Reviews & features: Romance

Top 5... time manipulation movies

Inspired by the trailer for About Time, we recount the 5 best chronologically-challenged movies

The trailer for writer-director Richard Curtis’ new time travel rom-com, About Time, was recently released, giving us first look at the love story between the chronologically gifted Tim (Black Mirror’s Domhnall Gleeson) and the object of his affections…

Billy Liar

John Schlesinger’s classic British New Wave comedy has a warm and light touch

Not many classic films have also enjoyed success as a book, play, sitcom and musical. It’s testament to the timelessness of Keith Waterhouse’s source novel, about a 19-year-old lad who ‘can’t say two words to anybody without telling a lie’, that the…

Love is All You Need

A syrupy, genre-led romcom-lite starring Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm

Love, apparently, is all you need, which could be why Susanne Bier has forgotten about nuance, character, wit and candour. Expectations were high for the Danish director of 2010’s Oscar-winning In a Better World, but she has let herself down with this…

World premiere of Not Another Happy Ending announced as 2013 Edinburgh International Film Festival closing gala

Programme features romantic comedy starring Karen Gillan plus Richard Fleischer retrospective

The world premiere of Glasgow-set romantic comedy Not Another Happy Ending is set to close the 2013 Edinburgh International Film Festival, which runs from 19th 30 June 2013. Karen Gillan, best-known for her role as Amy Pond in Doctor Who, stars in…

The Host

This Stephenie Meyer-adapted sci-fi has some good ideas let down by dull scripting and wooden acting

Whoever decided to combine the talents of author Stephenie Meyer and writer-director Andrew Niccol should never eat lunch in this town again. Both have form in coming up with intriguing, high concept storylines: an adolescent human falls in love with…

To the Wonder

Terence Malick's impressionistic hymn to falling in and out of love

You wait six years for a new Terence Malick film -- that was the gap between The New World and The Tree of Life -- and then another one materialises barely a year later. Advance reports indicated that this was the enigmatic director’s most…

Safe Haven

A bland, 'vanilla' film about true love conquering all, starring Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel

The Nicholas Sparks novel-to-screen hit-machine shows no sign of slowing down; A Walk To Remember, The Notebook, The Lucky One, and The Last Song have all delighted teenage girls worldwide. Director Lasse Hallström previously paired Amanda Seyfried and…

Populaire

Immaculately styled French period romcom starring Déborah Francois and Romain Duris

This immaculately styled French period romantic comedy signals its pedigree with a colourful cartoon credit sequence reminiscent of cute and kookie Hollywood comedies circa the 1950s and 60s. And in fact, co-writer and director Régis Roinsard’s feature…

Run for Your Wife

Hopelessly dated and poorly executed comedy starring Danny Dyer

This comprehensively cack-handed adaptation of the long-running West End stage sex comedy will have all but the most thick of skin and dim of humour running from the cinema as though their very lives depended up on it. Co-director and screenwriter Ray…

Warm Bodies

Hollywood's stab at the zom-rom-com starts off well, but slides into Twilight-style storytelling

Having already deprived vampires of any real bite and declawed werewolves into the bargain, Hollywood now turns its attention to zombies and attempts to tap into their sensitive side with zom-rom-com Warm Bodies. The result, while not quite dead on…

Five of the best cinematic unhappy endings

This Valentine's Day, enjoy some movies where the two leads don't live happily ever after

WARNING: This list contains major spoilers.

Playing For Keeps

A rigidly formulaic and shamelessly sentimental romcom starring Gerard Butler

Gerard Butler has fared pretty badly when it comes to tackling romantic comedies (if you dare recall The Ugly Truth and PS I Love You) and his latest film doesn’t improve on his record. A predictable tale of redemption, Playing for Keeps is a…

Celeste and Jesse Forever

Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg star in an intriguing take on the well-worn romcom genre

A couple of years ago Hollywood posed the question of whether a man and a woman could be friends without the question of sex rearing its head (No Strings Attached, Friends With Benefits). In Celeste and Jesse Forever, writers Rashida Jones and Will…

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part 2

A fitting end to the teen vampire series, starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart

As the final chapter arrives, it’s time to bid farewell to the Twilight vampire saga. Never again will we see Robert Pattinson’s Edward sparkle, Kristen Stewart’s Bella pout furiously or Taylor Lautner’s Jacob gratuitously remove his shirt. But for…

Laurence Anyways

A mannered, pretentious and ragged yet beautifully crafted and touchingly performed romantic drama

Xavier Dolan is an incurable romantic. His films are drenched in an intensely cine-literate sense of longing and frustrated desire. They display the melancholy of a Wong-Kar Wai brief encounter and all the self-consciousness of a nouvelle vague…

Silver Linings Playbook

How interesting that a director who’s taken considerable heat for certain issues around personal interaction should hit a creative peak with a film about the roots of shoddy behaviour, and the potential for its forgiveness. Might this be a case of…

Keep the Lights On

A thoughtful, tender film that recalls Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Keep the Lights On is personal in a way that harks backs to American independent cinema of an earlier era. Director Ira Sachs has transformed moments from his own life into a thoughtful, tender film that brings to mind the melodramas of Douglas Sirk and…

Thaandavam

Overlong masala movie starring Vikram, Amy Jackson and Santhanam

Kenny Thomas (Tamil superstar Vikram) is a blind man leading a double existence: by day he plays the organ at a rural Kentish church; by night he uses echolocation to assassinate targets in London. His life becomes more complicated with the intrusion of…

Now is Good

A great performance from Dakota Fanning fails to save this shallow look at terminal illness

After emerging as a child actress in Man on Fire and War of the Worlds, Dakota Fanning came of age in The Runaways and Now is Good, Ol Parker's adaptation of Jenny Downham’s novel Before I Die. With short blond hair and a gaunt appearance, Fanning's…

Liberal Arts

Gentle indie romcom from How I Met Your Mother's Josh Radnor

A successful and beloved US sitcom star delves into his soul, and finds there a story of revisiting one’s past, coming to terms with one’s mistakes, and getting it on with a gorgeous, playful, precociously wise young woman. That was how the world got…

Ruby Sparks

Thoughtful, engaging romcom from the makers of Little Miss Sunshine

The directors of Little Miss Sunshine deal once again with the clash between romantic idealism and vulgar, messy reality, in a thoughtful, engaging romcom that draws great work from its central pairing. Paul Dano – Little Miss Sunshine’s mournful…

Take This Waltz

Michelle Williams on compelling form in Sarah Polley's romantic drama

Are you old enough to remember the anthemic Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles, which will go down in pop history as being the first ever music video to play on MTV? Canadian actress turned director Sarah Polley uses the song on two occasions to…

Lola Versus

Floundering rom-com that lacks punch

Despite the combative title, which suggests a film with attitude, Lola Versus is a rom-com so lacking in fizz and confidence it’s virtually apologising for its own existence. Directed and co-written by Daryl Wein (Breaking Upwards) it stars former…

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Disappointing apocalyptic romcom starring Steve Carell and Keira Knightley

The directorial debut from Lorene Scafaria (writer of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) begins with the announcement that the final mission to save the Earth from obliteration by an asteroid has failed. Initially it’s hilariously cynical as, with just…

The Five Year Engagement

A lack of comedy lets down an unexpectedly truthful treatment of romance

Following in the footsteps of last year’s excellent Bridesmaids, The Five Year Engagement is the latest romantic comedy from the seemingly endless Judd Apatow production line. Reuniting the Forgetting Sarah Marshall team of writer/director Nicolas…