You should be “working from home” but, this Winter Storm Juno day, let AnOther guide you down a more joyful cinematic path
Winter Storm Juno has just set up prodigiously snowy shop over the northeast of America, meaning residents of New York and Boston have been confined to their homes. So, what to do with a snow day? Once the emergency dash to the supermarket for milk, tea, bread and wine is complete, this kind of extraordinary weather best lends itself to a day spent under blankets on the sofa, enjoying a film marathon. So, while your food menu may have been limited by the enormous queues at the supermarkets, let AnOther curate a vibrant and diverse cinematic selection that will feed all parts of your brain, allowing everyone to ride out the #snowpocalypse in a contented, edifying stupor.
The best film you’ve never seen
We all have a film that lurks round the corner of our minds, unseen yet never quite guiltlessly banished to the pile of “I just haven’t got time for this”. It gets brought up at dinner parties by dazzling conversationalists, and you’re left murmuring something about having once watched the trailer, while others advance into thrilling dissection of the director’s motives and innovative use of lighting. Citizen Kane, stalwart of best-films-of-all-time lists, is a prime example, as are the 340-minutes of Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev and Marlon Brando’s excoriating turn in On The Waterfront.
The scary film
What better time to watch a terrifying film than when the world beyond your window resembles an apocalyptic wasteland? Go Psycho with Hitchcock, make sinister parallels with the secluded, snowbound world of The Shining, head into the retro woods with The Blair Witch Project or to a chilly Venice occupied by ghoulish sisters and a menacing something wearing a red coat. Just make sure there is someone else at home.
The film full of literal sunshine
Sometimes blankets and ramped up central heating aren’t enough, so if you can overcome envy and January blues, a bit of onscreen sun could be immensely cheering. From Here to Eternity combines blue Hawaiian skies with war romance, The Princess Bride adds giants and wisecracks to its scenic rides across sun-kissed meadows, there's the majesty of Rome in blazing summer depicted in The Great Beauty, while Ice Cold in Alex is a happy reminder to the snow-blown that there is such a thing as too much sun.
The film you’ve never quite understood
The muffled streets and traffic amnesty of a snow day make it the perfect time to really knuckle down and try and get to grips with some of cinema’s more gnomic offerings. One could wrestle with one of David Lynch’s brain-bending offerings such as Eraserhead or Mulholland Drive, exhaust the brain with the “impenetrable” 2001: A Space Odyssey, have a go at most/any Terrence Malick or, if you’re really in the mood to be pushed, immerse yourself in Drawing Restraint 9, a tale of the Shinto religion and whaling starring the high priestess of odd, Björk.
The unflinchingly feel-good film
Every person’s guilty pleasure movie is different, yet they all share one quality – it is the film that is your default choice for an afternoon on the sofa, the one you return to whenever things are cold or miserable, the one that’s reliably assured to soothe and amuse. A straw poll of the AnOther office suggested teen classics by John Hughes and Amy Heckerling to that bastion of pseudo-Britishness, Richard Curtis; romantic comedies starring Kate Hudson, Julia Roberts and Drew Barrymore to Judd Apatow favourites starring Michael Cera and McLovin; swooning romances like The Way We Were to the compelling drama of Vertigo.
