Emotion Pictures

Guaranteed To Get You In The Mood

By Josh Bell

The phrase “romantic comedy” evokes an immediate aversion in a lot of moviegoers these days. But just because Hollywood insists on churning out soulless, formulaic movies that have little to do with romance or comedy doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of great movies to get you in a romantic mood for Valentine’s Day. The Vow, starring Channing Tatum and romantic-movie queen Rachel McAdams (The Notebook, The Time Traveler’s Wife) will hit theaters Feb. 10. But if you’re wary of its weepy brand of tragedy-fueled romance, here are 10 great love stories you can rent and watch with your significant other (or friend with benefits) instead.

 

Before Sunrise (1995)/Before Sunset (2004)

In 1995, Richard Linklater perfectly captured the feeling of falling unexpectedly in love over the course of a single night with Before Sunrise, featuring Ethan Hawke as an American tourist and Julie Delpy as a French student spending a few hours together in Vienna. It ended on a note of wonderful ambiguity, equal parts hopefulness and melancholy. But Linklater, Hawke and Delpy managed to craft a perfect follow-up with the 2004 sequel, catching up with the characters nine years later and showing how the hopefulness and melancholy could be recaptured even after almost a decade of life experience. The second movie ends on another sweetly unresolved note, which can be interpreted as a triumph of love over time and distance, or the bittersweet feeling of that love once again slipping away.

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

People remember Audrey Hepburn as a charming pixie. But she shows off an appealing vulnerable side in this romantic comedy that is much more complex than many people realize. It tones down some of the explicitness of Truman Capote’s novel in favor of a more sanitized Hollywood approach, but still coyly suggests how the young New Yorkers Hepburn and George Peppard play use sex as currency in their lives. As these jaded urbanites see love and romance as mere commodities, they come together unexpectedly and find in one another what they’ve merely been selling to others. The movie captures the giddy feeling of being young and living in a vibrant city and being truly in love for the first time, even as it acknowledges that outside circumstances often make that feeling ephemeral.

 

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Sometimes love is illogical and counterintuitive, and yet it’s all that we have to hold onto. Nothing embodies that more strongly than a scene late in Michel Gondry’s wonderful, heartbreaking film, as Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) hear recordings of themselves savagely recounting each other’s faults, and at the same time fervently re-commit to being together. Those recordings are new to them because they’ve both participated in an experimental process to erase memories of their relationship, and yet they’ve found each other again anyway. The perseverance of love, even in the face of actual scientific proof that it will lead to pain, is both heartening and devastating. And that moment of Joel and Clementine seeing the worst possible consequences, and yet going forward anyway, speaks volumes about the power of the heart over the head.

 

Love Actually (2003)

Love can be difficult and sad and frustrating, but the message of Richard Curtis’ infectiously joyous comedy is that love is wonderful and necessary in all its various forms, and he manages to convey that without being manipulative or disingenuous, as so many Hollywood romantic comedies can be. Love Actually is sentimental in the best way, creating genuine, heartwarming emotions in its various overlapping tales of romance, all set in London in the weeks leading up to Christmas. A man falls in love with his housekeeper, despite a language barrier; a widower counsels his young stepson on how to win over a classmate; and even the prime minister goes all giddy at the prospect of romance with one of his staffers. Those stories and many more add up to a celebration of the transformative power of love.

 

Out of Sight (1998)

Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight is about a lot more than romance. It’s about a bank robber fleeing the authorities, getting his crew back together for one big heist (that’s bound to go wrong). But the story’s core is the unlikely chemistry between career criminal Jack Foley (George Clooney) and U.S. marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez). Clooney and Lopez have never been sexier (and the usually flat Lopez gives by far her best performance), exploring Jack and Karen’s connection while trapped together in a car trunk and later in one of cinema’s all-time-best sex scenes. Soderbergh cuts back and forth between the pair’s conversation in a hotel bar and their subsequent assignation upstairs, using their playful banter and the clever way they tweak their criminal/federal agent dynamic to enhance the more primal connection between the sheets. Plus, seeing two of the most beautiful people in Hollywood history go at it is guaranteed to get pretty much anyone’s motor running.

