Ring In 2025 With 12 Essential New Year’s Eve Movies
The holiday season doesn’t end as soon as Santa Claus bids adieu, and yet compared to Christmas, there are essentially no New Year’s Eve movies. To be fair, this makes a certain amount of sense. Christmas has St. Nick’s whole mythology, its religious origins, and a monopoly on wintertime merriment and good cheer. New Year’s Eve has a little Champagne, a dropping ball, and people counting down the literal seconds until the holiday has ended. There’s not as much lore to structure a New Year’s Eve movie around. (Baby New Year, mercifully, hasn’t been mined to death as IP yet.) And besides, by the time the 31st arrives, people are holiday-seasoned out, and New Year’s feels more like a Christmas coda.
This is a shame, because New Year’s Eve has so much thematic potential for moviemaking. It’s about endings and beginnings. It’s about turning the page on the good and the bad — the melancholy exuberance of “Auld Lang Syne.” And, in most cases, it’s about a group celebration that’s simultaneously universal and deeply personal. We’re all wishing for a happy New Year as we gather to watch the ball drop and ensure a January 1 hangover, but what that means to each of us is unique, and the best New Year’s movies approach this turning point in unique ways, too.
Here are a dozen movies (plus one bonus New Year’s Day flick) that take full advantage of New Year’s Eve as a storytelling device. These are not Christmas movies where the epilogue extends another six days; all of these films have at least one crucial scene set on New Year’s Day and place clear, narrative importance on the holiday in one way or another. The Godfather Part II, despite having an iconic scene at a New Year’s Eve party, is not on this list because it’s not a stand-alone film. (Worse way to spend the 31st than watching both Godfathers, though.) The 2011 Gary Marshall movie New Year’s Eve is also not on this list because, c’mon, it’s too easy. The pilot of Futurama is not on the list because it’s a TV show, not a movie.
With that said, let’s get to the list in 10 … 9 … 8 …
The Apartment (1960)
C.C. “Bud” Baxter’s New Year’s resolution was a while in the making, crystalizing when he decides to heed his neighbor’s advice and “be a mensch” — Yiddish for “a good person,” more or less. Billy Wilder, perhaps the greatest classic Hollywood screenwriter, spins a zippy yarn in this sneakily dark yet ultimately affirming story about a lowly employee at a Manhattan insurance company. Bud (Jack Lemmon) has a lucrative side gig, lending his conveniently located apartment to his bosses when they have affairs. When he begins to fall for an elevator operator in the building (Shirley MacLaine), it sets Bud down a path that shakes him out of his morally middling complacency. The story culminates on New Year’s Eve with one of the best closing lines of any film, and it’s an exceptional movie to greet the New Year with. Try to “be a mensch” and “shut up and deal” — two great mottoes for the next 12 months.
Il Posto (1961)
This quiet, restrained Italian comedy-drama from the early ’60s culminates at a company New Year’s Eve party, but the countdowns in it that really matter aren’t of the ball-dropping sort. It follows Domenico, a young man who is being pressured by his family to enter the workforce and start a career that will have him set for life. He applies for a job at a big, somewhat soulless corporation in the city, and we watch as the job slowly shuts the door on his youth. When he hits it off with a young woman in a similar boat who is applying at the same company, the pair are late coming back from a coffee break, and it’s only in retrospect that we realize that those extra stolen seconds of being carefree before the labor begins are quietly more meaningful than the arbitrary changing of the year. Il Posto is a sadly charming reminder that the clock is always counting down.
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Arguably the greatest of the wave of Irwin Allen disaster movies in the ’70s, The Poseidon Adventure takes place inside the titular SS Poseidon, a cruise ship that’s hit with a rogue wave on New Year’s Eve, flipping the boat upside down. Only a few passengers, led by Gene Hackman (playing a Christian minister who’s not a regular minister but, earnestly, a cool minister), decide to take their fate into their own hands as they attempt to climb “up” the overturned boat in hopes of escaping through the now-topside hull. It’s an entertaining — and despite the glitzy chintz of the ’70s of it all, harrowing — journey that could serve as a fitting capper to the end of a rough year. As proclaimed by The Poseidon Adventure’s Academy Award–winning Best Original Song, “There’s got to be a morning after / If we can hold on through the night.” It’s a good New Year’s message; unfortunately, “Morning After” might be one of the worst songs to ever win the Oscar.
