Men--what are romantic movies you enjoyed? Why?

Was just thinking, after seeing the trailer for Hitch, which looks to me like a romantic comedy that men and women would like--there has to be other romantically inclined movies men like.

One of my best male friends loves Braveheart. But the romance was a subplot. Is that generally how it is, the love story has to be a minor part of the film?

Did any guys like Love Story, LOL??

I guess it's a romance at the core :P

Seriously though, I usually can't stand rom coms. Two that I liked come to mind: "Amelie" & "The Fabulous Baker Boys."

Actually, I have heard that from a few guys, and I'm not sure why.

Was it Audrey Tatou or something about the story?

I think my main issue with rom com is that it relies too heavily on convention... each flick in the genre is a cookie cutter of the one before.

There was a lot of care that went into the making of "Amelie." The cinematography & editing are great. I also liked the use of color. In other words, it is a strong film as a whole - not just a xerox copy of another flick.

"Baker Boys" was also good because it was a lot darker than most rom coms. Very atmospheric. Doesn't take place in the sunny happy phony world of most rom coms. It's a good character study. Check it out if you get a chance.

Edited to add "High Fidelity." I really liked that too. Stephen Frears is a great director. He's been all over the map with different types of movies - and they're all pretty good.

I'm a male and I think Amelie is one of the best movies of all time. It wasn't a story about love, it was a story about isolation and taking chances. The metaphor for the girl in the painting works so well. If you study the painting, you will see that everyone in the painting is connected together. The script is just wonderful and really clever. Everyone has been in Amelie's situation before. She is unsure about moving ahead and doing something. So what does she do? She lives in her own little fantasties and has her little weird things that she does. That's how life works, but few people have written movies that incorporate that reality. Amelie trying to find the courage to meet the boy and then ask him out can be a metaphor for trying make to any big decision in our lives. Oh and yes, Audrey Tautou is BEAUTIFUL. The role works so well for her. Emily Watson was suppose to Amelie at first, but that would have been terrible. I'm a huge Watson fan, but she is too old and too tall for the part (Audrey is 5'4). Anyway, to talk more about the painting, I dug up an old essay I wrote on the painting:

"Luncheon of the Boating Party
By Pierre-Auguste Renoir
When applying the elements of design to the famous Renoir painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party, it is quickly recognized that Renoir was an artistic master. The first element to look at is line and he creates a host of seen and unseen lines. There are several people in the painting and they are all enclosed within a boat that is right on the shore line of some river or stream. You only get a vauge hint of this based on some background of some tall river grass and some water beyond that. The line of a banister is inserted so well that it holds everyone in to a definte space, but you can barley see the banister and would hardly notice it unless you were looking for it. Line on the front table is less defined as objects blur together, but they are not the focus of the picture.
The people are suppose to be the focus and Renoir creates interesting dimensions for our eyes. There are fourteen people and one dog in the picture and despite the fact that they are either sitting or standing, there are multiple angles created by posture, position and placement. The placement becomes especially important when the majority of the people in the painting cover each other up. Renoir is still able to create infinte amounts of levels of three dimension in a two dimension picture. All the people in the picture seem to be quite engaged with someone else at another level.
By setting this up, Renoir has place a tangled web of glances. Everyone in this picture is looking at someone. The glances lend a natural movement to the eye on where to look in the painting. A man looks at a woman, who looks at another man, who looks at a woman who is looking at a dog. Right above the woman looking at the dog is a man who is looking at a woman who is being looked at by two men right beside her. Then there are two couples looking at each other and in the center of all this there is a man that is looking at a woman who is looking at… well there is one person that is not looking at someone in this painting. The woman in the center looks out of the painting, but not directly out at the viewer, more just looking out into the distance. With all of this other movement, your eyes turn to the center of the painting.
She turns out to be an odd center as the light coming into the boat misses her by a couple of inches. Some of the river grass or plants around the boat are so high that they block out the sun to a certain extent. But to the left, the plants are smaller and there are definte areas of the painting that Renoir makes lighter then others. It is bright especially in the front, and this does make your eyes go there first. Only momentarily though, as the woman looking into the distance strikes out at you, which is made even more interesting due to the fact that she is ordinarlry dressed.
Many other outfits in the painting should catch your eye before the woman’s. She is wearing a plain blue outfit around bright reds, bright whites, blacks and brighter blues. The color on the front table includes colors of all sorts with grapes, apples, bottles of wine, and glasses. The color from the flowers in the background includes lilac and marigold with the green of the shrubbery too. In a swirl of color, she should be lost, but perhaps since she does not have the best color, the eye goes towards her: ‘the plain one’."

