New Year's Eve movies: Dinner for One and 8 films set on the big night

New Year's Eve has a timing problem: the evening is long, but at midnight you do not want to be stuck in the middle of a finale. The films here are all set entirely or partly on New Year's Eve. At the end you will find the latest time to start each one so you are done before the fireworks.

The German ritual: Dinner for One

1963, 18 minutes. Miss Sophie celebrates her 90th birthday with four friends who have long since died. Her butler James takes their places at the table and drinks for each of them, course after course. The sketch with Freddie Frinton and May Warden was recorded in 1963 by the German broadcaster NDR in Hamburg, in English and in black and white. Little known in Britain or the US, it has been a fixed part of New Year's Eve on German television since 1972 and is considered the most repeated programme on German TV.

New Year's Eve as a turning point

When Harry Met Sally...

1989, 96 minutes. Harry and Sally meet after college, cannot stand each other and keep running into each other over the years. Running through it all is the question of whether men and women can simply be friends. Rob Reiner directed, Nora Ephron wrote the script, Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan play the leads. New Year's Eve matters in it more than once.

The Apartment

1960, 125 minutes. A junior clerk at a New York insurance company lends his flat to his superiors so they can meet their lovers there. It earns him promotions, but also trouble when he falls for the lift operator. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine star under Billy Wilder's direction, and the story runs from Christmas into New Year's Eve. Black and white, funny and more serious than it first seems. The film won five Oscars, including Best Picture.

About Time

2013, 123 minutes. After a botched New Year's Eve party, 21-year-old Tim learns from his father that the men in the family can travel back in time within their own lives. He uses it for love first, for Mary, played by Rachel McAdams. Bill Nighy plays the father, and Richard Curtis wrote and directed. It starts as a romantic comedy and gradually becomes a film about family.

For a group before midnight

Trading Places

1983, 116 minutes. Two rich brothers bet on whether a street hustler would do as well in high society as their pampered commodities broker, and simply swap the two. Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd play them, Jamie Lee Curtis co-stars, and John Landis directed. The story runs from Christmas to New Year's Eve, with a costume party on a train. One disguise in that scene is rightly uncomfortable today, but as a comedy for a group the film still works.

Ghostbusters II

1989, 108 minutes. Five years after the first film, the Ghostbusters are out of business, until a river of slime turns up beneath New York. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver are back, and Ivan Reitman directed again. The finale takes place on New Year's Eve. For anyone who likes the first film and does not need surprises tonight.