The Irony of Fate, Or Enjoy Your Bath! (1976)
There actually is an unquestionable consensus New Year’s Eve movie, the one that everybody watches every year; it just happens to be one that’s beloved by the former Soviet Union rather than the West. The Irony of Fate, Or Enjoy Your Bath! aired as a Soviet TV movie in the winter of 1976 and it became an instant sensation that basically the entire country watched and demanded to be rebroadcast. The film follows a Moscow man who, after drinking with his buddies, is mistakenly put on a plane to Leningrad. When he rouses from his drunken stupor, he discovers the apartment he’s walked into is not his own but an identical one on an identically named street thanks to the generic Soviet architecture and city planning. He and the apartment’s occupant, a woman, end up spending New Year’s together — though they don’t exactly get along … at first. The Irony of Fate looks like the TV movie it is (albeit a very well-made one), and its three-hour run time drags (perhaps its ratings success speaks as much to the lack of great Soviet entertainment as it does to the movie’s quality). Still, it’s extremely charming, and it’s easy to understand why The Irony of Fate has become an annual viewing tradition not unlike It’s a Wonderful Life over here in the U.S. of A.
Ghostbusters II (1989)
Ghostbusters II got knocked for being a slimy, saccharine follow-up to the original horror-comedy, but is there really something so bad about positivity? The sequel, which has the Ghostbusters facing off with the spirit of Vigo the Carpathian and his profoundly negative vibes, ends in a joyous celebration that brings the Big Apple together while an animated Statue of Liberty stomps to the rescue. Singing “Auld Lang Syne” literally saves the day in Ghostbusters II, and while in the real world, it’s unlikely that any New Year’s Eve celebration, no matter how exuberant, can defeat whatever your troubles are, seeing unbridled partying positivity is quite affirming.
When Harry Met Sally … (1989)
It takes 12 years for Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s titular characters to fall in love in Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron’s seminal rom-com. The pivotal scene takes place on New Year’s Eve (there are two big NYE scenes, actually; the climax is what people remember), but the joy of When Harry Met Sally … is the time it spends getting to that big declarative moment. When college students Harry and Sally first meet, they hate each other, and it’s only after a series of run-ins years later that they spark up an earnest friendship as adults that, eventually, turns into something more. Sally notes that “‘Auld Lang Syne’ is about old friends.” And maybe New Year’s Eve can be about that, too: discovering something new in what’s been there all along. (Just maybe don’t let When Harry Met Sally … raise your expectations for a New Year’s party too high.)
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
The Coen brothers’ biggest box-office bomb got a second chance, of sorts, as one of the most beloved cult classics in their filmography. That feels fitting, as The Hudsucker Proxy’s magical New Year’s Eve climax is about second chances. Tim Robbins stars as a simple, entry-level employee at a big New York corporation who is promoted to CEO by a conniving member of the board of directors (Paul Newman), as part of a strategic attempt to tank the stock price following the old CEO’s suicide. However, in his rapid rise to the top of all 44 floors of Hudsucker Tower (45, counting the mezzanine), Norville Barnes risks losing himself. The Hudsucker Proxy is a hilarious, offbeat little comedy that has a lot to say about the end of the year; a time to take stock of who we are and how we got here while also looking toward the future. And The Hudsucker Proxy might not be, you know … for kids, but compared to some of the Coens’ other movies, it’s fairly age-appropriate!
