Romance

The romantic comedy is always interesting. As one of the most popular and referenced genres in film, it feels like every avenue has been explored and subverted. Ultimately, this led to a lull in good…

At this point, the age of Apatow and the Farrelly brothers ruling the comedy landscape by mixing gross-out comedy with sentimentality is long gone. Nothing has exactly filled the void, either — unless you count…

I feel bad for period lesbian romances in a post-Portrait of a Lady on Fire world. How can you possibly match up to a film that basically perfected the love story? (I found myself thinking…

A man sits on a bench, wrapped in a coat he’s owned for years. He rests his feet at the head of Jaffa Street in Jerusalem. A tour guide comes along, decked to the nines…

If you, reader, are anything like me, you are hip to any and all entries into the sapphic film canon. From Desert Hearts to Booksmart, every time there are two ladies kissing, my corner of Twitter…

I’m back, folks, with another review of a lesbian period romance. The most recent film to enter this illustrious canon is Ammonite, written and directed by Francis Lee. Ammonite stars Kate Winslet as Mary Anning,…

Stereotypes are a detriment to good writing. They create clichés, generalize the vast amount of nuance many cultures hold, and worst of all, they’re unoriginal. The Irish stereotype of a lush green land full of…

The most important relationships in any teenager’s life, no matter where they are in the world, are their friendships with other teenagers. It’s the crux of socialization, of discovering one’s own identity, of creating a…

We’re getting to the point where noticing similarities between a movie and the hellscape that is the current pandemic is reaching levels of self-parody. (“She Dies Tomorrow has a virus that spreads from person to…

A multi-year romance set in the 1950s Harlem jazz scene starring Tessa Thompson? Sounds promising, right? Eugene Ashe’s Sylvie’s Love has so many things going for it, following Thompson as the bright-eyed, ambitious Sylvie who begins…

You’d think that after Portrait of a Lady on Fire, we wouldn’t need romances, or even narrative films, anymore. I mean, Céline Sciamma has kinda been there and conquered that. Be that as it may,…

Call Me By Your Name, a gay coming-of-age romance, blew people away in 2017. I had not seen a film that touched me with a gay male protagonist so much until I watched No Hard…

The Half of It, the most recent iteration of Cyrano de Bergerac, after Sierra Burgess is a Loser, follows Ellie, a shy, hardworking nerd, as she helps Paul, a slow but sweet jock, try to win the…

One of the very, very tiny benefits of the current state of the world which is otherwise forcing me to have an existential crisis every twenty minutes is the ability to discover some of the smaller, more…

You don’t always know how important something is until you’re confronted with its sparse reality. It’s sort of the converse of saying you don’t really appreciate something until it’s gone. Universal’s new film, The Photograph,…

Dating at a young age is like trying to maneuver through a minefield, especially in relationships that go horribly wrong. You still have no idea who you are, and you can almost forget knowing how…

I’m always fascinated by what people in the industry can do with such limited resources. It’s a constant reminder that filmmaking is a marvel. And also that it’s hard. Incredibly hard. Amazingly, for Olympic Dreams, director…

When it comes to films with a heavy focus on artists and art in general, it is difficult to not be a little apprehensive. It can often be a slippery slope leading into shallow self-indulgence…

Every so often, I watch a movie and am immediately filled with dread afterward because I have no idea how to discuss it. Any critic will tell you that the hardest reviews are those you…

A teacher engaging in a sexual/romantic relationship with his/her sixteen-year-old student is a subject fraught with a moral quandary — besides the fact that it’s illegal, of course. A fundamental societal norm has been broken:…

We owe a lot to the French New Wave. Minds like Truffaut, Godard, and many more fundamentally changed how we looked at film. And now, in present-day, director and actor Louis Garrel is adding a…

When I reviewed Welcome to Marwen in 2018, I lamented the fact that many movies “based on a true story” seem to add in a love story. Even if the real story did not contain one.…

Though you might not think it at first, Seth Rogen is one of the more dependable stars that we have in Hollywood. You have a sense of what you’re going to get in each of…

Hi, it’s me again with another teen romance. Obviously I am suffering from some crisis after turning 30, and I accept whatever moral judgement you wish to throw at me. After, in a nutshell, is…

Dating is so, so tough. Showing vulnerability in the face of possible rejection is one of the more harrowing experience the common single person can encounter. Now add to the mix that the single person…

When I heard about Five Feet Apart, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to watch it, regardless what the critics said about it. Firstly, it brings attention to cystic fibrosis…

Every genre has it’s expected clichés. The romantic comedy genre is no exception. The new movie, Isn’t It Romantic, both revels in the clichés and mocks them in gleeful fashion. The following review will be…

With a distinct lack of romantic movies to drown myself in this Valentine’s Day, I decided Untogether would just have to do, even if the title sounds distinctly unromantic. I was not expecting much, given…

At the Sundance Film Festival back in January of 2017, word quickly spread about a little film from Italy entitled Call Me by Your Name. Although its subject matter was controversial to some, it quickly became…