Here’s some movie recommendations for your New Year’s viewing…
With 2025 hours away approaching, it’s time to see out the year. From attending a New Year’s Eve party with your buddies to watching fireworks illuminating the night sky, these are the few things you can do. Or how about keeping things simple by getting cozy on your couch or bed while checking out some of these movie titles? Titles where you can revisit (or visit for the first time) our pick of seven best New Year’s Eve movies, with something for everyone from romantic comedies to a disaster flick, supernatural comedy and sci-fi thriller…
Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
Bridget Jones’s Diary made Renée Zellweger a household name. Her titular character is the epitome of a flawed, thirtysomething single woman who suffers all the reality checks in the guise of romantic-comedy tropes. Right from the get-go, Bridget’s coming home to her parents’ New Year party is met with disaster: She finds herself embarrassed dressing like a carpet and there’s the awkward meeting with Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy. The latter even badmouthing her behind his back, labelling her “some verbally incontinent spinster who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and dresses like her mother”. Ouch, that hurts.
Then comes the New Year’s resolutions written in her diary from pledging herself to lose weight to finding a sensible boyfriend. Zellweger’s hilarious titular performance certainly deserved a spot in the Oscar’s Best Actress nomination category. The success of the first movie, of course, paved the way for two sequels and an upcoming Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy coming up next February.
When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Before Meg Ryan dominated the 1990s romantic-comedy era with Tom Hanks in the genre-defining Joe Versus the Volcano, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, she has already showed her range earlier in When Harry Met Sally… It’s a beloved rom-com that gets a major boost from Ryan and Billy Crystal’s unforgettable chemistry as two friends believe that men and women can’t be friends. And to quote from Crystal’s Harry, it’s because “the sex part always gets in the way”.
Working from Nora Ephron’s witty screenplay, the movie does a good job analyzing the love-hate relationship, friendship, and the debate about “faking an orgasm”. The latter refers to the movie’s centrepiece as Sally made a point by literally acting out the orgasm part in front of the stunned Harry in a crowded restaurant. Beyond that iconic scene, When Harry Met Sally… builds to a heartwarming payoff in the climactic New Year’s Eve party scene with Frank Sinatra’s “It Had to Be You” playing in the background.
Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
The 1990s romantic-comedy era wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, easily one of the best in the genre. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are the MVPs here, proving their on-screen chemistry is no fluke after Joe Versus the Volcano three years earlier. Interestingly, these two characters barely share the same screen together until the movie culminates perfectly in their eventual meet-up atop the Empire State Building with a little fate and a stroke of luck (thanks to the misplaced backpack).
The ending may seal the deal as one of the greatest romantic scenes ever seen in modern cinema but let’s not forget the bittersweet moment earlier in the movie. It was a scene where Hanks’ melancholic Sam Baldwin lying on the couch with New York’s Eve just passed while Nat King Cole’s “Stardust” playing in the background. He imagines his late wife (Carey Lowell) sitting on the couch and having a brief conversation with her: “I miss you so much it hurts”.
While You Were Sleeping (1995)
Sandra Bullock was on the roll in the ‘90s when he starred opposite Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man before gaining fame in Speed. Then comes While You Were Sleeping, a charming romantic comedy that benefits from a storytelling hook: An unusual meet-cute moment when a Chicago Transit Authority token collector (Bullock’s Lucy) saves a man’s life. That man in question is Peter (Peter Gallagher), a regular commuter who she always sees him passing by every weekday morning. She has been harboring a crush on him and the aftermath of the rescue leads to a big misunderstanding: She is being mistaken for the fiancée of the now-comatose Peter. Bullock’s girl-next-door persona and irresistible charm elevate the movie and she shares a memorable chemistry with Bill Pullman, who plays Peter’s younger brother Jack.
While You Were Sleeping features a pivotal stretch that takes place during New Year’s Eve. A night where Lucy finds herself dealing with her neighbor (Michael Rispoli) and later, Peter in a series of misunderstandings that culminates in the movie’s most memorable line: “I’ve had a really lousy Christmas, you’ve just managed to kill my New Year’s, if you come back on Easter, you can burn down my apartment.”
Poseidon (2006)
The late Wolfgang Petersen’s Poseidon – a $160 million-budgeted loose remake of The Poseidon Adventure – marks his final Hollywood movie before he passed away sixteen years later in 2022. The big-budget disaster movie may have slumped at the box office but Petersen’s genre know-how direction ticks all the boxes: it’s economically paced at under 100 minutes; it has plenty of major set pieces (the capsizing scene!) worthy of the big-screen thrills aided by the state-of-the-art special effects technology; and the obligatory mismatched characters led by familiar faces from Josh Lucas to Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss and Emmy Rossum.
And not to forget, this movie takes place on New Year’s Eve when the rogue wave hits the titular luxury ocean liner. It’s understandable that the Hollywood disaster genre has been oversaturated at this point and there’s nothing fresh or new in Poseidon. Petersen isn’t interested in reinventing the wheels but one thing is for sure, it’s a cinematic ride with enough action and peril to keep you entertained.
Ghostbusters II (1989)
Ghostbusters II may feel like a lazy rehash of the iconic 1984 box-office smash, complete with more or less the same storytelling and action beats. But it’s far from a disaster, even though the idea of introducing the Vigo the Carpathian painting comes to life isn’t as formidable as one might expect. Looking past that, the sequel still retains the oddball charm coming from the returning ghostbusting quartet along with Rick Moranis and Annie Potts’ delightful supporting turns as Louis Tully and Janine Melnitz.
There are a few memorable set pieces worth mentioning here, from the Ghostbusters team discovering a river of pink slime underneath the New York sewer to the culmination set on New Year’s Eve – the slime-powered Statue of Liberty is brought to walking life scored to Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher”, the hopeful citizens cheering for the return of the Ghostbusters and of course, the heroes save the day. Not to mention director Ivan Reitman does a good job conjuring up a creepy scare during the abandoned subway sequence.
Strange Days (1995)
The final days of 1999 are all bleak, uncertain and full of depravity in Kathryn Bigelow’s underrated sci-fi thriller Strange Days. The movie may have been lengthy at nearly two and a half hours. But it has its moments, beginning with Bigelow’s vivid direction in envisioning the gritty, near-future Los Angeles dystopia influenced by the 1992 LA riots. Working from her ex-husband James Cameron and Jay Cocks’ deeply cynical screenplay, the movie explores the dark side of virtual reality, voyeurism (which in this case, the illegal SQUID device that enables users to get a firsthand experience of another person’s memories) and police corruption.
Strange Days also showcases Bigelow’s flair for stylish and visceral set pieces (the opening POV scene and the car chase come to mind) while bringing out the best in the unlikely pairing of Ralph Fiennes playing the unconventional antihero character and Angela Bassett as a tough bodyguard and driver.
Casey Chong
Originally published December 31, 2024. Updated January 1, 2025.