Strange Days (1995)
This sci-fi thriller from Kathryn Bigelow, based on a screenplay by James Cameron, is infamously not streaming anywhere nor is it available to rent digitally. It was on Max for a minute, but not anymore. If you do manage to spend the last day of the year tracking down Strange Days in one way or another, you’ll be treated to a unique, very prescient story set at the turn of the millennium. Ralph Fiennes plays a black-market dealer of SQUIDS — devices that tap into a wearer’s cerebral cortex and fully capture their experiences so others can relive them. When he and his best friend/unrequited love (Angela Bassett) discover a criminal conspiracy on one SQUID recording, it prompts a race to uncover the unsavory truth in the lead-up to the end of a dystopian 1999 that’s not too far removed from reality. Full of huge ideas about topics like technology, voyeurism, and police brutality in addition to some of Bigelow’s most gripping action filmmaking, Strange Days works as a New Year’s watch both because it’s a fun sci-fi noir and it’s a grim (but not hopeless!) reminder of how little things have changed.
200 Cigarettes (1999)
As with Strange Days, it’s infuriatingly hard to see this movie, which you’d think would be considered a classic if it weren’t impossible to view. (Shout-out to my local public library for having 200 Cigarettes on DVD. Please don’t ask how I watched Strange Days.) 200 Cigarettes’ obscurity is shocking given the cast; Paul Rudd, Ben and Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Christina Ricci, Dave Chappelle, Janeane Garofalo, Gaby Hoffman, Jay Mohr, and Courtney Love are just some of the stars in this ensemble comedy, which follows a group of 20-somethings around the East Village on New Year’s Eve 1981. There’s not necessarily a grander message in 200 Cigarettes beyond maybe an encouragement to be open to where the night — and life — might take you, but it’s fun to watch these characters weave a tangled web. (Doubly so if this type of madcap New Year’s Eve partying is in your rearview.)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
Bridget Jones’s Diary follows Renée Zellweger’s title character for a year of self-betterment as the 30-something Londoner tries to turn her life around following a revealing encounter at her parents’ New Year’s party. What’s nice about the rom-com is that it doesn’t get too hung up on Bridget’s New Year’s resolutions, written in her famous diary. She falters, she pivots, she embarrasses herself in front of Colin Firth and Hugh Grant — but she’s trying, and that’s what is important. Take the message of Bridget Jones’s Diary with you into the New Year, because writing those resolutions is easy; following through with them for 365 days is imperfect work.
Phantom Thread (2017)
Typically, New Year’s Eve is thought of as a holiday that can mark progress. Next year, things will be better. Next year, I’ll change. But the showstopping moment of Paul Thomas Anderson’s warped romance, Phantom Thread, uses a lavish London ’50s New Year’s party to emphasize the opposite. This is the moment when it becomes clear that the protagonists, fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his muse, Alma (Vicky Krieps), aren’t making any resolutions. They’re going to retrench into their now clearly toxic (literally) relationship. Phantom Thread is a brilliant piece of filmmaking and, also, a cautionary tale about what not to do on New Year’s. Having said all that, the party seems pretty fun.
The Substance (2024)
You know that expression “New Year, new you”? Well, until you see the breakout body-horror hit of 2024, you’ll never truly understand. Demi Moore stars as a celebrity who decides to try a black-market drug in an attempt to claw onto her youth after she’s fired from her job as a TV aerobics instructor on the day she turns 50. When she injects the substance into her body, a new, younger body (Margaret Qualley) emerges, and it turns out the young and old bodies don’t share custody very well. The Substance — which is hilarious, disgusting, thought-provoking, or empty (depending on who you talk to, and possibly all of the above) — ends in a bloody grand finale at a New Year’s special that puts Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve to gory shame. If there’s a message to take from The Substance into the New Year, it’s to try to find peace and happiness in the natural passage of time … and maybe to follow the instructions when taking strange drugs.
Bonus: Rocky (1976)
The big fight at the end of Sylvester Stallone’s iconic boxing drama takes place on January 1, making it technically disqualified from the New Year’s Eve film canon. But, with so many people groggily waking up with a hangover and trying to decide just how serious they were about that New Year’s resolution to get in shape, it’s worth including Rocky on this list. I promise you, jogging a 5K will not hurt nearly as much as surviving 15 rounds in the ring against Apollo Creed. Happy New Year! Now, go run up those steps.
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