Best Romance Movies to Watch (+Mood: Well-acted)

Sure, many of the tropes in this feel-good romcom would be familiar. Naveen, a shy Indian doctor, loves Jay, a white photographer, though of course, like in many gay and interracial romances, his family is reluctant to support them. However, writers Eric Randall and Madhuri Shekar take these tropes and weave them into something new. […]

For better or for worse, every romantic relationship anyone will ever have will end. This isn’t a bitter statement single or heartbroken people declare, it’s just that we have to keep in mind that time with our loved ones is limited. Romcom drama We Live in Time is titled as such for a reason– mentioning […]

With the internet able to connect people from miles away, the concept of the one that got away has become unromantic– after all, with instant messaging, their distance just means that you’ve been ghosted. But for the longest time, romance stemmed from the fated circumstances that kept or lost love, and this is excellently portrayed […]

At first, Marmalade just seemed like a good ol’ fashioned Bonnie and Clyde story being told by one inmate to another. As Baron tells Otis about his titular Bonnie in Joe Keery’s Southern drawl, there’s a charming bittersweet romance about a man pushed into crime because of healthcare costs and a compelling Camila Marrone as […]

Are connections truly fated, completely chosen, or purely circumstantial? The slow tragedy of Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle hangs entirely on the question, which captivated readers and filmmakers with the concept, including Bertrand Bonello, which forms the foundations of 2023’s The Beast. Bonello lets loose The Beast in the Jungle into an AI […]

Challenging, strange, and utterly captivating from start to finish, Sanctuary takes the relationship between a pathetic, wealthy man and a desperate, plucky young woman—a relationship built on consensual acts of sexual humiliation—and makes it so much more dynamic and entertaining than it has any right to be. The film takes place entirely in one hotel […]

In what is only his second feature, Greek director Christos Nikou crafts a singular universe that is orderly and enticing. The dystopian premise that you can now scientifically test for love may be bizarre, but it answers to one of the biggest anxieties humans share. That said,  this particular world feels so close to ours today, […]

As the third instalment in Paul Schrader’s “man in a room” trilogy after First Reformed (2017) and The Card Counter (2021), Master Gardner rounds up the issues at stake in a most profound way. For anyone who’s seen a film either scripted by Schrader (such as Taxi Driver) or directed by him, there will be […]

Who among us hasn’t committed a white lie to save a relationship? And who among us hasn’t yearned for the full and brutal truth? In You Hurt My Feelings, Nicole Holofcener digs into that paradox and delivers a film that is honest and funny in equal measure. Here, the writer-director doesn’t just use a hilarious […]

With the nostalgia and the twin love triangle, at first glance, You & Me & Me seems like nothing new. However, this Thai coming-of-age drama is done so well that it feels entirely unique. Taking inspiration from the childhood of twin writer-directors, You & Me & Me brings us to a summer vacation in Isan, […]

After years of documentaries covering Thailand’s controversial issues, some of which have been temporarily banned by the Ministry of Culture, Nontawat Numbenchapol takes a step into feature film in Doi Boy. The plot covers plenty of the topics he’s previously depicted– immigration, prostitution, and corruption– but it unfolds naturally into a slow-paced, but moving drama […]

When your dad is single, and he isn’t in a relationship with someone else, naturally, a kid would wonder about their real biological mother. Hi Nanna is a take on this familiar tale, though Shouryuv’s directorial debut makes it feel brand new by telling the love story in a way a father would tell his […]

The humor, oh the humor! It’s a breath of fresh air to be laughing with a Woody Allen film and not at it. He is so good at capturing the cheekiness in meet-cutes, secrecies, and lies, all powdered with exaggerated Frenchness. Forgive my surprised tone, but Coup de Chance surpasses all expectations in the way […]

Making a good erotic thriller out on Wall Street is no easy feat, but Fair Play has just the right ratio of wit, sex, and sleaze to spice up a Friday night viewing. There’s also undeniable pleasure in watching a fairytale love story corrode, especially under the influence of money and power—here’s one for the […]

Director Garth Davis (who worked with Jane Campion on Top of the Lake) adapts Iain Reid’s novel Foe with little concern about realism and veracity. The psychologically dense event at the film’s centre—an impending separation of husband and wife—renders the whole world around them meaningless. Saoirse Ronan stars as the self-assured Henrietta (Hen) and Paul […]

After more than six years in the making, The Little Mermaid should be a spectacle for the ages, but even the magic of Rob Marshall (Chicago) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) cannot save the live-action remake. The film feels at once too stunted for an actual musical and too expansive to be just another movie. There’s […]

Anyone who’s seen Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden will likely recognize the director’s fingerprints all over Scarlet. There’s the same haunting collage of colorized archival documentary footage and fictional scenes here, the same fascination with physical labor and historical moments of transition, the same loose approach to literary adaptation. Scarlet’s story is drawn from a 1923 […]

