The best romantic movies (that don't actually suck)
Love doesn't have to be lame, you know?
Morgan Truder
Most romantic films have a habit of laying it on thick. They are fuelled by glossy meet-cutes, perfectly timed grand gestures, and speeches that sound like they’ve been lifted straight from a Valentine’s Day card aisle. To be fair, sometimes that stuff works. But just as often, it leaves you feeling like you’ve watched a two-hour advert for unrealistic expectations and aggressively photogenic couples.
This list is for the romantic films that actually earn it. The ones that understand love is messy, complicated, occasionally awkward and often a lot quieter than Hollywood would have you believe.
Some are funny, some are heartbreaking, some are slow burns that sneak up on you days later. All of them, crucially, avoid the usual cheese and deliver something that feels a bit more honest and a bit more human. Here are the romantic films that not only don't suck, but are straight-up bangers.
11. Romeo + Juliet
Baz Luhrmann somehow made a generation of teens, and mostly teen girls, obsessed with a Shakespeare text despite them barely being able to trudge through it at school. This take on the play is a brilliant mix of the old and new (for the late 90s, anyway). It teases out the romantic impact of the original text while transplanting it into a visually hyper-saturated modern context.
10. True Romance
True Romance has all the classic ingredients of a romance: violence, murders, mobsters and loads of guns. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette are our couple on the run, after Clarence (Slater) kills Alabama’s (Arquette) pimp and steals a suitcase full of cocaine. Love and car chases from one of the great directors of shameless action movies, Tony Scott. A classic.
9. Rye Lane
Dom and Yass are two young south Londoners who are getting over rough break-ups. They form a friendship across the streets of Brixton and Peckham, making sense of their previous relationships. Rye Lane has a real sense of place, and the interactions between its characters are funny and (largely) legit. A film with real charm, and a flavour all of its own.
8. Call Me By Your Name
This brilliant gay romance, full of loss and longing, has become something of a complicated watch. One of its stars, Armie Hammer, was accused of sexual abuse. There are even stories of cannibalism fantasies. But, if you can look beyond that (or pretend we never told you), Call Me By Your Name is a coming-of-age delight and one of Chalamet's best performances.
7. The Shape Of Water
Could Guillermo Del Toro ever make a straightforward love film? We don't think so. The Shape of Water sees Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute janitor at a high security lab, fall in love with the half-reptile, half-human creature being kept captive there. It’s beautiful and fantastical, duking it out with Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth for the Del Toro ranking top spot.
6. When Harry Met Sally
You’ll find When Harry Met Sally sitting at the top of many “best rom com” lists, like a Christmas tree fairy. Why? It’s the writing from Nora Ephron. It’s the performances from Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, at the height of their late 1980s powers. It set the template that 90s rom coms would attempt to recreate, and generally fail in doing so, time after time. Even 35 years later, this one holds up.
5. Before Sunset
The middle chapter in Richard Linklater’s “before” trilogy. In the first film we saw Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy engage in a holiday romance. Almost decade later, in the fiction and reality, the two meet again as Hawke’s Jesse is on a promotional book tour. He may be a married man at this point, but the strength of their connection… well, we won’t spoil the rest.
4. La La Land
This film persuaded many who thought they hated musicals that they could actually love… a musical. It stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a fledgling couple trying to make it in LA. He’s a jazz pianist, she’s a would-be actor. It’s beautifully shot and often swooningly romantic, while often subverting the expected moves of film rom-coms.
3. Past Lives
Nora and Hae Sung were childhood friends. They reconnect after 20 years, for just a week, and wonder what could have been if Nora hadn’t moved away with her family in her youth. It’s a must-watch contender for the 2024 Oscar for best film. And it’s also as much about the branching paths of all of our lives as its central stalled romance. This is not Sliding Doors, folks.
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
A film that at one point seemed to take up the number one spot on every University student’s most-loved film list. Joel (Jim Carrey) finds out his ex, Clementine (Kate Winslet), has had the memories of their relationship erased, which is a common service in this off-kilter world created by writer Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry.
1. In the Mood for Love
If most romantic films feel like they’re written by people who’ve never actually been in love, In the Mood for Love is the complete opposite. Wong Kar-wai’s slow, aching masterpiece follows two neighbours in 1960s Hong Kong who grow close after discovering their partners are having an affair, just don’t expect sweeping declarations or big Hollywood pay-offs. The emotion lives in glances, missed chances and the unbearable tension of what never quite happens. It’s heartbreakingly stylish, beautifully restrained and proof that sometimes the most romantic stories are the ones that barely say anything out loud.
If you are not in the mood for love, then head to our best anti-Valentine's movies list
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