No plans for Valentine’s Day? It’s cool, call your girls up, grab some wine, some popcorn and watch these beautiful love stories unfold all from the comforts of your living room. These are just a couple of my personal favorites:
1.) Pretty Woman – A successful and wealthy lawyer (Richard Gere) travels to Los Angeles for a business trip and he hires a female escort (Julia Roberts) to accompany him for a week of business dinners, parties and of course the occasional shopping trip.
2.) Crazy Stupid Love – A middle age man’s (Steve Carrell) world is turned upside down when his wife (Demi Moore) unexpectedly asks him for a divorce. He meets a young bachelor (Ryan Gosling) at a bar, and he teaches him how to rediscover himself by picking up girls at a bar.
3.) The Notebook – Another Gosling favorite. A poor, yet passionate man (Ryan Gosling) meets a wealthy and adventurous young woman (Rachel McAdams) at a carnival one night. They soon after fall in love, but social differences soon separate them against their will. Fate brings them back together years later, and they try to make there once summer love into a lifelong commitment.
4.) Love Actually – Around Christmas time in London, love actually is the story of eight very different couples -all loosely connected with each other- as they fall both in and out of love., some finding themselves with the wrong one and others still searching for “the one”.
5.) Love & Basketball – Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) and Monica Wright (Sanna Lathan) grew up as next door neighbors and have known each other since they were kids. As they grow into adulthood, they fall in love, but they also share another all consuming passion: basketball). They’ve been in love with the game all their lives and are bother super talented on the court. As Quincy and Monica struggle to make their relationship work, they follow separate career paths through high school and college and both have hopes for a shot in the big leagues.
6.) Love Jones – Darius (Larenz Tate), an aspiring writer, and Nina (Nia Long), an aspiring photographer, share an instant connection after a chance meeting at a Chicago club. The two bond over music, photography and poetry, and eventually begin a torrid romance. However, when Nina decides to move to New York and mend her relationship with her ex-fiancé, Marvin (Khalil Kain), Darius is left heartbroken, and the couple’s future in jeopardy.
7.) Poetic Justice – After witnessing the murder of her boyfriend, Justice (Janet Jackson) decides to become a hairdresser. Avoiding friends, the only way for her to cope with her depression is by composing beautiful poetry. On her way to a convention in Oakland, she is forced to ride with an independent-minded postal worker (Tupac Shakur) whom she has not gotten along with in the past. After various arguments between them and their friends, they start to discover that their thoughts on violence, socially and domestically, are the same. Justice may finally feel that she is not as alone as before.
8.) The Best Man – Harper (Taye Diggs) is an author whose first novel is about to be published, just as he has been asked to be the Best Man at his friend Lance’s (Morris Chestnut) and Mia (Monica Calhoun). Harper struggles with publication day jitters for good reason, most of his book was derived from real life events and he is afraid that his friends and family will notice some very disturbing literary versions of themselves.
9.) Dirty Dancing – Personally one of my favorite movies of all time period. Dirty Dancing follows a privileged doctors daughter (Jennifer Grey) falls for a dance instructor (Patrick Swayze) while vacationing with her family at a resort in the Catskills. She fills in as his dance partner and then they fall in in love as he teaches her his routine. Theirs is a love that is tested by a complicated series of events and pressures from her family.
10.) Titanic – A fictionalized story of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ship during its ill-fated journey.