Happy Valentine's Day: Revisiting My Favorite Romance Movies

Valentine's Day is a day for couples to smother each other in Hallmark cards, candy hearts, and floral arrangements. It's also a day for cynical singles to whip up their best "I don't care about this holiday" jokes. But for me, Valentine's Day is simply a movie marathon, consisting of some of my favorite romantic movies.

I'm not a fan of a lot of "rom coms" or romance movies, because there's a gigantic disconnect between the way relationships are, and the way Hollywood portrays them; it immediately takes me out of the film. Not saying every love story has to be absolutely 100% realistic in its depiction, but to be more about the idea of what a relationship should be, instead of depicting the relationship that [should] be blossoming onscreen (whether it be good or bad) is completely counterproductive; these days, romances onscreen oftentimes seem so formulaic.

But for every few bad movies, there have been some truly great films about relationships or love. Shakespeare In Love, last year's Blue Is the Warmest Color, Like Crazy, Love Actually, Sleepless in Seattle, the list goes on. I'm going to talk about 2 of my absolute favorites which I watch every year, that I think deserve even more praise than they got in their respective release years.