BY KAREN KEMMERLE |
How Romantic: Happy Valentine's Day (Movies) From Tribeca!
In honor of Valentine's Day, we've Tribeca-sourced our staff's favorite romantic movies: some expected, some totally not...
Happy Valentine's Day!
With help from the Tribeca staff, we've pulled together a wide array of some must-see movies for the most romantic day of the year. Please chime in with your own suggestions in the comments below.
First off, we have to give a shout out to Newlyweds, the latest film by Edward Burns. This relationship comedy focuses on Buzzy (Burns) and Katie (Caitlin Fitzgerald), who believe that their new marriage works because of their conflicting work schedules—their happiness will not be destroyed by overexposure. Soon the the two realize they didn't "just" married; they have inherited each other families, friends, and even their exes. Buzzy and Katie must figure out a way to stay together despite the outside forces that begin to weaken their relationship. Watch Newlyweds on demand tonight!
Now, here are some Tribeca staff recommendations:
Alison Diviney: Acquisitions Manager, Tribeca Film
The majority of my Valentine’s Days have been spent watching movies, and I’ve come to realize that most of them end up containing one very handsome Colin Firth. He was clearly put on this planet to make all our Valentine’s Days a bit more unrealistic but a lot more dreamy. Depending on your plans for Valentine’s Day, there’s an option for everyone.
This is a good one to watch with your Mom, the other ladies in the knitting circle, or your piano forte instructor. Hello Mr. Darcy! I’ve been known to rewind the scene where he gets naked, jumps in lake and then saunters around with a see-through shirt on multiple times. Make sure you watch with smelling salts handy—if you don't faint at least once, you may not have a pulse.
Love Actually
I’ve watched this more times that I care to count, usually with a group of my closest girlfriends. I know's I am seeming like insane person, but I have to ask: will you marriage me? Um, heck, yeah, I will. Butchering a beautiful language in the name of true love is the most charming, and hilarious, way to propose.
Bridget Jones Diary
I usually watch this one with multiple Cadbury's chocolate bars...alone. Yes, I have no shame. I like you, very much, just as you are…seriously? Seriously!
A Single Man
This is great for a night in with your gay best friend. The Tom Ford suits and glasses, along with the California tan. Goodness gracious. He never looked better. Meow.
Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy
This is far from romantic, but I would pick this one for a night out with a date. A small piece of advice: if you don't understand what’s happening, just excuse yourself to the restroom and Wikipedia the plot. They’ll never know, and you’ll still be able to get your much needed Firth fix.
Some other options if you’re up for a Colin Firth marathon are Fever Pitch (not be confused with the baseball remake), Circle of Friends (Where did Chris O’Donnell disappear to?), and The King’s Speech (yyyyeeesss, please!).
Colleen Hammond: Development Associate, Individual Giving, Tribeca Film Institute
This film really has it all: comedy, romance, suspense! Sure, it’s a little hokey, but that’s part of why it’s so endearing. Here’s looking at you, kid…
Loren Hammonds: Manager of Operations (Tribeca Cinemas/The Varick Room)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
This Michel Gondry-directed film takes a decidedly sci-fi premise and infuses it with romance, raw emotion, and remarkable humanity. Jim Carrey (in a rare understated performance) stars as a man who decides to have all memories of his ex-girlfriend (a free spirit played perfectly by Kate Winslet) professionally erased. However, during the procedure, his regrets get the best of him. This love story, and a parallel one involving the technicians performing the erasure, is wholly unique. Gondry is a master of visual invention, and this is his strongest effort. The narrative raises some huge questions about the nature of love and relationships. Ultimately it’s a little bittersweet, but the best romances often are.
This Valentine’s Day, why not cozy up to your loved one and watch a tale of stolen cocaine, prostitution, and ultra-violent hitmen? Seriously. At the core of this Tony Scott-directed cult-classic is the sweetly intense love story of Clarence & Alabama… just a couple of crazy kids with guns and extremely high pain tolerances. Written by Quentin Tarantino, and boasting an amazing cast, including Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, and Gary Oldman, True Romance is always on my list for its intense replay value.
Rob Reiner's classic take on the fantasy genre manages to tell the extremely romantic tale of Westley & Buttercup, while still incorporating oversized rats, swordfights, and Andre The Giant. After all of these years, it still holds up as an entertaining (and romantic) action comedy. The thought of anyone not liking this something-for-everyone mash up of a movie… inconceivable.
My favorite Valentine’s Day flick is this Jonathan Demme-directed romantic comedy about a mild mannered man (Jeff Daniels) who is seduced by NY wildchild Lulu (Melanie Griffith) and whisked to her hometown for a high school reunion. What sounds like a typical cutesy romance benefits from healthy doses of weird, thanks primarily to a great screenplay and the gritty locations featured throughout the film. This movie also features the first great performance by a young Ray Liotta as Lulu’s ex, a sociopath who just isn’t ready to accept her new boyfriend.
Ashley Havey: Director, Key Accounts & Product Management
It’s a toss-up between Cinematon and Modern Times Forever. The selling point of the first is the presence of Samuel Fuller (nothing puts you ‘in the mood’ like ruminations on Fuller and his films). And the other film practically screams “Valentine’s Day!” with its slow and excruciating observation of centuries of decay. Most importantly, either film will more than adequately quarantine you from the hours leading up to and following the most unapologetically sappy day of the year.
Jennifer Holiner: Publicist, Tribeca Film
Lloyd Dobler is the standard by which all potential boyfriends should be measured.