 

Amelie (2001)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s charming film is a movie about the romance of romance, about a woman so in love with love that she devises complex, whimsical schemes to create love matches between strangers and give the people around her the happiness they could never conjure for themselves. Played by Audrey Tautou, Amelie is painfully shy and wary of relationships. She puts all of her energy into engineering perfect moments for others. Jeunet’s vibrant, colorful visual style highlights the everyday wonder of the world around us, illustrating Amelie’s point of view that life is constantly infused with romance. Eventually, Amelie finds love for herself. But, like so many selfless people, she has trouble taking charge of her own life. The generosity of Amelie and the people around her is uplifting and infectious, creating a warm sense of the grand possibilities of life and love.

 

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart compete for the love of a socialite (Katharine Hepburn) in one of the best examples of the classical Hollywood romantic comedy. Although Hepburn’s Tracy is obviously drawn to her caddish ex-husband (Grant), she’s also credibly paired with Stewart’s cynical journalist, who’s reluctantly covering her wedding to the guy she definitely won’t end up with. Hepburn plays a wonderfully headstrong, independent woman who deftly balances her two suitors, and the cleverly written film relies as much on wordplay and intellectual discourse as it does on movie-star chemistry when it comes to depicting romance. Everyone ends up happily paired off in the end, but the movie never shortchanges the effort that goes into finding (and losing, and then finding again) love, and it features some of Hollywood’s greatest repartee along the way.

 

Roman Holiday (1953)

The pampered rich girl (or, less often, guy) who escapes her stifling, upper-crust surroundings and cuts loose with a rough blue-collar guy is a familiar romantic-comedy device. But never has it been handled better than in this giddy travelogue co-starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. Hepburn is exuberant as the princess who just wants to cut loose and roam around Rome, and Peck is suitably grumpy as the serious journalist stuck covering her royal highness’ every move. When they unknowingly (at first) fall in love, it’s contrived but believable, a fairy tale complete with cynical bosses, ruthless reporters, public drunkenness and brawling. And while they both may want to change their lives and get out of their ruts, personally and professionally (if being a princess can be called a profession), the movie doesn’t pretend that romance solves all problems. As the title indicates, it’s just a holiday — albeit a magical one.

 

It Happened One Night (1934)

Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert play the prototypical opposites-attract couple in this sparkling comedy from Frank Capra. Thanks to its release just before Hollywood began enforcing the Hays Code (which dictated strict moral standards for movie content), It Happened One Night is appealingly bawdy, including an iconic scene in which Colbert’s spoiled heiress Ellie hikes up her skirt and shows a little leg in hopes of increasing her odds while hitchhiking. Colbert’s Ellie and Gable’s unemployed newspaper reporter Peter bicker and squabble with wit and venom. But, of course, their arguing conceals a growing romance. The banter is never mean-spirited and the love story feels genuine, as the two spend time on the run from Ellie’s wealthy, domineering father before realizing they’re perfect together. As plenty of couples know very well, cutting remarks and clever put-downs are often the foundation for a passionate relationship, and Capra captures that dynamic perfectly.

 

Annie Hall (1977)

Annie Hall was a turning point for Woody Allen and the romantic comedy genre, introducing more serious themes into Allen’s comedic films and offering up a more intellectual perspective on the story of two people falling in love. It’s still a very funny movie, with possibly Allen’s quintessential performance as his archetypal neurotic worrier, a comedian and writer named Alvy Singer who falls for the flighty title character. As Allen illustrates various romantic pitfalls (including the emotional baggage people carry into each relationship, and the way lovers often hide what they really mean to say in vague, coded conversations) with clever, sometimes fourth-wall-breaking devices, he shows romance from both the emotional and the intellectual angle. Despite how analytical Alvy is, he can’t shake his attraction to Annie, even if they’re not meant to end up together. Allen is adept at picking apart the nature of love, but he knows that in the end it’s what we feel that matters most.