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

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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...
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Band Four review – Hong Kong goes indie as musical family get the band back together

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Three generations of a talented family reunite unexpectedly, but there’s little surprising about their subsequent journey, despite its undeniable charms

You’d have to have a heart of brick to take against this earnest musical drama from Hong Kong about a single parent in an indie band dealing with her failed rocker dad suddenly walking back into her life (after leaving 20 years ago when she was little). It’s a warm and watchable valentine to music and starting afresh. But I did find something a bit make-believe and naive in its feelgood message about the power of music to heal old wounds; the idea that a sentimental chord or two could strum away the kind of pain and resentment it can take years of therapy to work through.

Cantopop star Kay Tse plays Cat, lead singer of Band Four, and single mum to pint-sized drumming prodigy Riley (Rondi Chan). Cat nursed her own mum through years of illness, and it’s at the funeral that her dad King makes an appearance – all of five foot nothing, a ponytail, rock star sunglasses and leather jacket. Real-life musician Teddy Robin Kwan plays it beautifully; beneath the swagger there’s an unmistakable air of genuine regret. King is back to make amends to Cat and he’s got a surprise: a teenage daughter, her half-sister. Cat is fuming but King shamelessly ingratiates himself with little Riley, who is delighted by his new grandpa and auntie.

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