The Apartment\u2018Shut up and deal\u2019 \u2026 Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment. Photograph: Cinetext Bildarchiv\/United Artists\/Allstar<\/p>\n
At the end of any especially troublesome year it\u2019s always good to revisit The Apartment<\/a>, Billy Wilder\u2019s brilliantly bleak comedy of office politics and festive bad cheer. It memorably ends on the stroke of midnight as heartsick Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) abandons a drunken new year\u2019s party to be with hapless, jobless CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon) instead. Is The Apartment suggesting that Kubelik and Baxter then live happily ever after? Probably not, because I\u2019ve never been convinced that these two lovers are going to stay the course. They\u2019re too mismatched and desperate; their wounds are still too fresh. What the ending gives us is the next best thing: a sudden sense of hope and freedom, with everything packed in boxes except for a bottle, two glasses and a deck of cards. Nothing to lose and nowhere to go. \u201cShut up and deal.\u201d A clean break, a fresh start. Xan Brooks<\/p>\n Strange Days Kick-ass \u2026 Angela Bassett in Strange Days. Photograph: 20th Century Fox\/Allstar<\/p>\n A flop on release \u2013 at a time audiences were facing an abundance of multiplex options \u2013 Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s pre-millennial tech-noir has seen its reputation swell substantially over the decades. James Cameron and Jay Cocks\u2019s screenplay straddles the 20th and 21st centuries: kick-ass chauffeur Angela Bassett strives to shake lovelorn VR addict Ralph Fiennes from his funk so as to unravel a conspiracy involving the LAPD. What follows is a cautionary tale about real-world structural flaws and the bedazzlements of the virtual realm; the source of Fatboy Slim\u2019s \u201cright here, right now\u201d sample; and, most crucially, a propulsive, jolting, finally exhilarating thriller. Increasingly, when the clock strikes midnight on 1 January, it\u2019s Bassett\u2019s wearied \u201cwe made it\u201d that sounds like a bell in my head. Mike McCahill<\/p>\n The Irony of FateScrewball swerves \u2026 Andrey Myagkov and Barbara Brylska in The Irony of Fate. Photograph: Mosfilm Studios<\/p>\n Already most will struggle to recall the 2022 romcom About Fate. But not the 1976 New Year\u2019s Eve classic on which it was based: The Irony of Fate, which is known by every Russian. The holiday misrule premise, beloved of many NYE flicks, works even more fruitfully in the far more rigid Soviet context: soon-to-be-married Moscow doctor Zhenya (Andrey Myagkov) mistakenly gets on a flight to Leningrad after his stag party. Thanks to identikit Soviet architecture, he drunkenly falls asleep in an apartment with the same address, where willowy Nadya (Barbara Brylska) is welcoming her cranky fiance, Ippolit (Yury Yakovlev, the Soviet John Cleese). The course of true love takes many screwball swerves, with the lead pair fanning the Slavic melancholy by often breaking out a guitar for one of Mikael Tariverdiev\u2019s stunning songs. Epic but intimate, a kind of Kie\u015blowskian import sets in as the night gets long; have these circling soulmates also left it too late in life? Phil Hoad<\/p>\n The Lord of the RingsGalloping into another year \u2026 The Lord of the Rings. Photograph: New Line Cinema\/Allstar<\/p>\n \u201cThe world is changed.\u201d So begins Peter Jackson\u2019s epic three-part adaptation of JRR Tolkien\u2019s epic. I have a tradition where I get together with friends (some more enthusiastic than others, it must be said), and watch the full extended cut of the whole trilogy, every New Year\u2019s Eve. The world has changed, you see: it\u2019s a chance to reflect and look back over the year while enjoying a glorious trio of films whose comforting familiarity never breeds contempt. Instead, like a good marriage, the flaws are part of what you adore. Twelve hours well spent, we think you\u2019ll agree. Catherine Bray<\/p>\n Sunset BoulevardClosing up the year \u2026 Gloria Swanson and William Holden in Sunset Boulevard. Photograph: Paramount Pictures\/Allstar<\/p>\n