The 30 coolest winter movies to see this season

Make those outdoor trips count by consulting our list of the worthiest winter movies—upcoming titles from Hollywood, foreign festivals and all points in between.

By David Fear, Joshua Rothkopf and Keith Uhlich Fri Nov 30 2012

Winter movies

SLIDE SHOW: View the winter movies preview as one slide show >>

This Is 40

Having revolutionized the American schlub comedy with Knocked Up and other hits, Judd Apatow is back in the director’s chair, exploring a couple’s sexual anxieties via Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann and Apatow’s own precocious kids. (Dec 21)

Django Unchained

The D may be silent, but Quentin Tarantino’s pre-Emancipation Western about a gun-toting slave (Jamie Foxx) searching for his kidnapped wife is sure to make plenty of audience-riling noise. (Dec 25)

Les Misérables

The hit 1980s musical adapted from Victor Hugo’s masses-uprising tome gets an equally gargantuan big-screen rendering. Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe make for memorable foils, but Anne Hathaway steals the show as the tragedy-prone Fantine. (Dec 25)

Promised Land

How do you pull viewers into a movie about a pro-fracking natural-gas salesman who has a crisis of conscience during a visit to a middle-American small town? Put Gus Van Sant at the helm and coscreenwriter Matt Damon in the lead. (Dec 28)

56 Up

Every seven years since 1964, interviewer and filmmaker Michael Apted has checked in with the same small group of Brits, watching them age, succeed, fail and reckon with the flow of life. A new chapter—the first after the subjects passed the big 5-0—should be eye-opening. (Jan 4)

Gangster Squad

This movie was quickly yanked from last summer’s release schedule after a pivotal scene—a machine-gun attack in a crowded movie theater—became too painful to watch. We still have hopes for the rejiggered components, featuring ever-likable Ryan Gosling and sultry Emma Stone. (Jan 11)

Winter movies: Trash at "New Yawk New Wave"

“New Yawk New Wave” at Film Forum

Former Village Voice critic J. Hoberman cocurates this series devoted to gritty, anything-goes representations of Gotham onscreen. Downtown avant-garde musings, offbeat docs, proto–indie dramas from John Cassavetes and Shirley Clarke—it’s all here. (Jan 11–31)

Quartet

Dustin Hoffman’s official directorial debut watches the graying fur fly at a retirement home for opera singers. A gaggle of geriatric thespians—Dame Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Michael Gambon and Tom Courtenay—grace this musical dramedy. (Jan 11)

The Last Stand

The little boy within all movie lovers should be thrilled to see former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger back in action (in a leading role, no less), as a border-town sheriff drawn into a heavily armed conflict with a drug lord. (Jan 18)

John Dies at the End

Two dopey dudes (one of whom is named John) are the only people that stand between an alien invasion and the survival of humanity. Given that director Don Coscarelli was the man responsible for the mind-blowing Phantasm, we’re intrigued. (Jan 25)