When she’s trapped on the mainland by rough seas, she finds herself falling for crotchety naval officer Roger Livesey. Plus the final scene with Bill Nighy and his manager is guaranteed to thaw a frozen heart! Welcome to a world before contraception, as acclaimed playwright William Inge’s Oscar-winning script puts in place a devastating conflict between fundamental human desires and layers of obfuscating social hypocrisy. David Lean’s super-sized epic of love lost and found – several times over – across a half-century of tumultuous Russian history may seem to have fallen slightly out of fashion these days. Meanwhile, Wong’s stop-go camera captures the restless bustle of pre-handover Hong Kong, and the melancholy sway of the original ‘California Dreaming’ sets the seal on an off-hand masterpiece. The climactic whispering scene is the most talked about (what does Bob tell Charlotte?). Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into his. It’s far from subtle, but certainly delivers more grit than a payload of weepy master Nicholas Sparks’ adaptations. All that, and a weepy Portuguese rendition of ‘Be My Baby’ on the soundtrack. GL, Cast: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin. And, for once, they would be right on the money. At the same, he never lost sight of the essence of Shakespeare’s tale of two young lovers doomed from the first time they lay eyes on each other. Not many romantic comedies starring Steve Martin can claim to be based on an 1897 verse play…. Like its bumbling protagonist, Hawks’ archetypal screwball classic went from disaster to darling. It’s impossible not to be swept along by the gorgeous Broadway-style song and dance numbers and by what one philosopher called the fairy tale’s ‘great message’ – ‘that a thing must be loved before it is lovable’. The attraction is instant, but the unstable political landscape tears their relationship apart time and time over. So we’re more than happy to indulge it, like the cinematic equivalent of a dirty weekend. While the latterday framing device is somewhat clunky, the central middle-aged romance is exquisitely inscribed through tender looks, stolen moments, and much sultry jazz on the radio, building to a wrenchingly bittersweet conclusion that love’s liberating affirmation doesn’t always arrive when circumstances allow it to flourish. TH, Cast: Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Richard Denning. This anarchic romance was made by French New Wave filmmaker Godard at the height of his powers and starred his then-girlfriend Karina and Belmondo, the thick-lipped, brooding star of his earlier ‘Breathless’. Teenager Elio (Timothée Chalamet), juggling at least one girlfriend, finds himself developing a deeper relationship with Oliver (Armie Hammer), who has arrived at the family’s summer home to become his father’s research assistant. CC. TH, ‘I will find you!’ With these words, bellowed to his beloved (Madeleine Stowe) as she’s hauled off by rampaging Native American braves, Daniel Day-Lewis secured his position as the ultimate thinking woman’s crumpet. When she quit, he’d all but given up hope of finding his Amélie, until he spotted Tautou on a film poster in the street. It’s so heart-floodingly romantic, you’ll forget about the cat corpses left in its wake. Most of the fun lies in gender-bending games of mistaken identity that would make Shakespeare proud. Cameron Crowe made his directorial debut with the film after proving he had a keen ear for realistic and memorable dialogue in previous work. Grant plays a self-made professional whose dreamier impulses don’t match the sensible life he’s fashioned for himself; Hepburn is the free-spirited sister of his wealthy, straitlaced fiancée, in whom he finds himself curiously able to confide his most fanciful ambitions. Undoubtedly the best screen romance where half of the couple spends most of the runtime in a coma. Audrey Tautou is irresistible as lonely waitress Amélie, who discovers her purpose in life: to make other people happy with anonymous acts of kindness.