Movies like crazy beautiful
That’s why Empire has pulled together a list of guaranteed feelgood movies – 30 films sure to bring a smile to your face (and maybe a few cathartic tears along the way) just when you need it the most. What follows is an unsparing but deeply moving portrayal of fidelity, compassion and mutual care.Between the pandemic, multiple lockdowns, and all kinds of political upheaval, it’s been a very difficult couple of years to say the least – and we’ve never needed escapism more. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Georges, who enjoys a life of art, music and cultivated intellectualism with his wife, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), until she suffers a stroke. Abiding love: “ Amour” (2012)īefore those crazy kids of “A Little Romance” and “Moonrise Kingdom” took the plunge in earnest, it would have behooved them to see this devastating portrait of marriage at its most committed and self-sacrificing. OG: “ Harold and Maude ” | Classic: “ Lars and the Real Girl ”
What sounds ridiculous and kind of creepy on paper turns out to be haunting and surprisingly moving. Writer-director Spike Jonze spins this weirdly poignant story with just the right balance of surrealism and groundedness, giving Phoenix’s emotional journey heft as he doles out crucial bits (and bytes) of information. Joaquin Phoenix delivers one of his finest performances as a lonely writer of e-greeting cards who falls in love with his computer’s operating system, voiced to silky cool-girl perfection by Scarlett Johansson. Pictures/Everett Collection) Forbidden love: “ Her” (2013) OG: “ Splendor in the Grass ” | Classic: “ Moonrise Kingdom ” Sweet without being insufferable, sentimental without being smarmy, this is a gem of a film that captures every facet of first love with subtlety and not an ounce of condescension. When she meets a French boy her age, the two embark on an endearing romantic adventure, helped along by a mentor portrayed by Laurence Olivier. But few may remember her screen debut in this beguiling coming-of-age tale, in which she plays the daughter of American expats living in Paris.
OG: “ Brief Encounter ” | Classic: “ Brokeback Mountain ” Young love: “ A Little Romance” (1979) “Meant to be” takes on a different and utterly resonant meaning in this portrait of the real-world complications that can slow a couple’s roll toward destiny. But Gina Prince-Bythewood’s timeless story captured another form of fated romance, one rooted not in elaborate rituals of patrimony or social hierarchies but in friendship and the competitive world of sports. Sure, we all have our favorite “Romeo and Juliet” adaptation. Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps in "Love & Basketball." (New Line Cinema/Everett Collection) Star-crossed love: “ Love & Basketball” (2000) OG pick: “ Vertigo ” | Classic pick: “ Crazy/Beautiful ” Loud, loquacious and increasingly bizarre, this chamber piece of horrors just gets weirder and better with age. But Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor took the archetype to its most brazen, bravura extremes in Mike Nichols’s riveting adaptation of Edward Albee’s play about displaced grief, bourgeois hypocrisy and shared madness. Most of us know dysfunctional couples whose arguments regularly cross that cringe-inducing line between public performance art and intimate foreplay. Mad love: “ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966) We’ve picked some timeless examples as well as, for some extra Valentine’s Day smooches, Golden Age originals (OGs) and more recent, often overlooked classics that have helped us figure out what love looks like - at its craziest, naughtiest, trickiest and most complicated. But there are countless kinds of love and equally countless ways to capture it on screen. Those movies are definitive for their mostly cheerful, occasionally bittersweet depictions of love at its most idealized. Search for “love in the movies,” and the results generally highlight the same names: Ephron, of course - for such classics as “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle” - along with Nancy Meyers (“It’s Complicated,” “Something’s Gotta Give”), Brooks (“Broadcast News”) and Richard Curtis (“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Love Actually”).