I love hearing info like that about "the classics", love knowing why they're classics.

That painting does seem to go very well with the film...going to look at the picture now!

Oh, and Emily Watson as Amelie would have been very bad indeed. I too like Ms. Watson, but oy. An older actress would have seemed kind of pathetic unable to talk to the boy, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if the movie came out of the painting. Glad you enjoyed the info. It was my pleasure to pass it on.

With Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.

I like any time-travel movie, and there's this one scene which, while tragic, cracks me up:

Reeve's character has just snapped himself out of the 'hallucination' and is being litereally ripped from Seymour's arms into the present. She's flapping her arms frantically, and screaming "RICHARD! RI-I-ICHAR-R-R-R-D!!", in a shril, frantic voice, and for some reason, I always imagine her doing the same scene wearing a costume parrot's head, and it totally kills me!!

Yes, definitely "Somewhere in Time" not just for the romance, but it captures that longing to find completion, AND it has a nice science fiction (time travel) component to it.

I like "Neverland" for the same reasons. I like that oh-so-elusive promise of a heaven filled with angels and fairies and loved ones, and the Neverland scene at the end of that movie really captures it.

his love for football

...Suspicion, Gaslight, Dial M for Murder

What Charles Boyer did to Ingrid Bergman wouldn't exactly endear my significant other to me. :)

just kidding...someone had to say it.

Not sure how romantic it was. I actually haven't seen it, believe it or not.

enough adventure to keep most guys occupied and there is the romance between Madeline Stowe and Daniel Day Lewis.

Excellent choice (even though no one asked my opinion)

"Love is a battlefield" ;-)

Lauren was quite the eyeful!

;-)

The romance between Frank and Rocky was shortlived, but you could see the anguish in Rocky's eyes after Frank was struck down, in his prime, by Riff's trident of lightning terror.

I will always miss them both.

Kate and Leopold and Practical Magic. I guess it was because of the fantasy elements in both films.

just liked it overall.

Love stories don't interest me much. I love action movies,so I guess a part of me is still 14.

Room with a view
A Lion in winter


Not sure why...I just do.

For a thriller kinda love story on the dark side rent "Body Heat"

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0082089/

Becacuse it is the greatest movie of all time in that it is all things to all people...

Otherwise, I tend to like old school romantic comedys a lot better, but that may just be because they have Audrey Hepburn in them.

Also I have yet to ever meet anyone who has ever hated that movie.

Perhaps that is why he is soon to be exed. :evilgrin:

I too am a big fan of Princess Bride. "You killed my father. Prepare to die!" funny! (first post! hi, all!)

used to have mock sword fights and they'd mock that scene. They'd make up silly threats.."You have failed to do your homework..Prepare to Die".
You brought that all back.

The Princess Bride is one of the all-time best-ever!

Welcome to DU! :hi:

And Titanic actually made me cry. Twice. However, in both instances I made it to the car before starting to sniffle and weep.

Shallow Hal.... that movie rocked...

including everything from Titanic to Bridget Jones. Most romantic movies seem to feature generic characters with generic emotions going through the same paces.

I very much like romantic movies in which unique individuals in unusual situations are attracted to each other. Romances from the Golden Age are usually much better -- a lot of the Bogart movies, It Happened One Night, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, Helen and God, Jezebel, etc. In many of them, the romantic storyline is an integral part of a dramatic story.

One modern movie that's like this is Intolerable Cruelty. Even though it's a Coen Brothers movie, the heart of the story is George Clooney's and Catherine Zeta-Jones's growing attraction and fascination with each other even while they're trying to cheat and outsmart each other.

and I quote a SHITTY love story:
Sam Baldwin: Although I cried at the end of "the Dirty Dozen."
Greg: Who didn't?
Sam Baldwin: Jim Brown was throwing these hand grenades down these airshafts. And Richard Jaeckel and Lee Marvin
Begins to cry
Sam Baldwin: were sitting on top of this armored personnel carrier, dressed up like Nazis...
Crying too
Sam Baldwin: And Trini Lopez...
Greg: Yes, Trini Lopez!
Sam Baldwin: He busted his neck while they were parachuting down behind the Nazi lines...
Greg: Stop.
Sam Baldwin: And Richard Jaeckel - at the beginning he had on this shiny helmet...
Crying harder

It sounds like a hysterical scene.

It's the only good part!

Thanks!

I think she plays his sister, or former sister in law...

