Valentine’s week looms ahead and it’s time to get creative with the movie choices. Now, I’m very well aware that the expected choices would run towards something like Gone With the Wind, Pretty Woman, Ghost and Grease. But let’s face it, chances are you will have already seen these classics a dozen times so my input in that direction won’t be exactly helpful.
The perfect proposal movie, as long as neither half of the couple minds a couple of odd corpses strewn along the way.- Ramona Depares
The good news is that, when it comes to love (not to mention its corollary) the cinematographic offerings are pretty endless and run the whole gamut from the comic to the tragic, the artsy, the uplifting... You name it, and chances there’s a movie about it.
Those with a penchant for the dramatic and the gothic – and who aren’t squeamish when it comes to raw emotion – would do well to start with Alex Proyas’s The Crow.
Best known for being Brandon Lee’s last movie (he died tragically in a gun accident on set), The Crow has a lot more going for it, not least the fact that it depicts what most of us believe to be love in its purest form. As love stories go, it doesn’t get more tragic. On the eve of their wedding, Eric Draven and his fiancee are brutally murdered by gangsters on the rampage. What follows is a chilling tale of revenge as Eric reaches from beyond the grave and goes seriously medieval on all those involved in murder.
The fact that Eric’s motivations are the purest of all somehow makes all the carnage just fine and we still find ourselves rooting for him.
Add a killer soundtrack (featuring The Cure, Stone Temple Pilots, Nine Inch Nails and Violent Femmes among others) and all you’re missing is the solitaire. It’s the perfect proposal movie, as long as neither half of the couple minds a couple of odd corpses strewn along the way.
The more traditional romantics among you will probably be shaking their head by now. Fear not – for you, I offer you Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride. A fun frolic with all the necessary ingredients for a successful date night. There are swashbuckling pirates, love-sick knaves, a giant played by the legendary Andre The Giant and, of course, the obligatory princess.
Besides the feel-good vibe and the traditional fairy-tale plot, the film is also famous for the amount of quotable quotes it yielded. Lines like “he’s only mostly dead”; “I just want you to feel you’re doing well. I hate for people to die embarrassed”; “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”; “Consider me as an alternative to suicide”. You get the gist. You’ll laugh, you’ll go “awww”, you will get high on love and on the happy ending... in short, you really can’t go wrong with this one.
For those whose tastes are a tad less, shall we say, orthodox, Stephen Shainberg’s Secretary is a good choice, particularly for Maggie Gyllenhaal fans. But do make sure that your date is not the easily shocked kind. Not that there is anything crass or obscene about this movie – on the contrary it tackles a risquee topic with incredible panache. Having said that, I’m not sure that sexual domination in a post-50 Shades of Grey world still qualifies as a risquee topic.
Despite the seemingly ‘out there’ theme of the movie, this is actually a very sweet love story that focuses on the strange ways that fate can bring two soulmates together. Gyllenhaal brings to the movie an element of innocence and naivite, while James Spader... well, he’s alternately scary and cute, quite the combo.
The last trick out of my movie-going hat is a cutesy, fun-filled offering for those who are after the closest thing to a traditional rom-com: Nicholas Stoller’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Fans of the TV series How I Met Your Mother will be happy to know that it stars Jason Segel (who also wrote the script). Segel pretty much plays his How I met Your Mother role on this movie but, hey, it works. And more to the point, so will your evening.
Now don’t forget to book those roses!
rdepares@timesofmalta.com