The Most Romantic Movie of All Time

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NOT ACTUALLY BANNED
I'm sure there's a thread, but I couldn't find it throught the search engine.

What is it? Everyone tells me it's Harold & Maude, but I have to go with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind



Eternal Sunshine, yes, very romantic film. But one of my favourite romantic films is actually Castaway with Tom Hanks. Romantic? You ask. Indeed.

Man trapped on island for 3 years waiting to return home to his soulmate... beautiful.
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There is THIS thread, but it was started over five years ago so we could probably stand to discuss it anew.



  • Casablanca (1942 - Michael Curtiz)
    "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life." There's much more to this great film than just a love story of course, but the Rick-Ilsa-Laszlo triangle is key, and the on-screen romantic history, past & present, between Bogart & Bergman has got to be the tops of the tops. If you don't absolutely love this movie, I suspect you aren't really human.
  • Bringing Up Baby (1938 - Howard Hawks)
    "It's not that I don't like you, Susan, because after all, in moments of quiet I'm strangely drawn toward you, but...well, there haven't been any quiet moments." One of the best Screwballers ever made has, at it's center, super-flighty Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) doing literally ANYthing to get the attention of uptight paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant). Elevates the sincere but misguided hair-pulling and name-calling we all know from the sandbox to a brontosaurus-bone-burying dog and a couple escaped leopards bent on seemingly ruining the good Doctor's career and bringing these two crazy kids together. Aaaah, love.
  • Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991 - Anthony Minghella)
    "Thank you for missing me." It's kinda like Ghost for grown-ups who have half a brain not reliant on Hollywood bullsh!t. A beautifully told if simple tale of losing the love of your life, collapsing in despair, being led back to life by that love, then set free to live again. Juliet Stevenson, Alan Rickman, and Michael Maloney are all perfect, and the balance between very funny, quite sad, and ultimately hopeful is artfully achieved by Minghella. This one makes me cry every time I watch it, and I've probably seen it over twenty-five tmes.
  • Amélie (2001 - Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
    "No. I'm nobody's little weasle." Purely Romantic, purely comedic, uniquely and vibrantly told. A wonderfully wonderful film full of energy and wit and darkness and light and how can you not be madly in love with Audrey Tauotou after watching this (especially if like me you've watched it fifty or eighty times)?.
  • Far From the Madding Crowd (1967 - John Schlesinger)
    "If I can believe in any way that I could make you a good wife, I will indeed be willing to marry you...but I cannot promise yet, and I have not promised tonight." Thomas Hardy's novel brilliantly adapted by Frederick Raphael and lovingly brought to the screen by Schlesinger. A period piece love story that is actually as romantic and involving as the pastoral vistas are sweeping and beautiful. Alan Bates, Peter Finch and Terence Stamp are all excellent vying for the affections of Julie Christie (and who could blame them?). Too often overlooked.
  • Notorious (1946 - Alfred Hitchcock)
    "Say it again, it keeps me awake." Hitch's romantic spy thriller, with the driving love that Devlin (Cary Grant) and Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) won't allow themselves to surrender to and forgive all past sins putting her into the gravest of danger over wine bottles filled with radioactive sand. But can that love save her? The finale on the steps, with bluffs, pistols in pockets, and declarations of love as they make their escape is grade-A stuff.
  • The Lady Eve (1941 - Preston Sturges)
    "I need him like the ax needs the turkey." Another fantastic screwballer, this one with that special Sturges sensibilty. Barbara Stanwyk is a con artist who begins falling for a rich, bumbling zoologist (Henry Fonda) who professes love for snakes over people. The schemes and devices she uses to trap her man are often hilarious. A very sweet and very funny movie.
  • Modern Romance (1981 - Albert Brooks)
    "OK, let me ask you something: if a person's not home, and you start driving around their house, and you drive around, around, and around, and you start driving around the city, you're going ninety miles-an-hour, and you're calling them every four seconds, and you don't think of anything else, what is that? Is that not love?" For me, nobody does neurotic obsession and make me laugh about it like Albert Brooks. Here watching him talk and worry his way in and out of a relationship with Mary (Kathryn Harrold) reaffirms my faith in love and myself. After all, even I can't be that bad...I don't care what that Restraining Order says.
  • When Harry Met Sally. . . (1989 - Rob Reiner)
    "The fact that you're not answering leads me to believe that a) you're not home, b) you're home but you don't want to talk to me, or c) you're home, desperately want to talk to me, but you're trapped under something heavy. If it's either a) or c), please give me a call." OK, so what if it is just Reiner & Ephron doing Woody Allen, they did it so damn well. Crystal and Ryan are at their best, the supporting players are all perfect too, and it's chock full of about four dozen quoteable lines in examining the eternal question: can men & women just be friends?
  • Say Anything. . . (1989 - Cameron Crowe)
    "I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen." I think Crowe's first directorial effort is still his best. A perfect and odd script brought to life by John Cusack, Ione Skye and John Mahoney, it moves beyond the familiar High School love story mini-genre and creates something special. It's just good and addictive. How can you not be pulling for Lloyd Dobbler?
  • Roman Holiday (1953 - William Wyler)
    "Mr. Bradley, if you don't mind my saying so, I think you are a ringer." Great modern fantasy with the incomparable Ms. Audrey Hepburn at her most adorable, and Gregory Peck in all his class and glory. Love can't hide behind duplicity, as Peck's reporter finds out supposedly trying to get a story but instead rescuing a fairy princess.