So she starts talking about how all women love "An Affair to Remember", and how it's so sweet, tears up--and to make fun of her the guys start talking about a "male" movie, with the dialogue above. They pretend they're tearing up too... They all end up laughing.

It is a pretty cute scene.

The girls are talking about An Affair to Remember. The guys start to get sarcastic and Tom Hanks starts that dialogue.

It's a moment of brilliance.

...gets me every time. Also Paltrow's Emma.

As Good As It Gets
Don Juan De Marco

Casablanca
Jerry Maguire
Terms of Endearment
Gone With the Wind

Personally, I don't have a problem with "chick flics" when they are well written, directed and acted. It's the overly-sentimental, pandering movies that make me crazy. Then again, that goes for any genre of movie. I still want to retch anytime someone so much as mentions "Forrest Gump."

I liked it because it was very well written, and very funny, as well as being romantic.

Don't ask me why. :shrug:

It was a little slow getting going, but oh my god, best love story ever!!! My husband actually told me I simply had to watch it. He's obviously a romantic, where the hell does it go when he shuts off the tv? :shrug:

:shrug:

?

The Graduate
Groundhog Day
Sex and the Single Girl
Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (and several more Natalie Wood movies)
Boys (strange Winona Ryder/Luke Haas mid-'90's movie)

Those are a few off the top of my head. I think I tend to like romantic movies more than romantic comedies; there are few romantic comedies I want to sit through- they always seem far too unrealistic.
FWIW, I do like romantic movies more than action movies; I pretty much never like action movies.

Plenty of others too, but that's probably the best one. I don't mind Romantic movies if they're well made and original, like that one was. For romantic fluff like, say, Raising Helen, I usually half to play a video game at the same time to stay entertained. :)

I had a huge crush on Meg Ryan after this movie came out. I watch this movie everytime it is on tv.

Victor, Victoria
The Princess Bride
Amelie
Shakespeare in Love
Much Ado About Nothing
Casablanca
Chocolat
Undercover Blues. now this is not a classic romantic comedy in that the couple is already married and the plot is something totally different, but the romance between them is so much fun and adds to the storyline nicely.
Romancing the Stone
Shrek and Shrek 2

I like Renee Zellwegger. It was good that she chose the good guy who was in the wings her whole life after being treated shabbily by the cad. The humor was very well done, and the flirtation and affair between Bridget and her boss seems realistic and understandable even though his character is a dork.

I heard the sequel sucked which is too bad.

after seeing the movie. My daughter and I went when the movie came out..it was our chick flick. Then we rented it and my husband watched. He was smitten with Bridget. Or Renee. Or both.
She nailed that role.

She either tragically dies or otherwise disappears in the end because of unresolvable complications.

That way, the man gets the thrill of love and romance without a lifetime commitment.

If a romantic movie ends in marriage, men hate it.

loved the surreal angle.

I like some romantic movies, however, I have a much greater tolerance for average sci-fi or average action movies than I do of average love stories or romantic comedies. Heck, I can even watch B or C level horror & sci-fi, and unless there is gratuitous female nudity, I won't watch a similar romantic comedy or love story.

I've never seen "Love Story", however, I liked Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, Shrek, Princess Bride and several others.

Yes, it is a subplot, but works all the better for me that way. It's on the box again in an hour's time. I was completely blown away by that actress, Pam Grier. I'd never seen her before.

A strange and hilarious, if kind of accidental manifestation of romance featured on the box last night, in a programme called "Wife Swap". I think you have it in the US, too. Couples swapping partners for a week, I think, not for sexual purposes, but to see how they cope with their new partner's more general expectations and vice versa.

This programme concerned a bloke in a very proper kind of middle-class household, who, however, seemed a bit of a control freak. He expected his wife to meet him at the door when he came home from work, take off his coat (she put it on him in the morning) and his shoes(!), and have a bath ready for him. His wife - I think it was her second marriage - was pretty and demure, evidently sufficiently submissive. The house was kept spotless. They had a young lad, about 8 years old - presumably hers - with whom they sometimes played draughts and chess. We saw him sitting rather forlornly at a computer.

Now, his new partner for the programme was like a force of nature; a good-looking, well-built Yorkshire girl with a heart as big as a house. However, when her own partner, a miner came home from the pit in the evening, he had to make the meal, do the washing, etc. You'd have to say she was a disgrace in that department, as she sat on the sofa all day watching the box, and the place was like a tip. It would be difficult to imagine a greater, more chaotic mess than the place was in. Her husband was a big affable, quiet, good-natured lad, who still obviously felt he had a bargain. They had three or four young children, I think all girls.

