Staying in with the old: the best films to watch on New Year’s Eve

For those not going out to celebrate, you can still party with Harry and Sally, play cards with Jack Lemmon and make merry hell at the Overlook Hotel At the end of any especially troublesome year it’s always good to revisit The Apartment, Billy Wilder’s brilliantly bleak comedy of office politics and festive bad cheer. It memorably ends on the stroke of midnight as heartsick Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) abandons a drunken new year’s party to be with hapless, jobless CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon) instead. Is The Apartment suggesting that Kubelik and Baxter then live happily ever after? Probably not, because I’ve never been convinced that these two lovers are going to stay the course. They’re too mismatched and desperate; their wounds are still too fresh. What the ending gives us is the next best thing: a sudden sense of hope and freedom, with everything packed in boxes except for a bottle, two glasses and a deck of cards. Nothing to lose and nowhere to go. “Shut up and deal.” A clean brea...

Its ethically dubious but thats love: The 24-year-old with a brain tumour filming his familys reaction

When Kit Vincent was told he had terminal cancer, he decided to shoot his parents and girlfriend during his final years – no matter how uncomfortable it made them. The result is an extraordinarily moving film, which premieres in Sheffield on Friday

‘I’m like the grim reaper,” says Kit Vincent at the start of Red Herring. He is filming himself in a mirror, appearing ominously behind his girlfriend Isobel’s back. “No one ever wants to talk about death, but I guess that’s what I remind them of.”

Kit is 24 and has recently been diagnosed with a brain tumour. The prognosis is not great: four to eight years, say the doctors. This means some difficult, emotionally raw conversations need to be had with his family. Hard enough in any situation, but especially tough for Kit’s loved ones because he insists on filming them throughout. Whether it’s questions about end-of-life care, discussions of sperm freezing, or live footage capturing him struggling with seizures, no private moment is spared the glare of Kit’s camera, often to the clear discomfort of those closest to him.

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