The practice of releasing event movies around festivals and holidays is as old as cinema itself – which is why you’ll find, for example, a glut of blockbuster releases in South East Asia around the Lunar New Year in late January and early February. Russia has a tradition of ringing in the New Year with films that express aspiration, cheer and prospects, keeping with the good-will-hunting nature of the holiday season.
Remember Timur Bekmambetov? He’s the Russian-Kazakh filmmaker who burst onto international consciousness with the stylish fantasy thriller, Night Watch (2004), and its sequel, Day Watch (2006), based on Russian writer Sergei Lukyanenko’s World of Watches pentalogy. Obviously, Hollywood came a-calling and Bekmambetov unleashed Angelina Jolie in Wanted (2008) upon us.
Bekmambetov then went back home and revived the Russian New Year movie tradition with Yolki aka Six Degrees of Celebration (2010), a comedy where people with problems in 11 Russian cities try and reach the president on New Year’s Eve to ensure that they enjoy a happy year ahead. The film became one of Russia’s biggest box-office successes and spawned two sequels, Yolki 2 (2011) and Yolki 3 (2013), and a prequel, Yolki 1914 (2014). He’s now back in Hollywood, working on the post-production of his Ben-Hur reboot, due August 2016.
New Year or New Year’s Eve, as a crucial rendezvous point, has been popular in cinema down the ages. Star-crossed lovers William Powell and Kay Francis set a date to meet at a bar on New Year’s Eve, knowing fully well that they won’t be able to make it in One Way Passage (1932). The popularity of the film saw it being remade again as ’Til We Meet Again (1940) and in Mexico as El valor de vivir ( The Price of Living , 1954). Kenneth Branagh’s exquisitely acted and staged Peter’s Friends (1992) sees a bunch of Cambridge University mates reunite at a friend’s stately pile for the New Year holidays and secrets come tumbling out of the closet.
In Peter Hyams’ horror End of Days (1999), Miriam Margolyes is the one who draws the short straw and is chosen to give birth to Satan’s Child on New Year’s Eve. 200 Cigarettes (1999) sees disparate characters stumbling around New York City on New Year’s Eve in 1981, before all arriving at the same party, only to discover that their hostess got tired of waiting for them, has necked several bottles and drunk herself to oblivion.
Sadly, not all New Year-themed movies are successful. The imaginatively titled New Year’s Eve (2011) assembles several high-wattage stars, including Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry and Sarah Jessica Parker, but is deathly dull. Similarly, Nick Hornby adaptation, A Long Way Down (2014), sees actors of the calibre of Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette and Imogen Poots on top of a London building on New Year’s Eve, contemplating suicide. Their natter is so annoying that you wish they’d hurry up and jump.