Of course given everything else, they were not going to be given a particular time to go to bed, and all in all were a rough and tumble, but very loving family. During the day, when not at school, they'd be out in the street, playing with a number of other kids of both sexes.

Well, when he told her she should put his coat and shoes on and off, morning and evening, she exploded with laughter: "You can kiss my ass" she said. "A'hm not yoor fooking skivvy! Who fook do you think you are! You can kiss my ass!" Much the same when he ventured that she shoudn't wear her tee-shirt with the word "Bitch" written across it, and swear like that in the presence of the young lad.

They were seated at the table having their evening meal, and she started talking to the young lad, nearby, who was not eating with them. He told her that he should give him her attention, not the boy; then herself, and lastly, the boy. And she simply went ballistic! "You've got it all wrong! The little lad comes first! I coom second! The dog cooms third, the cat cooms fourth. And YOU! You coom fooking last!" On another occasion, she commented to the camera that, "He wants to treat me like a piece of shit on his shoe. He's a fooking loony, a fooking loser!"

Anyway she was appalled that the wee boy was never able to play childrens' games with kids of his age, so they took him to tae kwando classes. But he was lost there, so they took him home early. She then took him to parks and generally played childrens' kind of games with him, there and back in his home. It was all a wonderful revelation to the lad, who had evidently quickly come to worship this "strange" earth mother.

When she was about to leave she became tearful and said how she realised she'd treated her husband "like shit", and what a wonderful husband he was, and she didn't deserve him.

Now, that was romantic. (Not roses under pillows, going down on one knee, etc...! But then maybe I'm more like his nibs than I thought!) And when she got back home, she was throwing herself into the housework, keeping up the work the other girl had been doing there, after cleaning it up, and said she found she was enjoying it - which I kind of expected. Most manual work is fulfilling and gives you a sense of wellbeing, particularly if it's what you should be doing.
Hilarious and heart-warming.

This caught dating life in Seattle in the early nineties well. It just worked...

But then, I have a sentimental streak a mile wide!

The scene where he kisses her on the forehead.

because there is basketball in the movie.

the natural also has romance as well.

Great to hear that men do enjoy a romantic moment or two....great picks, too!

About as close to romance as I will get, willingly.

yes, don't laugh. a female friend took me to see it when my campus showed it and i loved it. it was hillarious, well-acted, and the score at the end was phenominal.

also love Eternal sunshine of the eternal mind, both shreks, and i think Titanic is pretty good too.

I have trouble relating to things like that on the movie screen. Maybe if there was a movie with just an average guy who got the woman I could feel it on a personal level. But it's always Ken gets Barbie.
To me science fiction would have more realism to it.

and "Chasing Amy".

arguably my #1 favorite movie. Bull Durham and TAP are head and shoulders above any other movie, IMO. ;)

Between Mulder and Scully. Yes, I know no one ever wrote their relationship to "the next level" because that would of kind of killed the whole FBI partner thing, but gets just to that point, repeatedly-- which is 98% of a romance movie. (then it ends, and everyone lives happily ever after, and the credits roll to some cheesy light rock)

The problem I have with most romance movies is, and maybe I'm crazy, there never seems to be any connection, any chemistry, between the main characters.

Yeah, Amelie was a good movie... very well done, I liked it. But ... a romantic connection between the characters? It just seemed really artificial. Fake. Like the formation of a boy band... something money buys but isn't genuine.

I think it's the little things, you don't notice much on a concious level. Things not written in scripts, not directed. I think the actors themselves need to have some affinity towards each other for this to work.


Or... maybe I'm just on crack.

They have to do the work of making you believe that the characters are attracted to each other, lots of time that doesn't work.

The X-Files drove me CRAZY with never getting them to the next level.

CRAZY. Oh it hurt.

I'm sure they qualify as romantic.

Love for your children and loving someone so much you'd be willing to go to hell for them...you can't beat that.

He spends most of his life chasing Jenny. I love that movie.

But I like a lot of romantic comedies as well. I'm a sensitive softie, just like my dad, who cries at movies quite readily.

From The Sea, and many others. I've read exactly one historical romance that I liked enough to not only finish (very rare) but reread multiple times: The Far Pavilions, by M.M. Kaye (never saw the movie or series or whatever it was though, even though Amy Irving was the first actress I had a crush on, back in Carrie).

Whatshisname cried when we saw it.

I thought Hannibal was a romantic film myself.