New Year’s Eve has long been used as a dramatic backdrop in old movies, classic romantic comedies and even Phanom Thread. Queue up "Auld Lang Syne" and watch these movies this holiday.
Peak Bogart: The man turns bitterness into an art form. The look on his face when his gangster character, Roy Earl, fresh out of prison, joyfully confesses his loving intentions to Velma (Joan Leslie), the young, innocent beauty he meets by chance on the road to California with her sweet grandparents, only for her to turn him down in favor of her boyfriend back home, is equal parts acrid and despondent. His chance to have a life free of crime and criminals and guns and capers up in smoke, he turns back to this hotel heist his boss has sent him on and botches it up like a rank amateur.