Our Top 10 New Year’s Eve-Related Movies
Why get stuck watching Dick Clark awkwardly usher in 2011 when you can pop in one of these classic New Year’s Eve-related movies instead? Friends? Loved ones? They can wait.
Christmas movies are a dime a dozen, but movies that center around New Year’s are…slightly less frequent. But their superiority is evident: During Christmas, drinking heavily and pondering the depressing sinkhole you call a life is frowned upon. On New Year’s, it’s practically required. So enjoy these movies that feature celebrations of all things ending and aging.
10. 200 Cigarettes
This movie is like Dazed and Confused in that it stars the most promising actors of the 90s but is trying to relive the 80s rather than the 70s. Got that? Set around a fateful New Year’s Eve, 200 Cigarettes has a cast you can’t help but marvel at—Jay Mohr, Christina Ricci, both Afflecks, Kate Hudson, Dave Chappelle, and that girl from that thing. Not to mention that the scene where Paul Rudd makes out with Courtney Love in a bathroom stall while Janeane Garofalo watches is the touchstone of all that is 90s.
9. Jaws: The Revenge
Earning the prize for the most obscure New Year’s-related movie ever, unless, of course, you’re all, “No duh! Michael Caine’s Hoagie is totes partying in the casino with Mario Van Peebles and Lynn Whitfield on New Year’s before all that shark shit goes down.” Oh, and if you are, you can leave now. Seriously. It has nothing to do with New Year’s, but this has got to be the best (read: shittiest) boss battle ever:
8. 54
The story of Studio 54 has so many parties in it that it’s reasonable to assume they all blurred into one long sequined Ziggy Stardust on acid being inappropriately touched by Grace Jones nightmare (assuming, of course, that you watched 54 at all). But like so many other movies, it uses New Year’s as a signal that the good times are over. Cheers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CZurLaSb-0
7. About a Boy
Admit it, every New Year’s party you go to, you go to with the vague hope that you’ll meet someone like Rachel Weisz. You probably won’t, it’s true, but you can always take comfort in the fact that you aren’t a twat like Hugh Grant. Most of the time.
6. Money Train
Need a little extra drama for your movie? Set the climax in New York City on New Year’s Eve. It’s like a shorthand way for non-sports movies to have that whole “two guys standing in the middle of a cheering crowd, celebrating their victory” thing. But without having to make the tough shot or impossible catch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDj-DRJj9bo
5. Strange Days
See: Money Train. Only substitute “celebration” with “a resigned sense that life is still pretty much shit, even though you solved this particular problem.”
4. When Harry Met Sally
Whether you think “iconic” or “cliche,” you have to admit that the whole “running through the city, finding the friend that you suddenly realize you are in love with and pouring your heart out to them seconds before midnight on New Year’s Eve” is to New Year’s what fun-sized candies and Satanism are to Halloween.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRhCTnkd3vM
3. Poseidon
You think not having someone to kill at midnight sucks? Imagine ringing in the New Year with a tidal wave that turns your cruise liner into Mister Magorium’s Death and Dismemberment Emporium. And you thought you were fucked when they announced Fergie as the musical guest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCtIb-1w9NQ
2. Trading Places
“Merry New Year!” Grab a paw full of beef jerky, because this party train is about to roll out. Trading Places taught us that New Year’s isn’t just the single most important party night of the year, it is also the ideal time to trick your nemesis into surprise gorilla rape.
1. Boogie Nights
What? Oh, right, like you don’t dream of welcoming in each and every new decade with friends, family, and a bullet right through your idea maker. If it weren’t a logistical nightmare and a bitch to clean up, we’d probably do it every December 31st.