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...

Martin Scorsese backs Iranian director jailed over Cannes screening

Oscar winner urges signing of petition after Iran court finds Saeed Roustaee guilty of ‘contributing to propaganda’ for showing banned movie

Martin Scorsese has backed a petition against the jailing of the prominent Iranian movie director Saeed Roustaee for screening a film at the Cannes film festival.

Scorsese, the Oscar-winning director of Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, reposted a campaign launched by his daughter Francesca this week after news of Roustaee’s prison sentence emerged.

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