What to do with your Sweetheart on Valentines?
Fight the crowds and go out for dinner? Or put on some PJ’s break out the wine and watch Netflix! But the dreaded question: What to watch?! Answers here!
I have curated a selection of choices designed to meet a wide variety viewing styles. All of them can be found on Netflix and all of them are romantic at heart. I put them in categories just because it’s fun. 😍
Hollywood Tropes
Nothing Hill
Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) is a big movie star and William Thacker (Hugh Grant) is a regular person/London bookstore owner. They meet and… enter Cupid. The trouble is she wounded and wary and he is sweet but oh so British (aka to polite for his own good). This one is a slow burn, sometimes almost painfully so but Roberts and Grant make it a wonderful pain and as the Bard said: All’s Well That Ends Well.
13 going on 30
I call this a teen romance for grownups. 13 year old Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) makes a wish and finds herself in her 30 year old self’s body. It turns out that Jenna Grew up to be quite a bitch but young, goodhearted, naive Jenna turns her own life around with the help of a boy she once knew, Matt Flamhaff (Mark Ruffalo). Garner plays cute naïveté adorably well and Ruffalo is watchable in anything. Fluff is rarely this good.
Pride and Prejudice (1995)
Nothing. I repeat nothing, is more romantic than Jane Austen and this her most popular novel gets excellent treatment by all involved. I love this book and the purist in me says watch the 4 hour BBC miniseries. You should watch that too but assuming you need to squeeze in a movie between children and life this shortened version is excellent and ridiculously romantic. It is the perfect Victorian romance with eye candy stars Kiera Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. I love it.
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Grown Up Romances
Age of Innocence
Martin Scorsese sets aside guns and gore but there is plenty of violence, it’s just emotional. Most upright uptight New York Gentleman Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is engaged to proper May Welland (Wynona Ryder) and all is as smooth and boring as can be until May’s unorthodox cousin Ellen Olsenska (Michelle Phiefer) comes to town. This is a film where everyone feels more than they say. It is elegant, romantic and achingly beautiful but how often does a Scorsese film have a strictly happy ending? Only watch this if you’re willing for love not to prevail.
Cold Mountain
William Innman (Jude Law) is a southerner who deserts the American Civil War to head back home to Ada Monroe (Nicole Kidman) the woman he loves and left behind. Director Anthony Mingella churns out a sweeping epic and the lovers spend more screen time apart than together. The journey to get back is fraught with oddities and peril. Things at home are not any better. It’s romantic but it has a dark edge. Bonus: a scene stealing performance by the late great Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
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Something Completely Different
The Edge of Tomorrow
You have to wait a long time for it but there is a lovely, blink and you miss it, romance here. It is actually part of what makes this one of my favorite action movies. The other reason is that it is freakin’ brilliant. Tom Cruise stars as cowardly US Major William Cage who is assigned to the frontline in London when aliens invade. Then he gets to live the same day over and over. Or as the tag line so brilliantly states: Live. Die. Repeat. Sgt. Rita Vartaski (Emily Blunt) is the romantic interest and she is entirely badass. Doug Liman directs with style. The action is great, the visuals are great, it is smart, frequently funny, and it’s romantic. Winner!