If you're in the mood for love...

April 13, 2025 6:22 AM

Spring has sprung in the northern hemisphere, which is great time to consider the 50 most romantic movies of all time!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (45 comments total)

Two of my personal favorites that aren’t on the list (BUT SHOULD BE) are Run Lola Run and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Yeah, I like scifi that goes beyond spaceships.

Run Lola Run because it’s a fun take on “what if you could change the world for the one you love. Lola has superpowers which she could use to make herself powerful, rich, or any number of things. But instead she uses them to save her boyfriend from a situation he got himself into. We don’t always consider using our talents for ourselves, but for those we love? Hell yeah! Plus Lola does come around to using her gifts for herself, win win!

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a neat concept in terms of its in movie tech. But the best thing about the movie is the two protagonists realizing the love can be problematic with ups and downs, but what the hell, it’s love, let's do it!

Arrival is another great choice, now that I think about it and thinking Eternal Sunshine. It’s scifi, but will actual aliens this time! It’s all about communication and how people literally have their own language (a love language?) and how important it is not to just communicate, but understand.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:24 AM on April 13 [6 favorites]

* Scans list *

* Locates Call Me By Your Name *

.....Other than that film being too low on the list, I approve.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:45 AM on April 13

Hey where's Defending Your Life?
posted by mazola at 6:52 AM on April 13

How could they omit Murphy’s Romance? It’s got romance right there in the title.
posted by Lemkin at 6:54 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

Remains of the Day? Might as well put it in a list of the top 50 action movies.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:54 AM on April 13 [3 favorites]

I mean, a whole world war happens off screen!
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:58 AM on April 13

Eternal Sunshine

...is at 28.

A Matter of Life and Death isn't there though so pretty clearly the compilers are know nothing numpties.
posted by biffa at 7:16 AM on April 13 [4 favorites]

Ew is there KISSING in this?? Where's The Lobster??
posted by phunniemee at 7:31 AM on April 13 [2 favorites]

An interesting thing about this list, to me, is that, unlike "best of" lists we've been enjoying lately here at MetaFilter, a lot of these movies are, to my mind, not very good, or very badly flawed in some way (such as being, arguably, pretty racist, like The Bodyguard). I had to remind myself partway through the list that it's not a "best of," it's a "most romantic," and those would be, to my mind, two pretty different lists.
posted by Well I never at 7:47 AM on April 13

I guess I mean to say that if you asked me, a lover of romance, for my personal "best" list, that would be a subset of the movies on this list. I'm not through the whole list so can't say yet whether any of my personal bests have been left off.
posted by Well I never at 7:49 AM on April 13

I do like that they've included in their list movies that don't necessarily have the required "Happy Ever After" ending usually expected of romance as a genre (rather than romance as a quality any work might have). Brokeback Mountain, for instance, is a heartbreaker but it is, by any measure, pretty darn romantic.
posted by Well I never at 7:50 AM on April 13 [2 favorites]

Well I never, you've fully outed yourself

I'd sure like a gander at your list!
posted by ginger.beef at 8:12 AM on April 13

I really don't care for some of these titles, for some reason Jerry Maguire especially. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon could replace any of a few of these, imo, and Four Weddings and a Funeral was most romantic for the relationship we mostly didn't get to see

The final scene of Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen kind of gives the lie to whether it's truly a romance but I think it belongs as a bold allcaps footnote to the list
posted by ginger.beef at 8:21 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

Uhm how great is the love story when in majority of them the couples
A: Don't end up together. Or
B: One of them ends up dead

?
posted by Faintdreams at 8:36 AM on April 13

I'd bump GWTW and Titanic out of the top 10 and replace them with Roman Holiday (11) and Princess Bride (35).
posted by kokaku at 8:54 AM on April 13 [5 favorites]

B: One of them ends up dead

Well, I've got bad news and worse news, Faintdreams.
posted by 1adam12 at 8:55 AM on April 13 [4 favorites]

That list was painful.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:56 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

Well, I've got bad news and worse news, Faintdreams

It all ends in tears, one way or another. It’s only a question of when and how - over which we have little say.
posted by Lemkin at 9:04 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

... Lola has superpowers?
posted by trig at 9:06 AM on April 13

I should expand. Not one Bogie/Bacall, Tracy/Hepburn, Astaire/Rogers, or even friggin' Hanks/Ryan film. It Happened One Night, West Side Story, hell, I'd pick the romance in Sweeney Todd over some of these. Very few mature loves. Robin and Marian, Shall We Dance (1994), Smiles of a Summer Night.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:18 AM on April 13 [5 favorites]

No Roxanne? No Romancing the Stone?
posted by SPrintF at 9:18 AM on April 13 [2 favorites]

Remains of the Day? Might as well put it in a list of the top 50 action movies.


Hard disagree: it's a superbly romantic film. And a tragedy. From theatro in 2016:

STEVENS JUST TELL HER YOU LOVE HER
posted by lalochezia at 9:23 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

Brandon Blatcher: "Two of my personal favorites ... Yeah, I like scifi that goes beyond ..."

Sort of continuing Friday's thread, I wondered how many personal horror favorites I could recommend that probably meet a typical definition of romance (which includes both "happily ever after" and "happily for now" where some things are unresolved). I hope I'm not misremembering their plots given that this isn't what I'm usually paying attention to in horror but probably Lisa Frankenstein (2024), Happy Death Day (2017), Happy Death Day 2 U (2019), Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023; more of a sweet HFN?), and Beauty and the Beast (1978, i.e. the Czech version with the scary crow-person Beast--the version mentioned in the article is very good and has some great weirdness to it but I've never seen it called horror). But for folks who are really OK with blending romance and sadness and being very, very aware of our mortality, I'd really suggest Spontaneous (2020).
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:54 AM on April 13

they called Titanic sublime...lol

I'm not the target audience, so I'll try not to be too snarky. I have only seen a handful of these, not being a Romance fan per se. There are plenty of films on this list that are romantic but not of the Romance or Rom-Com genre.

