Clockwise from top: Pokémon Janitor, New Year’s Rockin’ EveTime Bomb Y2K, Berlin.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Netflix, Tamara Arranz/Netflix, RTS/HBO, Jeff Neira/ABC via Getty Images
Gonna level with y’all: It’s a fairly light weekend for new releases because it’s New Year’s Eve. All the big releases that 2023 had left in store came out last weekend or on Christmas Day, and all we’ve got ahead of us is the dregs until January. There are a handful of new releases — including a Money Heist spinoff and Pokémon Janitorthe cutest show of the year — but mostly this weekend is for watching the ball drop and celebrating the New Year. If you’re hungover on Monday, you can catch up on some of the best TV shows or movies you missed over the past 365 days. —James Grebey
In 2020, during the pandemic, I celebrated NYE with my wife by watching the ball drop inside of the Animal Crossing town where we had honestly spent the most significant portion of our quarantined year. Now, though, it feels much less grim to watch crowds of happy (and cold) revelers cheer and kiss in Times Square when the clock hits midnight. Lotta options out there, including Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest on ABC and New Year’s Eve Live with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen on CNN. But, you know … you could also log back into Animal Crossing. Your villagers probably miss you … —J.G.
➽ Plus, some more live New Year’s Eve celebrations to watch.
This gorgeously textured stop-motion animation set in the Pokémon world follows Haru at her new job at a resort catering to creatures and their trainers. Interaction between humans and Pokémon will surely lead to high jinks, as will the perpetually befuddled Psyduck’s very presence. —Roxana Hadadi
➽ Pssh, I bet Haru doesn’t even know about EV training (that’s a deep-cut competitive-Pokémon reference).
See the tributes to this year’s class of Kennedy Center Honorees — Latifah, Crystal, Dionne Warwick, Barry Gibb, and Renée Fleming — from friends and colleagues, including Missy Elliott, Meg Ryan, and Robert De Niro, in this edited version of the ceremony held earlier this month in Washington, D.C. (It also aired on CBS earlier this week.) —Jen Chaney
If you’re the sort that likes to get their cry on really hard over the holidays, Dan Levy’s directorial debut, in which a character he plays mourns the loss of both his mother and his partner, may be the movie for you. —Eric Vilas-Boas
Cannot believe there are 12 seasons of this show but here you go. —Savannah Salazar
This spinoff of the Spanish show Money Heistwhich was a huge hit for Netflix, follows Berlin (Pedro Alonso), one of the thieves from the original series, in an earlier period of his life as he tries to embark on another daring heist (of jewels this time, not money). —J.G.
The Holdoversa laugh-out-loud period comedy that happens to also be a mediation on grief, is finally on streaming! It’s also the year’s best new Christmas movie. It might have hit streaming a few days late, but you can take that one up with Peacock, not us. It’s also got a pretty fun New Year’s scene, for what it’s worth. —E.V.B.
Dave Chappelle has a new special on Netflix. —E.V.B.
Spoiler alert: The world does not end in this HBO doc about an intriguing moment in time when legions of very smart, usually sober individuals lost their collective minds over the changing of a few numbers and clocks. The truth is there actually was a “Y2K bug,” one that was largely contained by preemptive programming initiatives, but that didn’t stop the hysteria. —E.V.B.
➽ The Simpsons’ “Treehouse of Horror” episode with a Y2K segment is basically a documentary.
Ring in the New Year with a bang, courtesy of this ecoterrorism thriller that’s one of the most tense and engaging movies of the year. Oppenheimerunderstandably, is getting most of the attention, but now’s a great time to watch the other movie about an attempt to make something explode in the desert of the American Southwest. —J.G.
I know a momentous Miyazaki movie just came out, but whatever you do, do not sleep on this movie’s incredible talking chair — one of the year’s best pieces of character animation. —E.V.B.
I showed this movie to my stepmom recently, and we had to rewind the audition scene when one of the kids is singing Post Malone because she couldn’t stop laughing. Theater Camp is a hit! With my family and in general. It’s just a great little gut-busting comedy. —S.S.
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of December 22.
