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Although Valentine’s Day is come and gone, the month of February is a great time to express your romantic affection with your significant other. What better way to do so than by curling up with a romance movie? Here are the top 5 picks for romance movies to choose from:
5. La La Land: “La La Land,” directed by Damien Chazelle, features Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as Sebastian Wilder and Mia Dolan respectively, a pair of aspiring artists in Los Angeles. The two meet and begin a passionate relationship bonding over their shared love of the performing arts and their experiences in Los Angeles. The film is also a musical with music written by Justin Hurwitz and lyrics written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul of “Dear Evan Hansen” fame. The film showcases how a relationship can wax and wane with the strain of professional obligations. As Wilder’s career excels throughout the film, Dolan’s suffers, and the opposite is true. The way the two work through this disparity in their individual successes is very mature.
4. Call Me By Your Name: “Call Me By Your Name,” directed by Luca Guadagnino, stars Timotheé Chalamet opposite Armie Hammer as Elio and Oliver, a pair of star-crossed lovers in 1983 Italy. Oliver is a graduate student coming to study with Elio’s father and the pair first develop a playful friendship. Elio, who is beginning to explore his own identity, takes to the academic with curiosity. The two soon form an intimate relationship framed by the different attitudes on homosexual activity at the time. The film is based on the book of the same name by André Aciman and portrays the coming of age spirit extremely well. Young people, especially today, often have tumultuous formative years and this film showcases this real experience.
3. Wall-E: “Wall-E,” directed by Andrew Stanton, is a Pixar animated film about the titular robot and his experiences with another android EVE who comes to the future version of Earth now decrepit and covered in human trash. Through the course of the film, Wall-E is transported to the last vestige of the human civilization, the spaceship Axiom, where humans live in absolute comfort with no pain or suffering but at great personal cost: their desire to do anything but sit and watch screens. Although romance is not the primary focus of the film, Wall-E and EVE develop a loving connection as they try to stop the plot of the AI Auto who controls the ship’s navigation and wants to keep everyone in space and not on Earth ever again.
2. Ghost: “Ghost,” directed by Jerry Zucker, stars the late Patrick Swayze opposite Demi Moore as Sam and Molly respectively who move to New York as their relationship grows. Sam, who works as a banker, starts to notice unusual transactions and begins to question them without his friend Carl’s offered assistance. After a night of working, he leaves for home and is mugged and murdered. By some miracle, he is able to continue acting on the realm of the living as a ghost and with the help of a medium from Harlem played by Whoopi Goldberg.
1. Moonlight: “Moonlight,” directed by Barry Jenkins, follows the life of Chiron, a young black boy growing up in Miami, Florida. The film is told through the lens of three different periods in his life, each with their own romantic challenges. These challenges range from being bullied for his perceived sexuality as a young child to fighting toxic masculinity to adequately express his feelings for his childhood friend when they are adults. The film is based on the play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” and it won Best Picture at the 2017 Academy Awards.