The 10 best New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day films, ranked
The calendar plays a crucial role in the success of New Year's films.
Midnight creates a deadline. Parties create friction. The morning after forces honesty. Even when the story isn’t explicitly “about” New Year, the turn of the year sharpens every choice.
This list brings together ten films that genuinely belong to New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. Each one uses the holiday as a trigger, a setting, or a pressure point. Below are short, non-spoiler summaries, with key actors included and a clear explanation of why each film works especially well at year-end.
1) Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: William Holden, Gloria Swanson
A struggling screenwriter becomes entangled with a former silent-film star living in denial about her fading relevance. What begins as a practical arrangement slides into emotional dependency.
Why it’s perfect for New Year:
This is a New Year film about time catching up. While the world celebrates fresh starts, the story traps its characters in the past, making it ideal for a reflective, late-night watch when resolutions feel fragile.
2) The Godfather Part II (1974)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton
The saga splits between the rise of a family empire and the cold consolidation of power that threatens to destroy it from within. Tradition and violence sit side by side.
Why it’s perfect for New Year:
New Year celebrations appear as formal rituals, masking danger and betrayal. It’s a film for the moment when the party noise fades and the consequences of past choices come into focus.
3) Phantom Thread (2017)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps
A meticulous fashion designer forms an intense relationship with a young woman who quietly refuses to remain subordinate. Control, care, and dependence blur.
Why it’s perfect for New Year:
This is a film about renegotiating rules. It suits the period when people reassess boundaries, habits, and power dynamics rather than chasing shallow reinvention.
4) When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
Director: Rob Reiner
Starring: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan
Two people repeatedly cross paths over many years, misreading their feelings and each other’s intentions. Friendship and romance tangle slowly.
Why it’s perfect for New Year:
One New Year’s Eve forces honesty that can’t be delayed any longer. It captures the feeling of deadlines created not by work, but by emotion.
5) Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts
A newly released thief assembles a specialist team to execute a tightly timed Las Vegas heist. Everything depends on precision and trust.
Why it’s perfect for New Year:
The ticking-clock structure mirrors the countdown to midnight. It’s energetic, stylish, and ideal when you want momentum rather than introspection.
6) Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
Director: Sharon Maguire
Starring: Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth
A single woman starts the year determined to improve her life, documenting successes and failures with painful honesty as romance and self-doubt collide.
Why it’s perfect for New Year:
The film begins with resolutions and tests them immediately. It reflects the hopeful, chaotic reality of self-improvement better than almost any other New Year staple.
7) Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Director: Nora Ephron
Starring: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan
After a loss, a widower and his son unexpectedly set in motion a series of events that draw two strangers toward each other across distance.
Why it’s perfect for New Year:
The film leans into longing and quiet optimism. It suits New Year’s Day especially, when the pace slows and the future feels open but uncertain.
8) Forrest Gump (1994)
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright
A kind, unassuming man drifts through decades of social change, influencing lives without ever seeking recognition.
Why it’s perfect for New Year:
It’s a film about accumulation rather than transformation. Watching it at year-end invites reflection on how lives unfold gradually, not through sudden resolutions.
9) Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (2018)
Director: Ben Wheatley
Starring: Neil Maskell, Hayley Squires
A man attempts to host the perfect family New Year gathering, only for unresolved tensions and buried resentments to surface.
Why it’s perfect for New Year:
It captures the reality of family holidays: forced togetherness, old roles, and the pressure to pretend everything is fine while it clearly isn’t.
10) The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Director: Ronald Neame
Starring: Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine
A New Year’s Eve celebration aboard a luxury liner is abruptly transformed into a fight for survival after disaster strikes.
Why it’s perfect for New Year:
The holidays aren’t background flavours. It’s the moment the world flips upside down, turning celebration into urgency and chaos.
