The 18 Best New Year's Eve Movies to Start 2022 Off Right

EntertainmentNo plan for New Year's Eve? These are some movie ideas where the New Year plays an essential role.

By Savannah Walsh

The closing of a chapter and the promise of a clean slate translate into a variety of emotions, which is why New Year is one of the celebrations that has been taken to the movies the most times. As the minutes count down to January 1st, there may be time for a romantic display of love for someone, a la When Harry Met Sally or The Apartment. It can also seem like the doomsday panic is coming at any moment, like in Snowpiercer and Ghostbusters II.

These 18 movies can fill your New Year's schedule if you don't have better plans: from classic rom-coms to time-traveling sci-fi and all the Paul Thomas Anderson movies.

You and Me

Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant's tragic romance begins with a fateful New Year's Eve kiss. Although both are engaged to other people, the couple agree to meet on top of the Empire State Building in six months. By now, many of us know how impossible that was to deliver, but their love story is bursting with possibility earlier in the year. (The film would later inspire Something to Remember.)

Carol

Speaking of New Year's kisses, the then-forbidden relationship between Carol (Cate Blanchett) and Therese (Rooney Mara) comes to a head over the holidays. It is a brief honeymoon for the couple, who meet at a department store around Christmas time and separate in early 1953.

Ghostbusters II

The sequel to Ivan Reitman's 1984 supernatural comedy reaches its climax on New Year's Eve. As a slime threatens to invade New York, the Ghostbusters must harness the goodwill of their fellow citizens to ward off the evil spirits. An all-town rendition of Auld Lang Syne defeats the film's central baddie.

Adaline's Secret

There's something about time travel that seems appropriate for the New Year. That's what happens in this 2015 romantic drama starring Blake Lively. Adaline, the first baby born in San Francisco on New Year's Day 1908, gains powers after suffering a tragic accident at age 29. At a New Year's Eve party decades later, Adaline may have a chance to reverse her curse.

Waiting to Exhale

If you've ever seen that meme of Angela Bassett with a burning car behind her, it's from this 1995 movie, and the burning takes place on New Years. It follows as she and her three friends (including Whitney Houston!) search for love and success between two New Year's Eves.

Boogie Nights

The second half of Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 play opens with a tragic New Year's Eve sequence in which Little Bill (William H. Macy) discovers his wife with another man. There's bloodshed at the end of the night, casting a shadow over 1980 and the decade that followed.

Bridget Jones's Diary

This quintessential romantic comedy is often mislabeled as a Christmas movie, because of the matching Christmas jumpers worn by Colin Firth and Renee Zellweger. But they wear them at a New Year's party and make up with the final kiss in the movie exactly one year later. Case closed.

Snowpiercer

Before director Bong Joon-ho collected his Oscars for Parasite, he directed another social parable starring Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton and Song Kang-Ho. It's 2031 and climate change has left all of humanity stuck on a moving train, hurtling toward New Year's Day on a loop. The train passengers are divided by social class, until Evans' character chooses to alter the pecking order.

The Apartment

Writer-director Billy Wilder would include New Year's scenes in two of his most famous works: 1950's Sunset Boulevard and, a decade later, The Apartment. In this Best Picture Oscar-winning film, insurance salesman C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) falls for hapless elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). The only problem? His apartment serves as a meeting point for Fran and Baxter's married boss, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). Unfortunately, it is on New Year's Eve that Fran breaks up with Sheldrake by running through the city streets towards Baxter and a bottle of champagne.

Rent

Of course, there's a part of this adaptation of the Jonathan Larson musical (and a whole song in the show!) that takes place on New Years. But the story itself is about the passage of time, and what better than December 31 to ask: "How do you measure a year in a life?"

Ocean's Eleven

Long before Steven Soderbergh cast George Clooney and Brad Pitt in a trilogy of wacky adventures, there was the 1960 original. In this iteration, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. plan a heist to go off on New Year's Eve at exactly midnight.

Sex and the City

Sex and the City revival And Just Like That may take the subway, but it was in the 2008 film that Carrie is first seen near the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority). As they each spend her first New Years away from her loved ones, Carrie dares to hop on public transportation to visit Miranda in Brooklyn. This also marks the first time that Stanford and Anthony have kissed on a different New Year's Eve.

The Godfather Part II

There has never been a more threatening New Year's Eve kiss than the one Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) plants on Fredo (John Cazale). “I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart," she tells him at a party in Havana that ended before it really started.

When Harry Met Sally

Did the holidays ever seem as romantic as when Harry tells Sally, "I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible"?

The Invisible Thread

Apparently the PTA likes New Years scenes. Twenty years after Boogie Nights, the filmmaker created another pivotal scene for the holidays. This time, fashion designer Daniel Day-Lewis (Reynolds Woodcock) meets his girlfriend, Alma (Vicky Krieps), at a New Year's Eve party. The final shot of the night, where Reynolds and Alma dance alone in an empty concert hall, has been declared one of Anderson's best.

The Last Holidays

Opparently set around Christmas, this time of year is perfect for viewing the 2006 film starring Queen Latifah. When Georgia discovers that she is terminally ill, she decides to quit her job, spend her life savings on a European vacation, and live out her final days to the fullest. Not only is the film a list of extreme resolutions, but it ends on New Year's Eve with a major twist.

While You Were Sleeping

Lucy (Sandra Bullock) saves the life of Peter, her secret crush, just before Christmas. After being mistaken for Peter's fiancée, Lucy spends the holidays with her family while he is in a coma. On New Year's Eve, Peter wakes up and Lucy must face his lies and a crush on Peter's brother, Jack.

New Year's Eve

What would this list be without the film of the same name? This 2011 comedy from the late Garry Marshall is far from a critical favorite, but it packs as much New Year's-related activities into two hours as humanly possible.

Article published in Vanity Fair USA and translated. Access the original here.