The Best Movies to Watch on Valentine’s Day Inline

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    Photo: Everett Collection
    1/22

    Intimacy

    For the majority of Intimacy, the lead characters, Jay and Claire, are fundamentally unhappy. The film's perspective on love can be bleak, but during the moments when Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox are together, their interactions and passion for one another is real. When Chéreau explores love he does so without flinching from its dark side, and his portrait of two people desperate for connection and understanding is as beautiful as any love story I've seen.

    —Janelle Okwodu, Fashion News Writer

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    Photo: Alamy
    2/22

    Dirty Dancing

    If I’m being completely honest, my movie is probably Dirty Dancing. My uncles were responsible for the opening titles, so my parents let us watch it when it first came out on video. It was the late ’80s, I was 4 or 5 years old, and that slow-motion, black-and-white sequence of couples slithering around to the Ronettes was hands down the most titillating thing I could imagine. Then of course you had prime Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze. For an arrhythmic Jewish girl from the midwest, it did not get better. To this day when I hear that opening beat to “Be My Baby”—Bum. Bum-Bum. Ch!—I get a weird little heart twist.

    —Julia Felsenthal, Senior Culture Writer

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    Photo: Alamy
    3/22

    Reality Bites

    So I know Reality Bites is no Love Actually, but the tortured, rocky romance between Troy (’90s dream Ethan Hawke) and Lelaina (’90s queen Winona Ryder) slays me every time.

    —Michelle Ruiz, Vogue.com Contributor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © 20th Century Fox
    4/22

    Wild River

    What more do you want from a love story? Lee Remick. Montgomery Clift. The Tennessee Valley Authority! It's heaven on a riverbed.

    —Chloe Malle, Vogue Social Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © Apparition
    5/22

    Bright Star

    Jane Campion’s film is loosely based on the true love story of the poet John Keats and his neighbor, Fanny Brawne. Heartbreaking, dreamy, and so beautifully shot!

    —Catherine Piercy, Vogue.com Beauty Director

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    Photo: Courtesy of © Fox Searchlight Pictures
    6/22

    The Dreamers

    More than just an untraditional romance—an incestuous threesome, actually, that would be scandalous even today, let alone in 1968, when the film is set—the movie is Bernardo Bertolucci’s love letter to the New Wave and features some superlative casting in Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, and Eva Green.

    —Mark Guiducci, Vogue Arts Reporter

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    Photo: Courtesy of © MGM
    7/22

    Moonstruck

    Cher’s character fills me with hope that if she can find love in crazy, complicated Brooklyn, so can I.

    —Alex Frank, Vogue.com Deputy Culture Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © MGM
    8/22

    The Philadelphia Story

    Casablanca is great and all (and it is great) but give me The Philadelphia Story, any and every time. I don’t particularly agree with all of its politics, but I do fully subscribe to the idea that you can stick up for yourself, be a royal pain (look great doing it, of course: those clothes!), and still get the guy in the end.

    —Alessandra Codinha, Vogue.com Fashion News Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © Paramount Pictures
    9/22

    Funny Face

    Funny Face, because people sing and dance about the color pink, Paris, bookstores, and beatniks . . . and because I screened it at my wedding.

    —Sally Singer, Vogue.com Digital Creative Director

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    Photo: Courtesy of © Wild Bunch
    10/22

    Blue Is the Warmest Color

    I went to see this movie with a friend who had recently gone through a breakup, and we both wept on and off through the entire thing. There's something about coming-of-age love stories that always move me, maybe because there’s nothing more heartbreaking than losing your first love.

    —Chioma Nnadi, Vogue.com Fashion News Director

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    Photo: Courtesy of © Warner Bros. Pictures
    11/22

    True Romance

    Perhaps because I was 14 when it came out, True Romance will always be the mold for romance with a capital R: Christian Slater as a comic-book nerd in a Hawaiian shirt, Gary Oldman as the dreadlocked villain Drexl Spivey, and Patricia Arquette with one of the all-time best professions of love: “You’re so cool. You’re so cool.”

    —Abby Aguirre, Vogue.com Culture Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © United Artists Films
    12/22

    A Man and a Woman (Un Homme et Une Femme)

    At the stage both characters are in their lives, you can tell that what they feel for each other is a very pure form of love.

    —Fernando Dias De Souza, Vogue.com Art Director

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    Photo: Courtesy of © TriStar Pictures
    13/22

    As Good As It Gets

    I’m a sucker for a New York love story, especially one that features an adorably hideous dog. But this movie is an all-time favorite mainly because I suffer from an unreasonable infatuation with Jack Nicholson.

    —Patricia Garcia, Associate Culture Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © Sony Pictures Classics
    14/22

    Celeste & Jessie Forever

    Because breaking up is actually pretty easy to do. Making a friendship work, that’s the real magic.

    —Sophie Schulte-Hillen, Vogue.com Contributing Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © 20th Century Fox
    15/22

    Romeo + Juliet

    It’s a tragic love story, but Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet gets me every time. Between the setting of “Verona Beach,” the Prada ensembles—Romeo’s wedding suit to be specific—and a killer soundtrack, the film makes me want to get married. Maybe without the poison and gunfire though.

    —Edward Barsamian, Vogue.com Style Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © Columbia Pictures
    16/22

    The End of the Affair

    It’s a raw, moody, romantic take on Graham Greene’s most autobiographical novel. It’s the story of a love triangle with an unexpected member, a look at the ways in which it is possible to love, and a tale of conversion: In the opening words of the film’s narrator, “This is a diary of hate.”

    —Susan Gordon, Vogue.com Copy Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © Paramount Pictures
    17/22

    Love Story

    I mean, you can’t pick a better love story than Love Story, right?

    —Andee Olson, Vogue.com Production Manager

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    Photo: Courtesy of © StudioCanal
    18/22

    Rust and Bone

    I really love Rust and Bone because it was so honestly told—there’s heartbreak, there’s ugliness, there are sublime moments of hope. I watched it twice in a row to deconstruct how Jacques Audiard was able to write in and direct the subtle ways the characters earn each other’s trust and betray one another. It is a love story hard won.

    —Mackenzie Wagoner, Vogue.com Beauty Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © RKO Radio Pictures
    19/22

    Top Hat

    The plot is almost beside the point: Romance is redefined by Fred with Ginger and her marabou-trimmed dress which takes on a life of its own.

    —Laird Borrelli-Persson, Vogue.com Archive Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © Columbia Pictures
    20/22

    Before Sunrise

    Who wouldn’t want to spend the wee hours of the mid-’90s with Ethan Hawke in Vienna discussing life and love?

    —Louise Hart, Vogue.com Contributing Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of © AAA Classics
    21/22

    Mauvais Sang

    Way, way before Greta Gerwig covered this scene in Frances Ha, there was Denis Lavant in Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang, cartwheeling and dancing in the street to Bowie’s “Modern Love” for the heart of Juliette Binoche, cast as a neo-Anna Karina. It’s sci-fi, it’s gangster, they’re young and beautiful and star-crossed in love. And everyone is speaking French. Happy Valentine's Day.

    —Rebecca Bengal, Vogue.com Contributing Editor

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    Photo: Courtesy of Everett Collection
    22/22

    Funny Girl

    You know what they say, “If you love them, let them go.” And no one knows that better than Babs in Funny Girl.

    —Anne Johnson, Vogue.com Social Media Manager