Best Romance Movies to Watch (Page 16)

A dramatic recreation of the last 10 years in the life of famed pianist Liberace (Michael Douglas), told primarily from the perspective of his young lover Scott Thorson (Matt Damon). Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the film follows from naive young Thorson’s early introduction to Liberace through his 6-year romance and live-in relationship with the celebrated […]

Funny and relatable, this film recognizes the struggles of both an emotionally lacking college graduate and those of his newfound liberal arts lady. A perfect balance of passion and sensibility also adds up to make it utterly engaging. Elizabeth Olsen delivers a great performance, and as for the man of the movie, Josh Randor, who wrote, directed and […]

These days, most coming-of-age films tend to have a comic or hopeful tone to them. It’s hard being a teenager, but the kids persist. There’s always something or someone to live another day for. The Last Picture Show doesn’t share that upbeat outlook. Set in 1951, at the outbreak of the Korean War, the teenagers […]

Every relationship reaches a point where the excitement settles into a calmer state. Korean film Time is set at that point, but rather than the two lovers settling into comfort, they’re at odds instead– Ji-woo lets his eye roam for a bit of excitement, while Seh-hee anxiously accuses him for anything. To be honest, these […]

Empirical truth is something that is observable, objective, and verifiable. However, without the ability to observe, one must find other means to obtain a set of observations– repeated, consistent answers to eventually parse out the reality. One must obtain proof. Proof is an Australian drama about a blind photographer named Martin, who uses his photos […]

Atonement is a tribute to cinematography, an epic film that might just remind you why you fell in love with movies to begin with. A young girl and aspiring writer has a crush on the man her older sister loves, so the young sister indulges her imagination to accuse the man of a crime he didn’t commit. The two are separated […]

If it takes your girlfriend dying before you’re able to open up to her, you’re probably not acting like a good significant other, especially when she moved all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to live with you. It’s hard to root for If Only’s leading man with such a rough start, but there’s a […]

Two young lovers go on a violent spree and run away together with zero care for anything else outside of their own bubble. You’d think the scene would be romantic, or passionate at least, but director Terrence Malick plays it with extreme detachment. You wonder if the two are actually in love, or if there’s […]

When adapting a novel, sometimes the book is too long to fit into a whole feature, so filmmakers would create a multi-part film series, or they would cut down just enough to fit a feature length runtime without sacrificing the main points of the novel. Coming Home is a love story where a devoted couple […]

Contemplative English literature professor Vivian leaves New York for Reno, Nevada, to facilitate her divorce from a lifeless marriage. There she meets Cay, a sculptor and free spirit living relatively uncloseted for the time. What starts as an inspiring friendship soon turns to attraction. It is partly the story of Vivian’s sexual awakening, partly a […]

Among the gems in Pedro Almodóvar’s filmography, The Flower of My Secret can seem rather tame in comparison. After all, in the actual plot, no one dies, gets seriously injured, or has their rights horribly violated. Even the sex strictly remains within marriage. It’s an interesting choice to make, especially the film’s protagonist goes through […]

At an older age, love can feel like it’s overrated, but watching Little Manhattan easily makes you remember the way love felt growing up, starting to explore all the feelings one had of the opposite gender, with childhood imagination and freedom from responsibilities making it seem so much more wonderful than it is now. Admittedly, […]

As a first feature, The Unbelievable Truth had a startlingly new style at the time, with deadpan humor, intentional stilted dialogue delivery, interrupting intertitles, and randomly posed existential questions, but these stylistic touches was what made Hal Hartley a key figure in the early aughts of American indie filmmaking. It’s a surprising twist to the […]

Admittedly, Gary Cooper, handsome as he is, was just not a great fit with Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon. It wasn’t that either of them did badly, really, they performed their roles pretty well, but there was just something so off-putting seeing a girl with someone twice her age and was closer to […]

It’s very interesting, if not startling, to see an earnest movie made about the white upper class these days. Metropolitan is one such film, and even though it was released in the ’90s, it still stands the test of time precisely because it neither judges nor defends the group of WASPs it follows. It simply […]

Meditative, slow, and peppered with mysticism and subtle humour, Syndromes and a Century is a truly unique Thai drama. With a male and female doctor as the central protagonists, the story is split into two settings, in different hospitals and 40 years apart. This is not a plot-driven movie by any means. Patiently paced scenes […]

Jane Campion’s biographical drama about the poet John Keats derives its name from one of the latter’s greatest love sonnets: Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art… / Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath/ And so live ever—or else swoon to death. Keats remains one of the most celebrated and adored Romantic […]

The brain behind this movie is one of the most legendary British screenwriters of all time: Richard Curtis. While he is beyond famous in the UK for founding the Comic Relief charity as well as co-writing some of the most iconic and biting comedy that have since become national treasures, like the legendary Not the […]