Based on the novel from writer, producer, and lead Micaela Wittman, indie drama Remy & Arletta is deeply personal. It’s partly because it’s based directly on Wittman’s own personal coming-of-age story, but it’s also because of how confessional it feels. Many scenes feel like uncomfortable memories, like the way Remy hides her real home from […]

A great example of frank, emotionally honest filmmaking with three totally vulnerable lead performances, Passages takes a subject that can so easily be reduced into clichés—infidelity—and approaches it with a genuine sense of melancholy. It can still be frustrating to watch fully developed adults refuse to communicate more clearly about their feelings, but director and […]

There are a striking number of similarities between Priscilla and director Sofia Coppola’s earlier offering, Marie Antoinette: both revolve around 14-year-old girls hand-picked to be partners to more powerful men in long-unconsummated relationships, and both girls are emotionally cut adrift and forced to live in gilded cages. But where Coppola’s Barbie-pink historical biopic is punkily […]

Understandably, Mimmi, Rönkkö, and Emma, the teenage girls who lead this Finnish coming-of-age drama, are bursting with emotional urgency. On the cusp of adulthood, they plunge into house parties and romantic affairs in the hope that exploring love, sex, and adventure leads them closer to being self-aware adults.  Of course, that’s a lifelong process, but […]

Beautifully staged, vibrantly colored, and powerfully acted, Brother is an instant classic of a film. It tracks three timelines: Francis and Michael’s childhood, their coming of age in high school, and the present day, where we learn that Francis has long been dead, although we don’t find out how till much later in the movie. […]

One day, Filipino romances will wean themselves away from the tropes that keep their stories circling back to the same conclusions, undermining the bold narrative ideas on which that they establish themselves. Nothing Like Paris still doesn’t break free, but its commitment to a more serious, modern view of romance set against the loneliness of […]

Maestro has already proven to be divisive, which is actually a good sign for a biopic. If a film like that placates everyone, it would mean the death of biographical dramas, n0 less. Bradley Cooper plays composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in this Oscar contender, but don’t worry, you don’t need to know too much […]

French director Mia Hansen-Løve is a master at gently capturing the full bittersweetness of life, and that’s no more evident than in One Fine Morning. Léa Seydoux gives a quietly powerful performance as Sandra, a mother-of-one who is grappling with the slow, devastating decline of her philosophy professor father at the hands of a neurodegenerative […]

Sitting in Bars with Cake’s best qualities and roughest qualities stem from the fact that the story is apparently based on true events. Screenwriter Audrey Shulman (who based the script on her cookbook of the same title) clearly wants to honor the details of this very personal year in her life, but the effect is […]

There are only two main characters in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande: Nancy, a retired teacher who was recently widowed, and Leo, an adept sex worker with a mysterious past. They’re almost always in one place and work on a single goal: pleasure. But despite the seeming monotony, the movie is crackling with wit […]

A twitchy, uncomfortable noir film for the digital age, Decision to Leave blends the trappings of a restless police procedural with an obsessive forbidden romance. Here, director Park Chan-wook flips every interrogation and piece of evidence on its head, pulling us away from the whodunit and towards the inherently invasive nature of a criminal investigation. […]

It’s difficult not to compare Of an Age to other beautifully shot and tenderly told queer love stories like Call Me By Your Name and Weekend. Like them, Of an Age gives its young lovers ample time and space for their relationship to blossom over a short while. And like them still, it’s made of […]

Earnest, beautiful, and tender, Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All is many things: a road trip movie that sweeps the midwest deserts of 1980s America; a coming-of-age story that brings together two outsiders into an understanding world of their own; and a cannibal film that is unflinchingly flesh deep in its depiction of the practice. Bizarrely, […]

Of the three Brontë sisters—all of whom are accomplished writers in their own right—it’s Emily who remains the most enigmatic to this day. She died early and left in her wake just one work: her first and only novel, Wuthering Heights. The book shook England back then; it was rugged and sexual and violent, and […]

As far as romance movies go, Dating Santa is surprisingly free of the usual artificial conflicts that plague the genre. The central couple meet early on and stay in close proximity to each other throughout—meaning they get to skip past the cliche of the courtship phase and converse maturely as adults about turning a new […]

Witty, unexpected, and thrilling, The Innocent pulls off an excellent European heist film with modern sensibilities and its stylistic mix of genres. All at once, the film is a crime film, as well as a family farce, but also a screwball romantic comedy. The genres line up with the premise perfectly, but there’s something intriguing […]

If Steven Spielberg had just decided to do a straightforward cover version of West Side Story, it still would have been a wonder of music, movement, and color. But more than the lush camerawork and impassioned performances from Rachel Zegler, Mike Faist, and Oscar winner Ariana DeBose, this adaptation is most memorable for its renewed […]