And on and on and on...
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra



NOT ACTUALLY BANNED
Nice list, Holden. I need to see "Say Anything..." again, because I only saw it when I was 9.

I just can't help but be captivated by Eternal Sunshine. The scene at the beach house when the place is crumbling around them is just so perfect. Their exchange is so romantic and the fact that they both (I guess only Joel, but it was sort of like it was Clem as well) know it's about to end is so painful.



Meet me...in Montauk...



I'd go with Amelie but although not a film, the end of The Office when Tim and Dawn get together is perfect.
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So many good movies, so little time.
Casablanca
An Affair to Remember
City Lights
The Adventures of Robin Hood
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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx



Truly, Madly, Deeply
Rebecca
Notorious
Casablanca
Say Anything
The Bridges of Madison County
Moonstruck
Roxanne
Benny and Joon
Crossing Delancy
Green Card
The Princess Bride
Untamed Heart .............

I need these next.

Amélie
Modern Romance
Harold and Maude
Wings of Desire



Amélie
The Last of the Mohicans
The Princess Bride
Much Ado About Nothing
Say Anything
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~William Blake ~

AiSv Nv wa do hi ya do...
(Walk in Peace)




And some more...


  • The Bridges of Madison County (1995 - Clint Eastwood)
    "Who knew that, in between bake sales, my mother was Anaďs Nin?" How filmmaker Eastwood and screenwriter Richard LaGravenese managed to take one of the biggest pieces of ***** in recent literary times and turn it into such a subtle and emotional movie about the path not taken is one of the most remarkable and least-heralded accomplishments in cinema the past couple decades. The novella was beyond trite, cringe-inducing garbage, yet Eastwood's movie is a wonder. Having Meryl Streep and Clint in the leads surely helps, too. The fateful moment in the rain at the stoplight when Francesca is gripping the door handle and must decide which direction her life will go from that moment on is a masterful piece of filmmaking.
  • Ninotchka (1939 - Ernst Lubitsch)
    "I should hate to see our country endangered by my underwear." One of Lubitsch's enduring classics and probably the best way to fall in love with the enigmatic Garbo, this story about a cold Russian agent who's heart is melted by a rogueish American (Melvin Douglas) with the romance of all Paris as a backdrop is both ahead of its time and timeless. Co-scripted by the great Billy Wilder, it's a must-see. It is a shame Garbo didn't do more comedy because her timing is impeccable, and if you only know Douglas as the old man he became years later in movies like Hud and Being There, see him as a handsome, strapping lad who gets the supreme honor of wooing Garbo.
  • Two for the Road (1967 - Stanley Donan)
    "If there's one thing I really despise, it's an indispensable woman." Very perceptive movie about the stages of a relationship, from the flush of first love up through marriage and children and boredom and anger and hopefully back to love. Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn play the couple, and screenwriter Frederic Raphael's clever narrative jumps around in time, mostly as they travel over the same stretches of road in France, shrewdly juxtaposing various points in their life together. It doesn't pull any punches or gloss over the happily ever after part, which is what makes it so compelling and ultimately romantic. Not much fantasy, just an entertaining exploration of the complexity of loving somebody.
  • L.A. Story (1991 - Mick Jackson)
    "Why is it that we don't always recognize the moment when love begins, but we always know when it ends?" I do love this equal parts witty and silly fantasy from the mind of Steve Martin, playing a wacky TV weatherman who meets the love of his life (then-wife Victoria Tennant) and how magical that can make the world seem. The talking freeway sign is gimmicky, but Steve pulls it off. Hell, even the Enya on the soundtrack (before she was played in every third commercial, elevator and mall) is just right. Some screamingly funny stuff throughout, but the underlying fantasy of the magic of love is what makes it tick.
