What is cool? Any attempt to define it is to not be cool. Everyone agrees Fonzie is cool. But Henry Winkler is just a nice old man. 

Although we can't quite put our finger on what cool is, the movie buffs on the popular film forum Letterboxd recently discussed what they thought were the Coolest films ever made.   

The answers range from the obvious to the thermal, with a few underdogs thrown in because it's always cool to root for the underdogs.

1. Cool Runnings (1993)

A film based on the true story of one of the coolest countries in the world participating in the Winter Olympics, starring John Candy in one of his final and best roles; there is nothing about Cool Runnings that isn't cool. Jamaica has a bobsled team; now that is cool.  

2. The Thing (1982)

A film that is cool both metaphorically and literally. John Carpenter's arctic-horror about a group of scientists battling the elements and an alien that can copy their fellow researchers, has some of the coolest practical effects ever committed to film. Paranoia, though, is not cool. 

3. The Warriors (1979)

Walter Hill's cult movie is the tale of a street gang battling across New York to return to Coney Island after being framed for murder. This film is based on Sol Yurick's novel, inspired by the Greek epic Anabasis by Xenophon. Can you dig it?

4. Bullitt (1968)

Everything Steve McQueen ever touched was cool. Bullitt is one of the coolest crime movies of the late 60s, with one of the coolest car chases ever created with some of the coolest cars ever made. That British racing green Mustang still sends shivers down my spine. 

5. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Pulp Fiction epitomizes 90s cool and remains Tarantino's best movie. Combining sharp suits, superb dialogue, and a seriously cool soundtrack, Pulp Fiction is one of the coolest movies ever. It even tells you how to order a quarter pounder with cheese in France. Now that's cool.

6. Drive (2011) 

Car chases are cool, mustangs are cool, and Ryan Gosling playing a wheelman running from the mob after a botched robbery in a Mustang is incredibly cool. Cliff Martinez's score is so cool it would make a car skid. Drive is cool.

7. Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010)

Bryan Lee O'Malley's “Scott Pilgrim” was one of the coolest comics of the early 2000s. Edgar Wright turned it into one of the coolest comic book movies ever made, with a soundtrack that slaps, played by the cast. Even the creator of Mario and The Legend of Zelda thought it was cool enough to allow it to have sound effects from his games. Now that's cool.  

8. The Blues Brothers (1980)

Undoubtedly, James Brown was cool, Aretha Franklin was cool, B.B. King was cool, and Ray Charles was cool. What if you put them in a comedy with Jim Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Carrie Fisher, John Candy, and a record-breaking amount of crashed police cars? One of the coolest musical road movies of all time, that's what. 

9. Mad Max Fury Road (2015)

I have two words for you: flamethrower guitar. Director George Miller's return to the post-apocalyptic wastes of contemporary Australia (just kidding) is some of his best work, featuring a calibur of physical effects and stunt work rarely seen in modern action movies.    

10. Fargo (1996)

The Coen Brothers' mid-western crime caper is as cool as a Minnesotan winter. Steve Buscemi, William H. Macy, and Frances McDormand star in this homespun police procedural about bungling bank robbers and a very determined and pregnant detective. 

11. Heat (1995)

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro reunite in Michael Mann's hard-hitting cops and robbers crime drama. During Heat's iconic bank robbery, the sounds of the guns were taped live by dozens of microphones carefully placed around the set. The result is one of cinematic history's most realistic and jarring gunfights. Cool, huh? 

12. The Matrix (1999)

The Wachowski's ground-breaking cyberpunk epic has some of the coolest fight scenes ever committed to film. However, it couldn't make wearing a leather trench coat and sunglasses cool. Not that most of us got that memo at the time. Just me? I'll get my leather coat.    

13. Akira (1988)

The Akira bike slide is one of the coolest things ever. Often imitated but never bettered, Katsuhiro Otomo's cyberpunk masterpiece about the leader of a motorcycle gang whose childhood friend gains telekinetic powers after a run-in with an escaped government brought anime to the West and inspired a whole generation of filmmakers, including the makers of a little known indie flick called The Matrix. 

14. Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door (2001)

Cowboy Bebop is one of the coolest anime series of all time. So it's no surprise that the feature-length movie, set between episodes 22 and 23 of the neo-noir cyberpunk series, which sees the crew of the Bebop attempt to thwart a terrorist plot on Mars, is also cool. 

15. Blade Runner (1982)

Ridley Scott created an aesthetic with Blade Runner that has remained as influential as it is cool to this day. The grim, rain, and neon-soaked streets of a near-future LA juxtaposed with its neo-noir sensibilities have dominated science fiction and particularly cyberpunk ever since.

16. The Italian Job (1969)

This Michel Cain classic about a daring gold heist gone awry is the perfect marriage of sharp writing, fantastic direction, and a handful of minis.  

17. True Romance (1993)

Christian Slater is the coolest nerd known to man in Tony Scott's True Romance. Penned by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery, this film about a comic store clerk who talks to Elvis and gets pulled into the underworld after falling for a call girl is seriously cool.

18. Ocean's Eleven (2001)

Though the original Ocean's 11 starred the Rat Pack, the Steven Soderbergh-directed remake of this Vegas-based heist movie with an ensemble cast of cool cats like Clooney, Pitt, and the late great Bernie Mac is even cooler. The story of Danny Ocean (Clooney) planning the biggest heist in history by robbing three Vegas casinos simultaneously with an 11-man team is very cool. 

19. Point Break (1991)

There are a lot of good Patrick Swayze movies, but Patrick Swayze movies with Keanu Reeves and surfing… well that's even more cool. Plus, there are undercover FBI agents and bank robbers. All of that adds up to an overall, sick movie.

20. The French Connection (1971)

William Friedkin's neo-noir thriller starring Gene Hackman as detective Jimmy ‘Popeye' Doyle investigating a drug smuggling ring features one of the coolest car chases ever. In the film's gripping climax, Doyle pursues a hitman riding in a metro line train across Brooklyn in a commandeered Pontiac LeMans. 

21. Fallen Angels (1995)

Wong Kar-Wai's meditation on loneliness, alienation, and a yearning for connection in a hectic city, showcases everything that makes the Hong Kong auteur's films so indescribably cool. With a fractious plot that follows the exploits of a hitman caught in a love triangle who wants to leave the criminal underworld and a mute-ex con on the run from the police, Fallen Angels cements Wai's unique grungy visual style that mixes in-camera effects, distorted color grading and experimental editing. Which, for film nerds like me, is very cool indeed. 

22. Blue Spring (2001)

Japanese director Toshiaki Toyoda's visually arresting Blue Spring follows the trials and tribulations of a group of disaffected teenage delinquents written off by society and attending a dilapidated school. With a soundtrack featuring Japanese grunge band Thee Michelle Gun Elephant, Blue Spring, like adolescent rebellion, is cool.  

23. Breathless (1960)

Jean-Luc Goddard's nihilistic debut movie about an aimless Bogart-obsessed French criminal called Michael and his American girlfriend Patricia is effortlessly cool like French vague cinema always is.  

Breathless bold look and unconventional use of jump cuts gained plaudits when it was first released in 1960 and made Jean-Paul Belmondo a star for his turn as Michael and regarded as one of the best films ever made.  

24. Goodfellas (1990)

Goodfellas is, without a doubt, Scorsese's coolest movie. The biopic based on the rise and fall of mob associate Henry Hill is packed full of great one-liners derived from improvisation sessions with the cast that became a large part of the film's final script. With powerhouse performances from Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, and Joe Pesci, it's hard not to like this one.  

25. Shaft (1971)

Arguably one of the coolest heroes in cinematic history, Gordon Parks decided to cast Richard Roundtree as the titular detective so young African Americans could be inspired by “a hero they hadn't had before”; a complicated man, a cat that won't cop out when there's danger all about, John Shaft. Funk guitar intensifies. 

Source: (Reddit).