Elaine Richardson

Trusting your at-home New Year's Eve entertainment to television is like consigning yourself to hell. Even with cable, you're in for a night of round-the-world New Year's parties, stupid commentary, cruddy movies and soft-core porn. Spare yourself the agony with a little planning ahead and lay in a couple apropos videotapes (or DVDs if you're so equipped). Here's a few you might consider.

"2001: A Space Odyssey": Your basic no brainer. As a celebration of the actual beginning of the millennium, Stanley Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece can't be beat. You've got HAL, you've got Dave, you've got the Blue Danube. If you've never seen it, this is the time. If you need an excuse to see it again, you'll never have a better one. Still weird, creepy, psychedelic and way ahead of this time -- or any time.

"The Apartment": Billy Wilder's 1960 romantic comedy (the last black-and-white film to win a Best Picture Oscar) still reigns as my personal choice for New Year's. It has nothing really to do with turn of the year, besides the fact that it ends on New Year's Eve, but the story -- of a shmucky office drone (Jack Lemmon) in love with an elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine with cute, cropped black hair), unaware of the fact that she's the love bunny of his slick, smarmy boss (Fred MacMurray)-is smart, sassy fun. With great performances and an exceptional Adolph Deutsch score.

"The Hudsucker Proxy": The Coen Brothers' 1993 offering wins on sheer beauty -- from gorgeous Art Deco sets to amazing 1940s-era costumes. The story, a darker-than-it-seems look at the rise of mailroom clerk/naïve business school grad Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), features the Coens' signature stylings, from staccato dialogue to absurdist sequences. Here, New Year's Eve 1958 is a point where Barnes may succumb to despair or find redemption -- all based on the turn of one amazingly powerful clock. With a fun performance by Jennifer Jason Leigh (doing her super fast Katharine Hepburnesque lady reporter voice) and a cameo by Peter Gallagher as a drunken crooner.

"Peter's Friends": Remember when Kenneth Branagh had cachet? His not-well-seen 1992 comedy features a load of talented Brits and Rita Rudner (luckily, she's not around that much). Peter (the foppishly wonderful Stephen Fry) invites a load of his college buddies for New Year's to tell them some big news, only to find that they're so unhappy and depressed with their own lives that there's a bit of cleaning up to do before he can spill the beans. Yeah, it's got a "Big Chill" vibe, but, thankfully, they're Brits, so the humor's dry.

"The Poseidon Adventure": Undiluted, grade-A, 1970s disaster crap! A group of passengers boating it from New York to Athens are about to have their New Year's Eve celebration turned upside down -- literally. Though skipper Leslie Nielsen warns owner types that a coming storm finds them too top heavy, no one listens and the unprepared passengers find their boat turned entirely over by -- a tidal wave! Forced to climb to the top -- that's the hull -- a group of scrappy survivors (led by preacher Gene Hackman and featuring Roddy McDowell, Shelly Winters, Ernest Borgnine and Stella Stevens) are picked off one by one while trying to survive. Produced by Irwin ("The Towering Inferno") Allen.

"Strange Days": Kathryn Bigelow's 1995 look at the days leading up to New Year's 2000 is, obviously, a tad dated. But the story of Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett in an uncertain future where L.A. cops randomly shoot black people seems, hey, not that far from reality. And if the music, by Peter Gabriel and Graeme Revell, doesn't make you electronica nostalgic, at least have fun making fun of the dialogue by Bigelow's ex, James "King of the World, 1997" Cameron.

"When Harry Met Sally": Rob Reiner's 1989 romantic comedy is bound to bring back some memories -- even if it's just to wonder what the hell happened to the swing-revival career of Harry Connick Jr. The quintessential friends-become-lovers movie, the New Year's dating habits of Harry (Bill Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) are key to the story and make it a solid way to skip Dick Clark dropping the Times Square crystal at 11pm local time.

(2000-12-21)

Also by Elaine Richardson

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