The Princess Bride should be way closer to #1. It's probably the only movie on this list that I have seen that actually makes me feel schmoopy and I'm ok with that if I choose to watch it.

(I watch Titanic because it is a disaster movie, possibly my fav genre, and one with a low volume of output. also the costumes are fun. but that is Historical Costume Drama, right?)
posted by supermedusa at 10:01 AM on April 13 [2 favorites]

interesting thoughts, Wobbuffet. I like digging into the minutia of these genre divides. I mean there are plenty of movies that are labeled "romances" or "romcoms" that I would personally say are not romantic AT ALL. for instance There's Something About Mary. I did not schmoop.

but more generally, as has been said in the SF and Horror threads, it is the rare film (or story) that neatly fits in one category with no crossover, which surely makes for more interesting stories.

Romance in Space!
High Adventure with Monsters!
Coming of Age in a Disaster!

let's write some screenplays!! how many genres can we bend and contort and stuff into one story?
posted by supermedusa at 10:11 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

and Sirens is a serious oversight.
posted by supermedusa at 10:12 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

I'll shut up now
posted by supermedusa at 10:13 AM on April 13

Metafilter: I did not schmoop

My schmoopy hobbyhorse: huh, no movie of Villette ever?

supermedusa, that sounds like a crazy fun game. Am already imagining expansion packs:

• Improbable Biographies
• Once-Glorious Cities
• Quirky Entries from Black’s Law Dictionary
• Tech Press Releases

posted by clew at 10:38 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

oh, and that thing that represents story arcs as a sparkline
posted by clew at 10:39 AM on April 13

The most romantic part of The Princess Bride is the scene where (pirate) Westley threatens Buttercup with physical violence. Just gets me all atwitter.
posted by obfuscation at 11:52 AM on April 13

This is a decent list that forces me to admit that in the past I have probably mentally downgraded movies in my head for being satisfying romances. The ones I’d add are mostly in some other category, like The African Queen, which is a thrilling adventure and one of the best “straight laced and proper lady meets rough and tumble adventure guy and they grow to understand each other” movies.
posted by caviar2d2 at 12:05 PM on April 13 [2 favorites]

Eternal Sunshine

...is at 28.

Damnit it Patrick, please stop that!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:10 PM on April 13

Hmmm, I submit “The English Patient”.
posted by fluffycreature at 1:49 PM on April 13

Ctrl-F, "electric dreams"

Nothing? This list is wack.
posted by fnerg at 2:06 PM on April 13

I'm not one for romance movies as a rule—they usually just turn me into a sobbing mess—but getting a chance to see Casablanca on the big screen was electrifying.

It is hard to believe that its creation was basically Hollywood doing its patented production by committee, yet it turned out sublime.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 3:13 PM on April 13 [1 favorite]

and [the omission of] Sirens is a serious oversight.

I'm not sure I'd categorize Sirens as a romance, though. That's more of a sexual-awakening one - which sometimes can come with romance, true, but I think that would be more like, "shy young woman has a sexual awakening and comes out of her shell just in time to win over the single guy she's had her eye on" as opposed to "shy young woman has a sexual awakening and it spices up her already-existing marriage" like Sirens is.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:44 PM on April 13

I mostly pretend to dislike romantic films, but I feel like I've seen at least half of those. I defer to the expertise of the writer and have no qualm with any on the list, except I wouldn't have put Titanic at #2 and, well, where is Love, Actually (just about my favourite film of all time and, yes, I know that's embarrassing to admit)? For the price of one film, you get eight half-cocked love stories!
posted by dg at 4:33 PM on April 13

#1 - The Thing Called Love (1993) - Peter Bogdanovich
#2 - Flirting (1991) - John Duigan
posted by signal at 4:38 PM on April 13

#3 - Molli and Max in the Future (2023) - Michael Lukk Litwak
posted by signal at 4:40 PM on April 13

I’m glad to see that Anora isn’t on this list. Seeing that it’s listed as a romantic comedy makes me weep for humanity.
posted by waving at 4:51 PM on April 13

C'mon now where is Amelie? Where is Gregory's Girl?
posted by storybored at 8:32 PM on April 13 [1 favorite]

I vote for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

Quite a few titles that stretch the definition of Romance in terms of genre.

I didn't care for Eternal Sunshine, I felt that the pair seemed immature and would have been better off with someone else.

Also, a couple of weeks ago I finally watched An Officer and Gentleman on TCM. It's just... so stupid. Dick Gere charmed his way through dumb scripts more than once in life.
posted by ovvl at 8:19 AM on April 14

I stopped reading at no. 40 -- Say Anything (1989). Nothing romantic about steamrolling over boundaries, and it took me (my generation of women? possibly just me) far too long to see that truth.

Can someone tell me if Truly Madly Deeply is on the list?
posted by travertina at 8:26 AM on April 14 [2 favorites]

Sirens is not a romance, but it's very romantic.
posted by supermedusa at 9:54 AM on April 14

caviar2d2 mentioned the first movie that I thought of, The African Queen, a movie I have only seen once but still stays with me. I can still hear Katharine Hepburn barking out "Mr. Allnut" and I still remember that kiss before the screen fades to black, and then she starts calling him "Charlie". Such a fabulous movie. She and Bogart were so good in it.
posted by ceejaytee at 10:18 AM on April 14 [1 favorite]