Happy New Year's, everyone! In honor of 2021 coming to a close, we're discussing George Cukor's appropriately named Holiday (1938).

Cary Grant plays Johnny, a self-made man who is engaged to Julia, the daughter of a wealthy man of business. Johnny is an independent spirit who sees business only as a means to an end, and has no interest in accumulating wealth. He hopes to amass enough money to "retire" young, giving him time to go on adventures and discover more about himself, and then return to the workforce later in life once his money has run out. He finds the family he is poised to marry into less-than-accommodating to this plan, however, as his fiancee and her father begin trying to disabuse him of such ideas. He finds an accomplice, however, in Julia's sister Linda (Katharine Hepburn), a kindred spirit who feels constrained and unhappy within the confines of her family. It isn't long before Johnny begins to wonder if he picked the wrong daughter to marry.

Holiday is one of four films Grant and Hepburn made, all of which are classics. The Philadelphia Story, which reunited them with this film's director and writers, is probably the more famous film, but Holiday is just as urbane, witty, and moving. It's a complicated and bittersweet film, but ultimately uplifting and life-affirming in spite of that, and is one of the few truly quintessential New Year's films.