Karen Kemmerle: Digital Content Coordinator
How can you ever smile, as if your life hadn't capsized? In The English Patient, a dying Count Almasy (Ralph Fiennes) lies on a bed in a bombed-out Italian villa with his beautiful nurse (Juliette Binoche) at his side and recounts, through progressive flashbacks, his steamy affair with Katherine (Kristin Scott Thomas). Their romance begins in the desert and continues when they return to Cairo as World War II explodes around them. Katherine breaks away from Almasy physically, but remains emotionally bound, and her husband eventually exacts his revenge. The doomed love between this incredibly attractive pair is the stuff of Hollywood legend.
I told you I'd share my ticket. I never planned on sharing my heart. Maybe I could get lucky twice today. In this whimsical nineties comedy, Nic Cage stars Charlie Lang, a good-natured cop who, after coming up short on his check, offers to split his potential winning lottery ticket with his waitress (Bridget Fonda) in lieu of a tip. When Charlie wins the $4 million dollar jackpot, he makes good on his promises, much to the displeasure of his disloyal wife (Rosie Perez). Needless to say, fate steps in and Charlie’s jackpot turns out to be the waitress with a heart of gold.
I knew her before you, loved her before you, only I'm not as lucky as you. Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious offers the first screen pairing of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, and the chemistry between the two is explosive stuff. Bergman plays bad girl Alicia, the daughter of a German man convicted of treason, who is recruited by a government agent, Devlin (Grant) to spy on her father’s circle of the neo-Nazis. Grant plants a particularly memorable screen kiss on Bergman in her husband’s creepy wine cellar, and later declares his love in impossibly sexy whispers as he rescues a poisoned Bergman from her menacing family. Excitement? Adventure? Intrigue? Romance? And how!
You be strong, you survive... You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you. Michael Mann’s adaptation of this classic tale wisely departs from Cooper’s novel and inserts a compelling love story between Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Cora (Madeleine Stowe). The two struggle to stay alive in the midst of the French and Indian War, and the scene in the waterfall hiding place when Hawkeye’s exhorts Cora to “stay alive, no matter what occurs” as she is about to be captured by the evil Magua is breathtaking. Spoiler alert: he does indeed find her. SWOON.
Everyday I don’t see you…is painful to me. Everyday where I can’t press my lips against yours, I feel like I’m gonna die. Who knew that Michael Keaton and Geena Davis would be such a dynamite on-screen couple? Keaton and Davis play Kevin and Julia, two political speechwriters who fall in love after one whirlwind night. When they realize they are on opposing sides, chaos ensues, but ultimately romance trumps politics. And why not? It’s Valentine’s Day, after all.
Myrna Moncayo: Director, Corporate Development
Getting out of that category of friend is harder than getting out of Alcatraz.
Well, I guess we're not going to be friends then.
Hi, uh, Nikki, this is Mike. I met you at the, um, at the Dresden tonight. I just called to say that I had a great time... and you should call me tomorrow, or in two days, whatever.
I'm going to help you rediscover your manhood. Do you have any idea where you could have lost it?
Well, now that the day's almost over, is it reasonable of me to ask you if you'll both join me in my room?
But then the morning comes, and we turn back into pumpkins, right?
Darling, we have a date, July the first at 5:00 pm.
Greg, my father was never in the rare flower business. That was just his cover. He was in the C.I.A. for 34 years.
Miller come from the Greek word "milo," which is mean 'apple'. Our name, Portokalos, is come from the Greek word 'portokali', which mean 'orange'. So, here tonight, we have apple and orange. We all different, but in the end, we all fruit.
OMG. We need to get as far away from any of our relatives as possible.
Runner ups … will save them for another story: Only Human (Seres Queridos), I'm Going to Explode, Chasing Amy, The Truth about Cats & Dogs, Sixteen Candles, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Opeyemi Olukemi: Program Associate, Digital Initiatives (Tribeca Film Institute)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
What is love? The Kaufman-scripted, Gondry-directed film, does a fantastic job exploring the relationship between an offbeat couple. Through targeted memories, serving as connection points, we feel every pang, beat and stab of the heart.
I’m not afraid to admit that I “bawled like Kristen Bell” during this movie. The intensity, heartbreak and defiance, make you wish for a love like such—no matter how it ends.
Swayze and Moore are simply electrifying on screen as their characters’ love for each other last through time and dimensions. My heart still skips a bit during that pottery scene.
With flowers, a fire escape, and Julia Roberts’ smile, is an explanation really needed?
There is always something to uncover when a group of long-standing friends reunite. Malcolm D. Lee’s film explores different aspects of relationships through marriage, friendship, commitment and forgiveness; and leaves you wanting more!
Dawn Sobczak: Executive Assistant to Jon Patricof
Ryan Gosling. No shirt, no problem.
Despite the fact that it gets more depressing with each subsequent viewing, I fall in love with them falling in love every time.
Oh wait, wrong holiday.
Caroline von Kuhn: Publicist, Tribeca Film Festival
Love triangles. Extravagant ocean liners. Charles Boyer. What else do you need?
More fun than romantic. Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. A favorite pairing of actors as a couple. Have to include both actors on this list: the classic handsome, funny gentleman and the tomboy, feisty woman.
Jane Campion’s cinematic poetry tells the story of Keats’ love, never physically realized, with the talented Ben Wishaw. Always love a British period piece, but this one is truly a stunning experience.
My guilty pleasure film year round, but always slightly more appropriate Thanksgiving through Valentine’s Day.
Woody Allen is year round. Only full collection of a director I own. How can you help but get swept up in Woody Allen’s love affair with New York? And who doesn’t fall in love with Diane Keaton?
Phew! Are you in love yet? Don't forget: Suggest your own Valentine's Day classics in the comments below!
