Top 10 Favorite Romantic Movies

Valentine's Day is here and I LOVE this holiday. Why people seem to feel the day is ruined if they are single is a concept lost on me. I love romance and I love the day on which we celebrate it wether I am single, with someone, out on the town or just holed up in my apartment watching my favorite romantic movies with a big bowl of popcorn and a box of kleenex!

Here's my top ten personal picks if you're alone at home on V-Day or looking to take in a quiet movie at home with your favorite cuddler:

10. The Sterile Cuckoo - Mia Farrow once called Liza Minnelli's performance in this film, "The best acting performance by a woman on film." It is one of the most overlooked pieces in Minnelli's repotoire as she portrays Pookie Adams, a frightfully co-dependent girl who teeters on the verge of falling in love or having a nervous breakdown at any given moment. Ultimately though, Cuckoo is for us outsiders what Splendor in the Grass might be for the prom queens. It's reminiscent of first love as a rite of passage and how it changes our lives forever. Best Quote: "Save me a seat."

9. The Way We Were - If ever there was an original on-screen duo that was sure to make you weep it was Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. Again, it hits outsiders at their core with Streisand lusting after a man she thinks is totally out of her league only to find once getting together with him that it's he who is out of her's. As two very different people going in very different directions, they find that sometimes love just isn't enough. Best Quote: "You'll never find anyone as good for you as I am, to believe in you as much as I do or to love you as much."



8. Threesome - Probably my most unlikely pick for a "most romantic movie" on the list, but Lara Flynn Boyle, Josh Charles and Stephen Baldwin never fail to make me cry in this coming of age sex-com. Three best friends in college: She loves the gay boy, he loves the straight boy and he loves she who has no interest in he! But their friendship knows no bounds and through their love for each other, they try in every way possible to find ways to compromise and to cope. Best Quote: "If you eat my yogurt again, I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna fucking kill you."

7. The Goodbye Girl - The screen adaptation of this Neil Simon script might be one of the few to be light years better than the play. Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss are thrown together by a comedy of errors that forces Dreyfuss to become selfless and Mason to let down her defenses. It's not so much the story as it is the perfect dialogue for the perfect actors that makes you fall in love with these two as they fall in love with each other. Best Quote: "I was an Elizabethan fruit fly. I was the Betty Boop of Startford-on-Avon. I was putird. Capital P, capital U, capital TRID."



6. The Bridges of Madison County - Meryl Streep's secret love affair with Clint Eastwood is one for the record books when it comes to unrequited love and "the one that got away." Their on screen chemistry sizzles in this perfect screenplay adaptation of the bestselling novel about two people's last chance at finding true love beyond the details of their mundane existences. Best Quote: "When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children, in one way her life begins, but in another way it stops. You never think that love like this can happen to you."

5. On Golden Pond - Who doesn't want to be Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda after seeing this movie? It almost makes getting old look fun! With a love that has lasted a lifetime, they find that while they may have slowed down, life around them moves rapidly forward. Their banter is as eternal as their bond. But with Jane Fonda's own tale of finding love, it is a veritable changing of the seasons, with she in spring and her parents in winter on Golden Pond. Best Quote: "You know, Norman, you really are the sweetest man in the world, but I'm the only one who knows it."



4. Sleepless in Seattle - The ultimate Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan pairing, Sleepless gives us all hope that everything we experience in life is meant to lead us to that special someone. In the most unlikely of premises with the most insurmountable of obstacles, we find ourselves rooting for the impossible and praying that these two find each other by the movie's end. It's the supporting performances too of greats like Rosie O'Donnell and Rob Reiner that make every second of the movie shine. Best Quote: "What is tiramisu?!"

3. Titanic - It is the Gone with the Wind of my generation, that epic movie that comes around only once in our lifetimes that we go back to the theater to see over and over again. It sparked Leo mania and it made all us hate the theme song, but above all else it is a timeless classic of a love far bigger and stronger than the boat it's named after. Best Quote: "I'd rather be his whore than your wife."



2. Casablanca - Ingrid Bergman must be one of the most beautiful women who have ever walked the face of the planet. And to watch Humphrey Bogart give that up to save something so much greater than himself makes us all believe in that superhuman type of man who would put his own heart on the railroad to protect that which he believes in and loves. Best Quote: "If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon and for the rest of your life."




1. Moulin Rouge - I've actually broken up with people because they hated Moulin Rouge. Seems silly, but I just know in my heart that the love of my life would never "hate" something so romantic, so why waste my time? It is, to me, everything that a great romance should be: Passion, drama and music. Maybe it hits me so hard because I do work in an industry full of Satines and I've seen so many "penniless poets" fall so hard for them. Whatever the case may be, I never tire of seeing Nicole Kidman's icy heart melt at Ewan McGregor's warm words and how they make such beautiful music together. I think I may have had a heart like her's until the year this movie came out. Moulin Rouge taught me how important it is to be open to love and it continues to remind me that love will find you even in the most unlikely places. Best Quote: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."