You want a bona fide, satisfaction-guaranteed classic, but also something that makes you glad you\u2019re not going out \u2013 and Sunset Boulevard ticks both boxes handsomely. Especially since it contains what must be the bleakest New Year\u2019s Eve party ever. To recap, William Holden\u2019s husk of a screenwriter rocks up at faded starlet Gloria Swanson\u2019s mansion in white tie, to discover he\u2019s the only other guest. Eventually he storms out in search of genuine revelry, only to be reeled back in before midnight after Swanson melodramatically slashes her wrists. The new year is not going to be happy for either of them. Piercingly grim but also gloriously camp, Billy Wilder\u2019s diamond-cut Hollywood hate letter merits endless rewatching, and you can have fun playing \u201cspot the modern-day resonances\u201d. From silents-to-talkies, substitute cinemas-to-streaming, lament how the pictures really have got small, and pledge to get out more next year. Steve Rose<\/p>\n The ShiningHappy holidays \u2026 Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Photograph: Warner Bros.\/Allstar<\/p>\n Movie pairings for the holidays are best kept simple, nothing fussy or fancy. In that spirit of not overthinking it, The Shining<\/a> is perfect movie for New Year\u2019s Eve. It\u2019s a horror staple that never wears thin. Most people have seen it at least three times already, so you won\u2019t need to hit pause to get the sausage rolls out of the oven (or if someone starts banging on about Kubrick faking the moon landing). The Shining is also a classic winter movie, ending with a snowstorm at the Overlook hotel where aspiring novelist and alcoholic Jack Torrance has been growing ever more homicidal over the winter. I first watched it aged nine or 10, plucking a VHS at random from the stack next to the telly, monitored with negligent parental guidance, and have watched it at least a dozen times since. I have my own nine-year-old now, but may give her another year before letting her join the party. Cath Clarke<\/p>\n The Poseidon AdventureSwell party \u2026 The Poseidon Adventure. Photograph: Cinetext\/Allstar Collection\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n However damp a squib your New Year\u2019s Eve, it\u2019s always worth remembering that worse things happen at sea. And rarely do they get worse than the big wet hell in which the passengers of the SS Poseidon flounder in this most glorious and absorbing of disaster movies. No sooner have the corks popped to mark the start of 1972 than the warnings of captain Leslie Nielsen against going full speed ahead (an economising measure by the avaricious shipowners) are realised and the boat is bottom up in the middle of the Atlantic, with thousands meeting grisly and often quite creative ends.<\/p>\n A handful of survivors \u2013 including Red Buttons, Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters \u2013 then slowly clamber up to the hull with only the wateriest hope of salvation. The tension is ratcheted slowly, the set pieces expert, the sentimentality diluted by real grit and upset. The star of the show, of course, is preacher Gene Hackman, sweatily brave to the end, when he sacrifices himself in a polo neck. In a year that began with the horrific news of his death<\/a>, it\u2019s salutary to see Hackman in his prime: tough and smart and sardonic, raging at God and rousing the rest of us to keep fighting<\/a>. Catherine Shoard<\/p>\n Radio DaysTuned to the occasion \u2026 Radio Days. Photograph: Entertainment Pictures\/Alamy<\/p>\n If there\u2019s one cry of \u201chappy new year\u201d that echoes down the decades, it\u2019s from Woody Allen\u2019s still-wonderful memoir of his boyhood years in 1940s New York. (Allen actually grew up in Brooklyn, on the other side of Jamaica Bay from Rockaway where this is set, but the windswept boardwalk he presumably visited as a kid was just too picturesque to pass up.) There are so many jewels contained within \u2013 \u201cYou think the Atlantic is a greater ocean than the Pacific?