While the world has gotten used to the many variants of the Romeo and Juliet story, Bombay was controversial upon its release, due to the story being centered on an interreligious marriage between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman– it led to bans in at least two countries, and to at least two homemade […]

Nine years after his out-of-nowhere, mind-bending premier Primer, writer/producer/director/ star Shane Carruth returns with this exponentially more challenging feature—a neo sci-fi/drama/romance/thriller quite nearly impossible to describe effectively in words. Ostensibly focused upon a woman who has been drugged, brainwashed and robbed and is subsequently drawn to an unknown man who has experienced a similar theft, […]

In a world where many women learn about relationships from movies and many men learn about women from porn, how does reality take shape when two people of each group get into a relationship? The explosion is as insightful as it is funny as director, screenwriter, and main character Joseph Gorden Levitt takes you on a genuine […]

A crazy, high-speed movie about double-dealing crooks and thieves living along the Danube River in Serbia. Such a description probably makes this movie sound dark and menacing, trust me it is anything but. It is filled to the brim with delightful music, slapstick humor, bizarre contraptions, shotgun weddings — with a sweet romantic caper at its […]

If you like and remember the small budget New Hollywood comedies that bases its humor on witty, philosophical dialogue, you will like Barcelona. It’s about two white-collared American guys who move to the titular city for work, but while the film is entirely in English, the jokes’ punchlines form as a result of the clear […]

Pain, in and of itself, is terrible, but more so when you can’t determine the solution. The River is centered around the mysterious neck pain that a young man suffers out of the blue, but through writer-director Tsai Ming-liang’s lens, the pain is made much more poignant as it seems he’s all alone in dealing […]

Even with a plot that wholeheartedly embraces the tropes of a fake marriage and of found families, The Wedding Banquet never falls into the trap of histrionic melodrama. There’s a calmness to this film that’s made all the more poignant by how none of these characters are truly right or wrong, good or bad. Everyone […]

When it comes to romance films, Hollywood casts young women with older men so often that this age gap is rarely questioned, even when the characters are supposed to be around the same age range. Murphy’s Romance does have an age gap, but it’s one of the few romances that actually cares to examine the […]

With the austere ethos of Dogme 95, most Dogme films tend to be naturalistic, serious dramas, dealing with heavy topics. Italian for Beginners is a Dogme film, but it’s one of the only lighthearted comedies considered to be one. It makes for a more casual, realistic approach to the romantic comedy, as students in an […]

There is a lightness to Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day that makes this period romantic comedy enjoyable– the banter, the gorgeous costumes, the gorgeous men, of which there are plenty, and silly hijinks in which the couples get together– and it feels reminiscent of some of the classic romantic comedies that once captivated the […]

Anything Shakespeare would be a classic, of course, but for the longest time, British filmmakers avoided The Merchant of Venice, for a variety of reasons. The most prominent of those reasons was the antagonist Shylock, who, as a Jewish moneylender, was characterized with many anti-Semitic stereotypes, yet, was written with one of Shakespeare’s most eloquent […]

Happy Together is a beautifully devastating tale about a gay couple, portrayed by Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Leslie Cheun, who struggle with maintaining romance and fidelity in their relationship. Despite their efforts, they find the emotional distance growing between them, especially as they leave their home of Hong Kong for Buenos Aires. Filmed and set […]

What strikes most people about The Vertical Ray of the Sun is how idyllic Tran Anh Hung captures Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital– lush greens, the summer sunshine softened by mosquito nets, scored by the birds and the neighborhood kids and a mix of early 00s soft rock and traditional Vietnamese songs. These visuals are so beautiful […]

A fun science fiction movie from the UK,  Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel stars Chris O’Dowd and Anna Faris. The plot centers around two geeks and their cynical friend who go out for a couple of pints and end up having a night they won’t soon forget. To go any deeper would court spoilers, […]

The Dangerous Liaisons ensemble is impressively stacked, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a two-hander helmed by Glenn Close, who plays the manipulative Marquise de Merteuil, and John Malkovich, who plays the ravenous playboy Vicomte de Valmont. The two are arresting on screen, especially when they’re together concocting plans to desecrate other lovers, […]

The Cuban bolero, not to be confused with the Spanish dance, is a Latin ballad form that spread all throughout the Americas, and even the whole world, that mixed and mingled with and influenced jazz in the 1940s and 50s. Chico & Rita celebrates this music, as well as the nightlife that made these sounds […]

Based on the story “Death Takes A Holiday”, Brad Pitt plays Death in this romantic drama. Death comes to take Bill Parish (played by the fantastic Anthony Hopkins) but gives him a last few precious days so that Death may roam the earth disguised as a human, looking for a reason to live. The movie […]

A Kurdish-Iraqi immigrant runs into serious immigration problems as he tries to immigrate from France to England in order to be reunited with his girlfriend. Eventually he begins to train in swimming, in an attempt to swim the channel between France and England. Welcome is a gripping tale of tolerance as well as relationships between […]