In the waning days toward Valentine’s Day, love courses through the air like blood in veins, invigorating the heart, mind and soul with passion for those with whom we are most intimately connected. This admittingly elusive phenomenon is one of the most natural and rugged elements in the universe, and cinema has the momentous power to capture this alchemy through its transportive conventions, making love’s cryptic sensation completely palpable. The rosy euphoria that can be gleaned from films is to be caressed and consumed like that teddy bear and box of chocolates you receive from that special someone, and my colleague Sarah Cornwell and I are ecstatic to share some of our favorite movies that leave us swooning, especially during this earnest time of year. The vast majority of our selections are available in the Media Center in the Paul Meek Library.
The Princess Bride (1987)
“Monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles.” The Princess Bride includes dangerous battles and duels as Westley searches for his true love, Buttercup, after years of separation. This once-farm-boy-now-pirate makes many enemies and allies along his journey to rescue his love from an engagement to an evil Prince Humperdinck. -Sarah
Availability: Hulu, Disney+, VOD
Together Together (2021)
A tale embedded into romantic comedy pantheon. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Boy asks girl to be his gestational surrogate. Well… It sounds like a classic setup with a high-concept incubative twist, but writer-director Nikole Beckwith keenly subverts this genre’s romantic trappings with a tenderly understated portrait of platonic love, retaining a nimble joy as these two loners find solace in each other. Together Together extols human connection at its most elemental and essential. It’s sweet and substantial. -Will
Availability: Hulu, VOD
Never Been Kissed (1999)
This 1999 love story follows Josie Geller, a 25-year-old copywriter trying to become a reporter, as she goes undercover to her old high school for a story on teenage culture. This once-outcast nerd gets a makeover and heads into the lion’s den. While at the school, she falls for her English teacher, who her boss wants to slander in the paper. Now, Josie must choose between her newfound love and her career dreams. -Sarah
Availability: Disney+, VOD
Sylvie’s Love (2020)
Melodrama is underrated, and it thrills me to tout a criminally underseen and shimmering gem in this genre, Eugene Ashe’s emphatically elegant Sylvie’s Love. Pulsed with lavish costumes and lush jazz music, this decadent riff on 1950s melodramas strews harmonic notes on well-worn strings with a sweeping, old-fashioned romance. “Love conquers all” is a dictum older the film’s homages themselves, but the precision of Ashe and stars Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha breathes ardent new life into timeless stylings, along with a rapturous depiction of Black love seldom seen in this aesthetic. -Will
Availability: Amazon Prime
Love, Simon (2018)
A typical coming-of-age love story with a twist, Love, Simon brings viewers along as high schooler Simon Spier falls for an anonymous classmate. The twist? Simon is gay and struggling with coming out. He must now navigate these new feelings as well as figure out the identity of his anonymous love. –Sarah
Availability: Hulu, VOD
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Two guileless, star-crossed lovers together embark on a grand escape from their everyday turmoil and mundanity. The catch? They’re 12 years old yet radically more mature than their counterparts and perhaps even marginally more than the adults who pursue them. Wes Anderson’s meticulous visual whimsy surprisingly lends this achingly human ode to young love an enduring melancholy, underscoring the universality of heartache and coming-of-age with singular vibrancy and pathos. -Will
Availability: HBO Max, VOD
The Notebook (2004)
Set in 1940s South Carolina, The Notebook reigns as one of the top love stories of all time. This type of Romeo and Juliet story centers on Noah and Allie, who are from two financially different worlds. Their love is broken apart when Allie’s family does not approve of the pairing and Noah enlists in the war. Allie gets engaged to another man, but when Noah comes back to town right before the marriage, things get complicated. –Sarah
Availability: HBO Max, Hulu Premium, VOD
The Big Sick (2017)
Not everyone is susceptible to the giddiness of conventional romantic comedies, so the wry yet sneakily earnest ethos of indie charmer The Big Sick may be the perfect balm for anyone’s studio rut. After a complicated cultural divide ends their plucky, fulfilling romance, aimless comedian and second-generation Pakistani immigrant Kumail is nevertheless left reeling when Emily is abruptly placed in a medically induced coma, and when her spitfire mother and meek father appear, he finds himself falling for her again vicariously through their contentious yet ultimately loving relationship. The Big Sick weaves an emotionally complex and starkly hysterically tapestry of love’s thorns and resiliency. –Will
Availability: Amazon Prime, VOD
Titanic (1997)
A poor artist and an aristocrat fall in love during this action-filled romance that takes place aboard the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic. Rose is trapped in an engagement and sees Jack as a way out as the two share many extravagant adventures together before the ship meets its destiny and sinks into the freezing waters. The couple must find each other before it is too late to escape the vast, chilling grave below. –Sarah
Availability: Showtime, VOD
A Star Is Born (2018)
I couldn’t resist discussing the most definitive onscreen romance since Titanic. Bradley Cooper’s rhapsodic remake of a timeless Hollywood story swells with a sensual cinematic soul that seeps into yours, stirring it with palpable catharsis on the complicated intersection between art and love. Jaded rockstar Jackson Maine finds comfort in his relationship with gifted everywoman Ally, crafting seismic music together that emulates Cooper’s and Lady Gaga’s sultry chemistry, but when her star begins to burgeon as his fades, devastation ensues. Operatic yet intimate, this unforgettable experience is tragic and lyrical all in one symphonic stroke. –Will
Availability: Hulu Premium, VOD
Photo Credit / Prime Video-Warner Brothers-20th Ceentury Studios