  • Joe versus the Volcano (1990 - John Patrick Shanley)
    "Long ago the delicate tangles of his hair covered the emptiness of my hand...would you like to hear it again?" I have splashed my love for this flick all over this board, and it is definitely one of those movies I can watch for a quick pick-me-up on a gray day. Farce of a fable about the power of love that is too often dismissed or misunderstood. It is weird and silly and impossible...you know, just like love. Don't care a lick for the subsequent pairings of Hanks and Ryan, but this one is an oddball charmer that makes me want to dance and take my love to the mouth of a steaming volcano to take that leap.
  • Tadpole (2002 - Gary Winick)
    "I realize now that was a mistake. I was drunk, she was wearing Eve's scarf, it smelled of her perfume, I got confused." Little low-budget charmer about a teenage boy (Aaron Stanford) who is madly and secretly in love with his stepmother (Sigourney Weaver) but winds up in bed with her best friend (Bebe Neuwirth), all while trying to guide his path pseudo-intellectually with a bit of Voltaire that's right up the alley of a precocious and slightly pretentious fourteen-year-old. Neuwirth is hysterical and Sigourney fetching as the older women he's tangled up with, and it's a great examination of the power of a crush at that age. The farce of the dinner scene is executed expertly.
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004 - Michel Gondry)
    "Are we like couples you see in restaurants? Are we the dining dead? " After you get past all of Charlie Kaufman's ingenious machinations about erasing memories and the surreal fun of desperately running through those moments as they disappear, what's at the core of it all is the emotional truth of the way humans love: even knowing exactly how painful the ultimate outcome and how fleeting it all can be, most of us would consciously choose to relive it all over again, because the great parts and happiness at love's apex are so great and really what life is all about.




NOT ACTUALLY BANNED
Ah! I found the scene on YouTube...

Bye, Joel.




One that first pops in my head I enjoyed was actually a Romantic Comedy called 50 first dates.
WARNING: "50 First Dates" spoilers below
Quite a triumph for a person to marry someone who forgets who he is everytime she wakes up. Could something like that actually work in real life? I'm not so sure. The heartache for one who's constantly forgotten and looked upon every morning as a stranger seems unbearable.



I didn't see all the movies in the world(and I can't remember all of them either ) but I think GHOST is one of the most romantics movies I've ever seen.
"Ditto" on the Ghost movie. Get it........"Ditto" heheh.

Eh, anyways yeah, one of the few romantic movies I loved was Ghost. Apparently the special edition just came out and I aim to buy it finally.

Actually when I first found out Whoopi Goldberg was in it, I wasn't so thrilled, but it turned out she was a blast. Usually she doesn't make me laugh but in this one, as annoying as her character was at times, she played it perfectly.



For me titanic



You ready? You look ready.
I just thought I'd throw a movie out there that hasn't been mentioned yet, Groundhog Day.
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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza



Death Is So Becoming ;>
Pride & Prejudice
Swept from the Sea
Far and Away
Shortbus
Love Story
Return to the Blue Lagoon
Emma
Remains of the Day
Forrest Gump
Get Real
Racing with the Moon

~this is all I could think of at the moment.
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"Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck."
-George Sanders, suicide note