Valentine’s Day is a great reminder to spend time with the people you love. All your relationships, your partner, best friends, or even your parents, could benefit from some quality time together this February 14th. A perfect way to do that is to curl up on the couch with your favorite treats and watch a heart-warming movie. With most theaters still closed or with limited capacity now is the time to boot up your favorite streaming platform and watch these love stories for the ages.
1. The Timeless
In every movie lineup or list, there must be one film that transcends time and is beloved throughout the years (or even the centuries). Pride and Prejudice is the original love story. A revolutionary romance, it showcases a man, Mr. Darcy, in love with a woman not but for her beauty but her brain as well. While most 1800s men find an intellectual and independent woman too troublesome, Mr. Darcy loves Elizabeth all the more for her strength. It was one of the first popular love stories written by a woman, Jane Austen, and it finally gave women a love story they wanted to live. Ever since many romantics hold their partners to the high standards the movie sets.
2. The H.S. Love Story
The next great Valentine’s Day movie is a more modern film. It showcases an adorable teen love that reminds us of the nerve-racking days of high school romance. Love, Simon not only perfectly captures the anxiety and excitement of having a crush at school but also explores coming to an understanding and acceptance of one’s sexuality. The movie follows Simon, a closeted gay teen who recently confessed his feeling to his anonymous online crush.
3. The Enemies to Lovers
A personal favorite rom-com trope is enemies to lovers. There’s something adorable and endearing about the passion of hate switching over to love. No movie executes this trope better than 10 Things I Hate About You. This film follows Kat, an independent and somewhat abrasive senior in high school, who has no interest in boy beyond Shakesphere. The problem is that her popular younger sister isn’t allowed to date until Kat does. So one of the younger sister’s suitors pays the school bad boy, Patrick, to try and capture Kat’s attention.
4. The Time Loop
A perfect way to add a little surrealism into a rom-com is to trap the lovers in a time loop so they are stuck with each other for seemingly an eternity. Palm Springs does a great job capturing playing with the idea of fate, the meaning of life, and the space-time continuum. This film follows Nyles who is stuck in a time loop Groundhog Day-style, during his least favorite event, a wedding. The story really picks up when an unsuspecting Sarah gets pulled into the disastrously repeating day.
5. The Curveball
While action movies and love stories aren’t labels one typically applies to the same film, it is possible to create a masterpiece that blends the two. While at first Deadpool may not seem like a love story, as Deadpool tells the audience at the beginning of the movie, his film is in fact a love story. A story as old as time really. Boy meets girl, boy loves girl, boy gets turned into a superhuman freak of nature.
While we might be spending the 14th socially distancing, for hopefully the last holiday, we can still enjoy quality time with our loved ones. Hopefully, this list helps you narrow down the movies to cuddle on the couch and watch this Valentine’s season.