It’s Valentine’s Day weekend and I’m not even going to pretend to be jaded, despite the fact that another Double Feature would easily lie in this weekend also being Friday the 13th weekend (with both the date and the remake out). Instead, I want to celebrate the whole mawkish idea of love - a theme that isn’t executed in movies as often as we’d like. In fact, it’s a shame that, more often than not, a love story winds up being forced into movies to their detriment; a waste of film considering all the decent and solid stories more focused on the human emotion.
So this week we put together a one-two combo of love stories, with a couple alternatives to solidify your celebration of Valentine’s Day. Of course, using the spotlighted movies does add in a nice bit of irony, since both tend to center around holidays other than Hallmark’s commercialized celebration of love. Guys - the more of these you can manage to endure, the more your wife/girlfriend/significant other will appreciate you. Girls - stick to this list, and you’ll have movies that most guys will be willing to watch. Go rogue with something like A Room with a View and you might lose your guy’s interest for the whole holiday.
Let’s be frank - if you want a good romantic comedy from the ‘80s or ‘90s, it’s most likely going to have Meg Ryan in it. Although most of her work in the genre was pretty good, I still think her team up with Billy Crystal surpassed everything she did with Tom Hanks. Much like the second movie in this Double Feature, When Harry Met Sally gives several different looks at relationships, from following Harry and Sally as straight out of college travelers to the testimonials of the older couples that bridge together the movie’s different parts. I’m also a sucker for the secondary players in the movie, Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby, who are the best friends a couple like Harry and Sally could have. The key holiday may be New Years here, but it’s okay to watch it in February.
Almost every Christmas I rave about this movie, but just because it’s set at Christmas doesn’t mean it’s only to be appreciated during that holiday. Love Actually is actually a perfect movie for the festival of love, because it’s a movie that looks at just about every kind of love , romantic or not - husband and wife, husband and other woman, siblings, and even just a couple of buddies. It’s a reminder that love can be the best thing in the world, and simultaneously the most devastating emotion we can feel. Ultimately, Love Actually does give most of its characters a happy ending, and celebrates more of the good from the emotion than the bad, but in the end isn’t that what we want? A two hour meditation on the dark side of love wouldn’t be quite as interesting… especially on Valentine’s Day.
Other Valentine’s Day treats: Sleepless in Seattle (although I prefer the original An Affair to Remember), The Lake House, Definitely, Maybe, That Touch of Mink (at my wife’s insistence I’m also suggesting Truly, Madly Deeply, Failure to Launch, and While You Were Sleeping)
Enjoy our Double Feature suggestions? and maybe we’ll use them in a future column.
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