There's a particular kind of film for a rainy night alone - absorbing enough to pull you fully in, good enough that you don't check your phone once.
Despite everything, the 2020s have produced some genuinely remarkable cinema. Films made under pressure that somehow carry none of it.
Romance cinema at its finest doesn't sentimentalise love. It shows it clearly â messy, inconvenient, and still somehow worth everything.
In modern-day Helsinki, two lonely souls in search of love meet by chance in a karaoke bar. However, their path to happiness is beset by obstacles - from lost phone numbers to mistaken addresses, alcoholism, and a charming stray dog.
The story of Usnavi, a bodega owner who has mixed feelings about closing his store and retiring to the Dominican Republic or staying in Washington Heights.
A young woman's plans to propose to her girlfriend while at her family's annual holiday party are upended when she discovers her partner hasn't yet come out to her conservative parents.
In late 15th-century Eastern Europe, Prince Vlad II's bride is brutally murdered. As a result, he renounces God and damns Heaven itself. Cursed with eternal life, Vlad is reborn as Dracula, an immortal warlord who defies fate in a blood-soaked crusade to wrench his lost love back from death.
Shy, straight-A student Ellie is hired by sweet but inarticulate jock Paul, who needs help wooing the most popular girl in school. But their new and unlikely friendship gets tricky when Ellie discovers she has feelings for the same girl.
The romance films that endure are the ones that don't lie about love. They acknowledge the difficulty while making the feeling feel completely worth it.
The love between Noah and Nick seems unwavering despite their parents' attempts to separate them. But his job and her entry into college open up their lives to new relationships that will shake the foundations of both their relationship and the Leister family itself.
A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.
An ambitious American fulfilling her dream of studying at Oxford falls for a charming Brit hiding a secret that may upend her perfectly planned life.
In 1800s England, a well-meaning but selfish young woman meddles in the love lives of her friends.
As a filmmaker and his girlfriend return home from his movie premiere, smoldering tensions and painful revelations push them toward a romantic reckoning.
The best mind-bending films don't cheat. They follow their own logic rigorously - which is exactly why the rug-pull, when it comes, is so disorienting.
The best romantic films leave you with an ache that has nothing to do with sadness. It's the ache of something real, depicted precisely.