By Anastasia Lazari

• When you think about cinema’s greatest moments those time tested, all-time best that remind us why movies are great. How many of them are heart stopping and romantic? When you really want something that hits deep into the soul, it’s time to watch romantic movies!

One of those when you want big feelings, swelling music, broken hearts or dances on the rain get ready to fall in love again!

FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002)

Inspired by the romantic melodramas of the ’40s and ’50s, this Todd Haynes-directed film follows a suburban housewife whose life seems idyllic from the outside, but inside is another story. Things get even more complicated when she strikes up a friendship with her young, African American gardener. Julianne Moore was nominated for an Academy Award for her role.

A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT

This movie represents a re-teaming of the director and star of Amélie. Audrey Tautou plays a woman whose fiancé disappeared somewhere on the front during World War I, and she has to investigate what’s happened to him. Can she keep her faith that he’s somewhere alive and waiting for her?

THE NOTEBOOK (2004)

Based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, this romance spans decades, flipping between a couple’s first blush of love in the ’40s and the present-day reality of how that relationship has transformed in old age. And while that may be moving, we sometimes forget everything that happens after

ONCE (2007)

This musical film is romantic without most of the trappings of what we see in a traditional romance. Instead, an Irish busker and a Czech immigrant strike up a musical relationship, and work together to create an album. They must’ve had some real chemistry, though, because a song from the film won an Academy Award for Best Song.

BRIGHT STAR

Directed by Jane Campion, who won the Best Director Academy Awards for her 2021 film The Power of the Dog, Bright Star tells the true story of poet John Keats and his muse, Fanny Brawne. There’s no yearning like poetic yearning.

THE VOW (2011)

This movie is based on the amazing true story of real-life couple Kim and Krickett Carpenter; after a tragic car accident, she loses her memory, and he has to find a way to make her fall in love with him all over again.

ANNA KARENINA (2012)

Playwright Tom Stoppard adapts Leo Tolstoy’s celebrated novel, with director Joe Wright giving the story new visual twists and turns that make it almost seem like a theatrical production more than a movie. The story follows the upper-echelons of Russian society, and how affairs of the heart can change a person’s social standing.

CAROL (2015)

Based on the novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, Carol tells the story of an affair between two women in the 1950s, so you get the pleasure of watching all the sumptuous period dresses and interiors in addition to being swept away by the romance. This film also features an Oscar-nominated performances from Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

LOVING (2016)

This film is about a love so strong it literally changed history. It’s based on the real-life story of Richard and Mildred Loving, whose Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, made it illegal for states to have laws barring interracial marriages.

LA LA LAND (2016)

As its name suggests, this film takes place in Hollywood, and has just the right dose of movie-magic fantasy. The musical follows Seb (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) as they chase their artistic dreams.

A STAR IS BORN (2018)

If you’re looking for a story about people brought together by talent and torn apart by fame, you can watch a number of takes on A Star Is Born: There’s the 1937 original with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, the 1954 version with Judy Garland and James Mason or the 1976 remake with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.

THE PHOTOGRAPH (2020)

This movie is really two romances in one: It follows Mae (Issa Rae) in the present day, as well as her mother, Christina (Chanté Adams), in the past. After Mae finds a hidden family photograph, she’s sent on a journey to discover her mother’s past, but is finding herself on a powerful, unexpected road instead.

THE LAST LETTER FROM YOUR LOVER (2021)

This movie unfolds in two timelines, so you get a contemporary romance along with one filled with great period details and costumes. In the present, a magazine writer is sent into the publication’s archives for an assignment, where she finds a misfiled love letter detailing an affair that happened in the ’60s. Still reeling from a recent breakup, she delves into researching the letter writers, uncovering more of their story.

LADY CHATTERLY’S LOVER (2022)

This movie is based on the super-steamy, often-banned novel by D.H. Lawrence, and it lives up to its source material in intensity. It follows the life of Constance Reid, an aristocratic wife whose eye turns toward her estate’s gamekeeper when her husband returns from the war paralyzed from the waist down. Their affair would upend social norms in a variety of ways, but can she resist his allure?

CYRANO (2022)

The love story of Cyrano de Bergerac is nothing new, but feels fresh in this adaptation through original songs, written by members of The National. Peter Dinklage gives a career-best performance as the title character, co-starring alongside Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Haley Bennett.