Top 5 Movies to Watch on Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love, and one of the most powerful ways to depict love is through cinema. In honor of this romantic holiday, I’d like to recommend five of my favorite romance films to consider watching. These films don’t all express love in the same way. There are star-crossed lovers. There’s queer love. There’s platonic love. No matter the type, I found these films to be incredibly moving—and they may have made me cry once or twice.
5. Someone Great (2019)
Unlike the other films on this list, this one’s breakup flick. Writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson was inspired by Taylor Swift’s “Clean,” a song about finally moving on from a relationship, and by her own breakup when making Someone Great, in which Gina Rodriguez’s character, Jenny, learns how to move on after her breakup with longterm boyfriend Nate (Lakeith Stanfield). It’s not an easy process, but Jenny does so with the help of her two best friends, played by Brittany Snow and DeWanda Wise. While not a love story in the traditional sense (spoiler alert: Jenny and Nate don’t get back together by the end of the film), this is a great story about platonic love—the love between friends. And it’s backed by a stellar soundtrack (the “Supercut” sequence is just, muah, chef’s kiss).
‘Someone Great’ is streaming on Netflix.
4. Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Crazy Rich Asians, based on the novel of the same name by Kevin Kwan, is arguably Jon M. Chu’s best film. The film, in which economics professor Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) discovers her boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding) comes from an extremely wealthy Singaporean family when she comes with him to his best friend’s wedding, could have easily been a superficial rom-com slop. Chu knows how to depict extravagance (the wedding scene is an all-timer; I remember hearing gasps when Sonoya Mizuno’s character walked down the aisle), but he approached the story with sincerity, keeping the story grounded by remaining focused on Rachel and Nick’s relationship and not on the excess glamor on screen. The mahjong scene between Rachel and Nick’s mother, Eleanor (played by Michelle Yeoh), and Nick and Rachel’s scene on the airplane at the end, are two of the best scenes I’ve seen in a romantic comedy.
3. Love, Simon (2018)
Who knew that Greg Berlanti, the producer behind Dawson’s Creek and DC comics’s Arrowverse TV series, would go on to direct the first film by a major studio about a gay teen romance? It’s based on Becky Albertalli’s novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, and follows closeted teen Simon (Nick Robinson) navigating his sexuality while catching feelings for an anonymous peer named Blue. Despite not having particularly compelling craft, Love, Simon was my favorite film of 2018 because of how much love and care it took to portray the “coming out” experience. Nowhere is this more present than in three of its best scenes: Simon’s rant to a classmate about “coming out” on his own terms after being maliciously outed, Simon’s father (Josh Duhamel) apologizing for missing out on so much time with the “authentic” version of his son, and the “you get to exhale now” monologue from Simon’s mom (played by Jennifer Garner). That last one—I cry every time.
2. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
In Slumdog Millionaire, Dev Patel stars as Jamal Malik, a young man who grew up in poverty in Mumbai, competing on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, knowing that Latika (played by Freida Pinto), the girl he lost touch with in his youth, watches the show. While the film is not primarily a love story, the romance between Jamal and Latika is the beating heart of the film. And their romance is made more powerful thanks to A. R. Rahman’s memorable score. I mean, “Latika’s Theme,” c’mon! Hans Zimmer called the song “the most perfect love theme.” Danny Boyle’s Best Picture-winning love story, loosely based on Vikas Swarup’s novel Q & A, was one of the films I watched in my early teens that made me fall in love with movies as an art form. I was taken aback by how emotionally powerful the storytelling was. I’m forever grateful to my cousin who took me with him to see the film despite me not knowing anything about it.
1. Titanic (1997)
James Cameron’s magnum opus—the love story that stole the world’s heart—is the only choice for this top spot. This is one of the earliest films I vividly remember watching, because my family, particularly my mom, would watch it over and over again on its double-VHS tapes. Sure, Titanic follows the star-crossed lovers trope, but it didn’t need to reinvent the wheel, it just needed to portray its tropes really, really well—and that’s exactly what Cameron did. The film works because everything about it fell perfectly in place: the star quality of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and the chemistry between them; the groundbreaking special effects; James Horner’s romantic yet haunting score; and Celine Dion’s iconic song “My Heart Will Go On.” Nearly three decades later, Titanic is still the king of the world when it comes to romance films.
‘Titanic’ is streaming on Netflix, Paramount Plus, and Pluto TV.
