For a marathon to work, you need a few films that people already love, at least one genuine discovery, and something that sparks a conversation at the end.
The 80s and 90s are where a lot of cinema's DNA was written. Films that set the templates still running today.
Great romance films understand that love is most interesting before it's resolved. The tension, the almost, the not-yet â that's where the cinema is.
In 18th century France, Marquise de Merteuil asks her ex-lover Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the future wife of another ex-lover of hers in return for one last night with her. Yet things don't go as planned.
A young beautician, newly arrived in a small Louisiana town, finds work at the local salon, where a small group of women share a close bond of friendship and welcome her into the fold.
Rebellious young Axel Blackmar gets caught up into the family car business when his cousin, Paul, coaxes him to come to Arizona to attend the wedding of their Uncle Leo. As Axel makes the decision to try selling Cadillacs with his family, he meets an eccentric woman named Elaine and her equally quirky stepdaughter, Grace. Their lives become inextricably intertwined through romance, dreams - and death.
Tells the life story of Danish author Karen Blixen, who at the beginning of the 20th century moved to Africa to build a new life for herself. The film is based on her 1937 autobiographical novel.
Jackie is a divorced mother of two. Isabel is the career minded girlfriend of Jackie's ex-husband Luke, forced into the role of unwelcome stepmother to their children. But when Jackie discovers she is ill, both women realise they must put aside their differences to find a common ground and celebrate life to the fullest, while they have the chance.
What makes romantic cinema great is the gap between what characters want to say and what they actually say. These films live in that gap.
In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.
Billy is released after five years in prison. In the next moment, he kidnaps teenage student Layla and visits his parents with her, pretending she is his girlfriend and they will soon marry.
Gia Carangi meteorically rises to modeling fame in the late 1970s but becomes overconsumed by persistent loneliness and drug addiction.
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.
A passenger on a cruise ship develops an irresistible infatuation with an eccentric paraplegic's wife.
Overlooked films are overlooked for the wrong reasons. Not because they failed - because they didn't fit. These didn't fit. They're excellent.
Great romance cinema earns its place in memory by being honest about love â not flattering it, not sentimentalising it, but showing it clearly enough that it resonates.