Mother Nature is celebrating the New Year by covering the Midwest with several feet of snow and subzero temperatures In Illinois, where I live, high temperatures this week barely broke double digits, which is scorching compared to double-digit minus temperatures when the night falls or freezing winds blow Frankly, this cold is illegal

If you're surviving these bitterly cold days by killing time indoors in front of the TV under a cozy blanket, you're in good company Make the most of your snowbound time with a movie marathon on the best streaming services From chilling winter thrillers and mysteries to comedies that will blow away the winter blues There's something to warm everyone up with this list of the best movies to watch when you're snowed in this winter

The "Fargo" TV series just finished its fifth season This black comedy by the Coen brothers follows Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), a rational and affable police chief who is tasked with unraveling the puzzling mystery behind a series of murders in Fargo, Minnesota, in the winter Just looking out the office window at the snowy mountains makes you feel like you're there [McDormand and William H Macy play Jerry Lundegaard, whose reckless plot to kidnap his wife and extort money from his father-in-law sets off a series of unfortunate events Steve Buscemi also plays an amusing role as one of the accomplices, but he meets a rather grisly end (if ykyk) McDormand won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the Coen brothers won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay

Watch on Max or Hulu

With the humor train running for a while, Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is next While the film jumps back and forth in time, the story centers on the misadventures of Monsieur Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes), the famed concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel, a glamorous uptown resort, and his apprentice Zero Mustafa (Tony Revolori)

Set in the fictional Eastern European country of Zubrowka in the 1930s, the film follows Gustava as he goes about his business of providing guests with whatever they need (especially wealthy blondes) When one of his mistresses is found dead and leaves Gustava a valuable painting in her will, he becomes embroiled in a murder mystery

Watch on Disney Plus

Listen, no matter how cold it is outside, it never gets as cold as in a "global freeze extinction event" That's the hook of Snowpiercer This post-apocalyptic thriller is set on a train that circles the globe at top speed to keep the last remnants of humanity from literally freezing to death The train is a completely self-contained ecosystem, a functioning society unto itself, with the poorest passengers in the rear cars and the wealthiest in the front

Based on the French graphic novel "Le Transperceneige," the film is a captivating, genre-bending epic and the English-language debut of South Korean director Pon Joon-ho, best known for his 2019 Best Picture Oscar winner "Parasite" Snowpiercer is a blunt but effective allegory about classism, and Bong creates an immersive world within the confines of its claustrophobic setting When a rebellion begins at the tail end, Chris Evans plays the leader of the rebels, while Tilda Swinton plays a woman defending a precarious order that is about to be overthrown

Watch on Netflix or Hulu

I may be in the minority here, but I prefer 2011's The Thing to John Carpenter's 1982 classic The new version serves as something between a prequel and a remake, and like the original, the tension and paranoia are uninterruptedly fostered by the occasional adrenaline-fueled body horror

When a spaceship and an alien corpse are discovered buried in the ice of Antarctica, a team of scientists gather at an isolated outpost to investigate the visitors from another world They initially thought the spaceship had crashed and died years ago, but an alien life form broke out of its icy prison and attacked them They managed to kill the creature, but an autopsy revealed that its cells had begun copying those of their human victims Paranoia spreads like wildfire among the crew, who fight to survive against the creature that mimics the victim's appearance

Watch on Netflix

"Insomnia" follows Christopher Nolan's breakout thriller "Memento"

One of the geniuses of this film, based on the Norwegian thriller of the same name, is its unconventional use of winter as a setting Instead of being shrouded in snow and darkness, "Insomnia" is enveloped in sunlight and fog This is because the town in which it takes place is in the far north, where the sun never sets for months on end Al Pacino plays Will Dormer, a grizzled LAPD detective battling the worst insomnia in history, and Robin Williams plays the killer Pacino is after

See at Paramount Plus