The weather is getting colder! It is now the perfect time to snuggle up with a bowl of popcorn and dream the evening away with one of these three films that celebrate our outrageous imaginations.

The Wizard of Oz

“It was all a dream!” We’ve all seen those movies in which the protagonist wakes up with a jolt, and the whole thing is revealed to be a passing fancy or nightmare. And why not? Aren’t movies already dreams, a projection we experience after getting comfortable in a darkened room? No movie does the dream better than everybody’s favorite childhood fantasy, The Wizard of Oz. Even if you’ve seen it umpteen times, watch again through grown-up eyes. It is such a deft look at an adolescent’s dreams and fears, all filtered through a dazzling world in which every witch and scarecrow and flying monkey is actually sprung from the mind of a Kansas girl named Dorothy (Judy Garland). Even if it’s true that “there’s no place like home,” it’s worth remembering that the world of dreams and imagination is in Technicolor, a vivid place we can dream ourselves into, and learn from.

Up

A desire nurtured for a lifetime: that’s the core of Up, the delightful 2009 Pixar production about a man lifting off into a long-held wish. At the age of 78, widower Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) has finally determined how to get to a particular South American jungle location that loomed large in his childhood brain: helium balloons, thousands of them, which will raise his house into the air and float him southward. There awaits derring-do, crazy colorful animals, and an unsolved mystery that has haunted our hero for decades (which Carl will face with an unlikely ally, a cheerful Wilderness Explorer Scout who tagged along for the ride). Sound farfetched? You’ll believe every minute of it, because despite the fun of the journey, this stuff goes deep into who we really are, what matters most, and how we cherish our hopes. Against those human attributes, the passage of decades seems a puny adversary.

Sherlock Jr.

In this swift (only 45 minutes) but thorough 1924 silent comedy, Buster Keaton plays a projectionist with two goals: to be a detective and to court his ladylove. Stymied on both counts, he falls asleep one night in the projection booth and dreams his way through a series of hilarious adventures that all lead him closer to achieving his goals. It was Keaton’s brilliant inspiration — he also directed the film — that his character step into the movie screen itself during the dream, thus passing seamlessly through a string of heroic situations, a never-equaled feat of camera trickery and crisp timing (Woody Allen reversed the idea in Purple Rose of Cairo, where the movie hero steps out of the picture). Along with its humor, and Keaton’s gloriously unflappable persona, what’s key about Sherlock Jr. is that our hero’s screen antics are directly related to his life, as though the self-styled sleuth needed his imagination unleashed to find answers for his waking problems. Just like the rest of us, but with funnier results.