Romantic Dramas You Will Fall In Love With
Also, see our reviews for new movies Run and Mangrove
We hope you’re enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend! This week we are recommending three romantic dramas you can find streaming now. Each one is very different in story and style, but they are all very much worth checking out.
If you’re looking for a new movie to watch from this year, scroll down for our mini-reviews of the Hulu thriller Run and the Amazon Prime courtroom drama Mangrove. As always, read, share, and subscribe!
Drew recommends…
Before Sunrise (streaming on HBO)
There’s something magical about a movie as simple as Before Sunrise. Two young people, an American man and a French woman, meet on a train traveling through Europe. They both sense an immediate connection. He convinces her to get off the train with him in Vienna to explore the city before his flight back to the States the next morning. The two wander around the beautiful Austrian capital for the next several hours discussing love, relationships, sex, art, God, and much more. The whole movie is pretty much one long conversation.
It’s a credit to director Richard Linklater (Boyhood, Dazed and Confused), as well as stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, that this doesn’t come off as pretentious or insufferable. The entire film is teeming with possibility, emotion, and romance, thanks to the intelligent writing and naturalistic performances from Hawke (he plays Jesse) and Delpy (she plays Celine). They really do seem like two college-age kids with the world at their feet, which means they are idealistic, naïve, cynical, and romantic all at once. Just think back to how you saw the world when you were 20.
But what happens with Jesse and Celine? Do they end up together after their day and night in Vienna? I won’t give it away, but Before Sunrise really does have that rarest of things: a perfect ending. The final scenes leave you feeling wistful and sentimental for the time you just spent with Jesse and Celine.
Which makes it amazing that the sequel didn’t mess it up. If you didn’t know, this is the first film in a trilogy that began in 1995. The sequel, Before Sunset, picks up their story nine years later, and Before Midnight, checks in on them again nine years after that. Somehow they struck lightning three separate times with these movies. The best part is each one will resonant differently with you depending on what stage of life you’re in. Over almost 20 years, Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy present the developing relationship between two complex human beings, showing how age, time, and life’s changes affect Jesse and Celine’s relationship. Before Sunrise is their origin story.
If Beale Street Could Talk (streaming on Hulu)
*Re-post from an April 2019 newsletter
How do you follow up a modern masterpiece and Best Picture winner? There’s no right answer, but filmmaker Barry Jenkins may have done it better than anyone. Adapting a James Baldwin novel that functions equally well as a love story and social critique, Jenkins continues to refine his storytelling and visual skills even after a historic success like Moonlight. From the lush score to the eye-pleasing colors, this is a drop-dead gorgeous film. It also helps that If Beale Street Could Talk is filled with actors that bring plenty of life. Stephan James and Kiki Layne are utterly convincing as the central couple torn apart when his character is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. You really feel like these two are meant for each other. Meanwhile, Regina King delivers an Oscar-winning performance as the strong-willed and emotionally wrecked mother. Melancholy love has hardly looked so beautiful as it does in this film.
Billy recommends…
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (streaming on Hulu)
The production company Neon has been throwing heat the past year with Oscar winner Parasite and Cannes Film Festival favorite Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Both being magnificent stories that bring foreign film to the forefront of the conversation. The latter being a romantic drama that focuses on the quiet and passionate moments of romance.
Director Celine Sciamma brings Marianne, a painter, to an isolated island where she is tasked to paint a wedding portrait of Heloise in secret. Heloise has refused having a portrait painted of her because she refuses the marriage she is being forced into. Marianne is told to act like she has been brought in to be a companion to Heloise. Going on long intimate walks is the time for Marianne to study her face, remember the details, and transfer those memories on to a canvas. This secretive task of painting her portrait forces intimacy and that intimacy turns into infatuation quickly.
Heloise has been sheltered most of her life. Not experiencing much music, love, or adventure. Whereas Marianne is a renaissance woman. A painter, lover of the arts, and willing to take risks, making their walks and moments alone even more electric. One woman who is finally hearing about the outside world and experiencing some of its joy for the first time. And the other who is enamored by the woman who is coming alive seemingly for the first time. Like any great relationship drama we feel the full force of their emotion. The happiness, the lust, the sadness, and the heartache. All of which is shown without a score accompanying the emotion.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire has very little music, forcing the actors’ performances to clearly convey the emotion. Without a score there is no leading the audience into ideal emotion the director wants them to feel. Only masterful performances, writing, and direction can steer the audience correctly. Thankfully for the audience this movie is masterfully crafted and it’s a must that you prioritize watching this borderline masterpiece.
Recent Release Mini-Reviews
Run (streaming on Hulu)
Drew: Coming off Searching, a very solid mystery-thriller filmed entirely on computer and smartphone screens, writer-director Aneesh Chaganty has brought us a more traditional, yet also more fun, thriller with Run. It’s a lean and stripped down story that we’ve seen variations of over the years, taking inspiration from Rear Window, Misery, and Get Out. While this contained thriller — set mostly in the home of a mother and her homeschooled, wheelchair-bound daughter — does follow a fairly familiar path, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a couple of good twists and plenty of fun to be had along the way.
Sarah Paulson plays the controlling and unstable mother with just the right amount of fake warmth and real menace. And the unknown actress Keira Allen, who is a wheelchair-user in real life, nails the part of the daughter that comes to realize her mom isn’t who she thinks she is.
Run is a terrific little horror-thriller that promises and delivers what you want out of movies like these. It’s a tight 90 minutes filled with dread, suspense, and a few spine-chilling moments. - 3.5 / 5 Apples
Billy: Sarah Paulson should only do thriller/horror for the rest of her career. She is spectacular at being unhinged and makes the most insane premise believable. While Paulson is super fun in Run, Kiera Allen is the breakout here. The script asks her to do so much and it all felt effortless. This simple thriller is enticing and showcases a veteran and a newcomer at the top of their game. - 3.5 / 5 Apples
Mangrove (streaming on Amazon Prime)
Billy: Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Widows) explores tragedy better than most directors we have. McQueen profiles an unassuming restaurant called Mangrove that is anointed a sanctuary by the black community of Notting Hill. Through that he shows the immense joy that small “homes” can bring. One location to celebrate, share ideas, and deal with tragedy together. McQueen masterfully shows how tired these leaders get while they are being raided and their sanctuary labeled as a place for savages, but through that exemplifies the resiliency of the people that call this place a home. The attempts to take this place away is their country trying to take away their humanity. Confronting all of this emotion in a gripping courtroom drama. Mangrove is a beautiful film and this “Small Axe” series is an interesting experiment that McQueen is masterfully handling so far. - 4.5 / 5 Apples
Drew: Mangrove is a powerfully told courtroom drama with forceful performances from a terrific cast. With this and The Trial of the Chicago 7, it’s funny that we got two courtroom movies centered around a group of protestors in the same year that we had widespread protest against racial injustice for months. I mostly liked Sorkin’s depiction of the Chicago 7, but Mangrove reveals the difference between a decent director and a great one. Steve McQueen is the perfect filmmaker to tell this story and he does so with potency and grace. Of the cast, I was particularly impressed by Letitia Wright (Black Panther) and am even more certain she’s on her way to stardom and/or awards recognition in the future. She’s just one of several really interesting performances in Mangrove. If this is any indication of the quality of McQueen’s Small Axe series, we are very fortunate. - 4 / 5 Apples