\u201d, a communist Larry David, the burglars who win a radio phone-in competition, the Carmen Miranda singalong \u2013 that are worth it for themselves alone, but at its heart there\u2019s an out-with-the-old in-with-the-new wistfulness to the whole thing. Filtered through one of Allen\u2019s favoured tropes \u2013 the hazy, movie-fuelled nostalgia for the supposed sophistication of New York nightlife of the era \u2013 the film ends with a superbly maudlin final scene that via the medium of a live broadcast as 1943 turns into 1944, brings together Little Joe and his family with the radio superstars on the nightclub rooftop. It\u2019s such a brilliant sequence, offering joy, hope and misery all rolled into a few minutes \u2013 watching it ought to be as compulsory as Jools Holland\u2019s Hootenanny. (Radio Days supernerds might want to know: start the film at 10.07pm \u2013 and eight seconds \u2013 to line up the movie New Year countdown with the real one.) Andrew Pulver<\/p>\n HolidayBreak from routine \u2026 (from left) Doris Nolan, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Lew Ayres in Holiday. Photograph: Granger\/Historical Picture Archive\/Alamy<\/p>\n Many of the best Christmas-themed romantic comedies come from the 1940s, but their spiritual sibling Holiday got an earlier jump on a slightly later holiday; released in 1938, it\u2019s maybe the best New Year\u2019s Eve-set romcom. Much of it unfolds at a party, during which Johnny (Cary Grant), who has resolved to take some time off to recharge and rediscover himself after years of labour, is drawn toward Linda (Katharine Hepburn), the free-spirited sister of his fiancee. Released the same year as Hepburn and Grant\u2019s better-known pairing in Bringing Up Baby, Holiday is the more reflective and romantic of the two, with lovely direction from George Cukor. The lead characters\u2019 willingness to rebuke expectations of capitalistic productivity, and instead make meaningful promises about how to better live their lives, makes it a particularly inspired and heartening new year\u2019s watch. Jesse Hassenger<\/p>\n La bonne ann\u00e9eJoyeux \u2026 Lino Ventura and Fran\u00e7oise Fabian in La bonne ann\u00e9e. Photograph: Rizzoli Film<\/p>\n For a happy new year with a French accent, try La bonne ann\u00e9e (1973) directed by Claude Lelouch, a director whose films are too glossy and romantic to appeal to high-minded critics. In this non-linear narrative he channels his inner Jean-Pierre Melville by casting Lino Ventura, one of Melville\u2019s favourite actors, as a convict out on Christmas parole and remembering a heist that went wrong. The robbery flashbacks alternate with his wooing of Fran\u00e7oise Fabian as the proprietor of an antiques shop next door to the targeted jewellery store, allowing granite-faced Ventura to show his goofy side. Seasonal delights include a drag queen miming to Mireille Mathieu singing Francis Lai\u2019s title song \u2013 with Mathieu herself in the audience! If you can\u2019t handle subtitles, Hollywood remade it as Happy New Year (1987), the highlight of which is Peter Falk disguising himself as an old lady. Anne Billson<\/p>\n Phantom ThreadAfter the omelette \u2026 Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps in Phantom Thread. Photograph: Collection Christophel\/Alamy<\/p>\n Phantom Thread is pretty much the perfect movie for most occasions \u2013 Christmas, breakfast, date night, mid-food poisoning fever spiral \u2013 but one of its most effectively date-specific sequences takes place during New Year\u2019s, a relatably tumultuous night for us all. She wants to go dancing, he wants to do nothing and in one of the movie\u2019s most ravishingly orchestrated moments, he goes after her, forced to play prince and save her from the extravagant party chaos. It\u2019s too little too late but in the hopeful, post dodgy omelette flash forward at the end, they\u2019re dancing instead of arguing their way into a new year, a dream replacing a nightmare. Paul Thomas Anderson knows it\u2019s usually a rotten night for most of us but he also knows that we still naively hope that next year might somehow be better. Benjamin Lee<\/p>\n When Harry Met Sally \u2026Rob Reiner and Meg Ryan on the set of When Harry Met Sally \u2026 Photograph: Columbia Pictures\/Allstar<\/p>\n