7 Films to Watch for Valentine’s Day, With Your Partner or Alone

The streets are pink-lit and glistening with rain, or at least they are in your mind. Everyone is holding hands, except the people who aren’t, and they all seem unbearably self-assured in their choices—where to eat, what to wear, who to love.

Meanwhile, you are scrolling endlessly, looking for something to watch, something that feels appropriately romantic but not humiliatingly so.

Something neither too ironic nor too sincere. Something with depth but also, ideally, a little bit of kissing.

Here are some options.

1. Past Lives (2023)

For when love feels both inevitable and impossible

You have heard this film described as devastating, which feels appealing in a controlled-environment sort of way. You are interested in the particular ache of paths not taken, of love that is no less real for being unfulfilled.

You sit on the couch next to someone who means something to you (or alone, with a blanket pulled high to your chin), and you watch two people grapple with what it means to know each other across time and distance.

You feel the weight of your own alternate lives pressing against the edges of your consciousness. It is a good kind of pain.

2. Aftersun (2022)

If you want to cry in a way that makes you feel profound

A film about memory, about the people we love and what we fail to understand about them. You put this on because you like beautiful cinematography and because you heard someone on social media say it changed them.

As you watch, you are reminded of the strange and flickering nature of nostalgia, the way it can never quite be trusted. If you are watching with someone, neither of you speak for a long time after the credits roll.

3. Pride & Prejudice (2005)

For a romance that makes you believe in grand declarations

The rain-drenched confessions. The yearning glances. The depth of feeling communicated through a single touch of a hand. It is all so intoxicatingly much.

If you are watching with a partner, there is a high likelihood that at some point during the movie, you will look at them and think: Would you walk across a misty field at dawn for me?

You may never say this out loud, but the thought alone feels satisfying enough.

4. Bottoms (2023)

When you want to laugh at love, but still kind of believe in it

Valentine’s doesn’t have to be all aching longing and stolen glances. Sometimes it can be ridiculous and stupid and full of fake high school fight clubs designed to impress hot cheerleaders.

This movie reminds you that romance can be fun, that it can be about chaos and bad decisions and absurd situations. It makes you laugh, and laughter feels like love, or close enough.

5. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

If you want to feel held

There is something deeply comforting about Studio Ghibli films, a kind of warmth that settles in your chest and makes the world feel gentler. You watch Howl turn into a bird and Sophie grow old and young again, and for some reason, it reassures you.

Maybe love is just this: small kindnesses, a place to return to, a floating castle that defies logic but still stands.

6. The Before Trilogy (1995, 2004, 2013)

If you want to spend the whole night talking

You put on Before Sunrise, and within twenty minutes, you are in a deep existential discussion about love, fate, and the nature of connection. By Before Sunset, you are re-examining every relationship you have ever had.

By Before Midnight, you are no longer sure if you ever want to be in love at all, but you do know you want to feel this understood. You go to bed feeling both full and emptied.

7. Twilight (2008)

Because why pretend you’re above it?

You are an intellectual, you tell yourself. You have taste. And yet.

There is something irresistible about the sheer audacity of Edward Cullen’s obsession, about the way Bella Swan looks at him like he is the only real thing in the world.

You let yourself sink into it, into the blue-gray gloom of Forks, into the drama and the longing. You remember what it was like to be fourteen and think love was supposed to feel like life or death. Maybe it still is.

So, whether you are watching with someone or simply with the version of yourself that exists when no one else is around, there is something here for you.

Something to make you feel, which is the whole point of love, after all.

Photos courtesy IMDB