New Year’s Eve is bound to be less brash this year – some would ever say melancholic. Strangely many classic New Year movies tend to bend towards a sense of melancholy amid the celebrations, most memorably Billy Wilder’s classic comedy-drama The Apartment (1960). That film at least has a hopeful ending.
Unlike say Sunset Boulevard (1950), Splendour in the Grass (1961), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Godfather Part II (1974) and especially Looking for Mr Goodbar (1977).
Still, things perk up in more recent pictures set on New Year’s Eve; here’s a selection to see 2021 in with; some good, some so-so, and some, well…not so great:
About Time (2013) – Amazon Prime & Netflix
For me, an enjoyment of work of Richard Curtis is a taste that I’ve so far singularly failed to acquire, so my view of his saccharine nonsensical time travel comedy should be seen through this lens.
Not even the great Bill Nighy can rescue a story of a family where the men (why not the women?) have the limited ability to go back in time to critical moments in their own lives – and possibly change them to create a ‘better’ present for them.
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