wealthy relatives. Cold are the consciences of the public servants who prey on the very people they've been hired to help. Then there's the nasty snowy Swedish weather and the omnipresent howling wind that even permeates Daniel Craig's guesthouse on Plummer's private island, symbolizing the chilly reception for the truth-seeking journalist.

<b>9. "Frozen" (2010): </b>An employee shuts down a ski lift for the season, not realizing that three young snowboarders have been accidentally stranded high in the air on the lift. A harrowing tale of survival ensues when the trio realizes that hypothermia will slowly kill them if they don't find a way to the ground - where a pack of ravenous wolves awaits. You know it's really cold when the dangling snowboarders let loose of their bodily functions and the result turns to instant ice.

<b>8. "Airport" (1970): </b>The most influential movie of the 1970s and the first all-star disaster movie of the decade. While pilots and passengers aboard a jetliner deal with a hole in the fuselage caused by a restroom bomb, airport personnel led by George Kennedy work around the clock to clear a runway for an emergency landing during the worst blizzard in the history of Hollywood. Furious flurries fitfully fly.

<b>7. "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980): </b>Few planets in the solar system can be as cold as the ice planet Hoth and still sustain human life. The subzero blizzard scene in which Han Solo saves a wounded Luke Skywalker from freezing to death (by stuffing him into the warm entrails of a tauntaun, freshly sliced open) is a classic.

<b>6. "March of the Penguins" (2005): </b>This documentary about the journey of emperor penguins displays the merciless nature of the Antarctic as the poor birds endure hunger, frozen water supplies and the frigid cold that nonchalantly kills their eggs and newborn chicks when exposed to the elements for any time at all. Of all the cold movies listed in this story, "March of the Penguins" is probably the most heart-wrenching to watch.

<b>5. "The Shining" (1980): </b>Jack Nicholson's character winds up freezing to death in a maze of snowy bushes outside the haunted Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's chilling adaptation of Stephen King's best-selling novel. The winter storm over the closed hotel isolates Nicholson's family and slowly drives the would-be novelist into homicidal madness, as well as a bad case of writer's block.

<b>4. "Snow Falling on Cedars" (1999): </b>Robert Richardson's crisp cinematography highlights this emotionally frigid adaptation of David Guterson's novel about postwar anti-Asian racism in the Pacific Northwest where a small-town journalist (Ethan Hawke) gets involved in a possible murder of a Japanese-American fisherman. A visual celebration of snow, wind and cold temperatures as Richardson turns the white-blanketed woods into breathtaking scenes of frosty beauty.

<b>3. "The Ice Storm" (1997): </b>In Ang Lee's aptly titled movie, based on Rick Moody's novel, the century's worst ice storm - and slightly overwrought metaphor - strikes 1973 suburban Connecticut where screwed-up, spiritually bankrupt middle-class families spiral into drugs, sex and bad taste while attempting to find meaning. Meanwhile, the bone-chilling frozen storm outside looks like a tropical paradise compared to the cold emotional connections between the characters. (Starring a pre-"Spider-Man" Tobey Maguire, pre-"Lord of the Rings" Elijah Wood and a post-"Addams Family" Christina Ricci.)

<b>2. "Fargo" (1996): </b>The Coen brothers' nasty little domestic crime tale wouldn't pack half of its pugilistic punch if set in Los Angeles or some other milquetoast temperate climate. The North Dakota winter sets the right tone for coldhearted killers and a stone-dumb husband as a pregnant sheriff tries to unravel the mystery of a kidnapping gone rancid. By the way, nothing makes the color red burn hotter than when placed next to white. Blood on snow is a powerful visual.

<b>1. "The Day After Tomorrow" (2004): </b>The big kahuna of cold movies. Roland Emmerich's special-effects-chocked greenhouse-effect thriller portrays the cold as Mother Nature's vengeful mass executioner, sweeping over New York City, turning moisture into instant ice and human flesh into stone. It's an ingenious device that makes the advancing cold every bit as frightening as the Martian's poison gas rolling through New York City in Orson Welles' radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds."

So there you have it. Ten of the coldest movies ever created.

Do you have a few titles that should be added to the list? Send them to me at dgire@dailyherald.com. Please put "Cold Movies" in the subject line so I'll be able to easily identify them, with chilly regards, of course.