Friday night with friends is about energy. You want something that earns its place in the conversation - a film that people are still talking about on the way home.
The 2000s feel undervalued now. A decade of films that knew what they were doing and did it without apology.
The best romantic films work because they're fundamentally about two people trying to understand each other. Love is just the context.
In 1920s Bagheria, Giuseppe 'Peppino' Torrenuova works as a shepherd to financially help his poor family. Over the next fifty years, Giuseppe's life, as well as the life of the village, is observed. Giuseppe grows up, joins the Communist Party, marries a local girl, has children, and forges a political career for himself.
Ten-year-old Gabe Burton is just an average kid growing up in Manhattan until Rosemary Telesco walks into his karate class. But before Gabe can tell Rosemary how he feels, she reveals that she won't be going to public school any more. Gabe has a lot more to learn about life, love, and girls.
Extremely shy Lars finds it impossible to make friends or socialize. His brother and sister-in-law worry about him, so when he announces that he has a girlfriend he met on the Internet, they are overjoyed. But Lars' new lady is a life-size plastic woman. On the advice of a doctor, his family and the rest of the community go along with his delusion.
When Isabelle and Theo invite Matthew to stay with them, what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and everything is possible.
A young widow discovers that her late husband has left her 10 messages intended to help ease her pain and start a new life.
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.
As the only legitimate heir of England's King William, teenage Victoria gets caught up in the political machinations of her own family. Victoria's mother wants her to sign a regency order, while her Belgian uncle schemes to arrange a marriage between the future monarch and Prince Albert, the man who will become the love of her life.
Harry Caine, a blind writer, reaches this moment in time when he has to heal his wounds from 14 years back. He was then still known by his real name, Mateo Blanco, and directing his last movie.
When she learns she's in danger of losing her visa status and being deported, overbearing book editor Margaret Tate forces her put-upon assistant, Andrew Paxton, to marry her.
After his long-time girlfriend dumps him, a thirty-year-old record store owner seeks to understand why he is unlucky in love while recounting his "top five breakups of all time".
A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents.
The films that give you a good cry do so because they've earned it. Not through sadness alone - through care. These films care.
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.