Saturday, February 11, 2012

get in the mood for valentine's day without having to get all liquored up

(though i do recommend it. it helps a ton.)
valentine's day is a toughie, i know i talked about this a little in a previous post but i just don't do the whole red and pink, let's watch the notebook style mushy stuff. i just can't. i'm not really romantic, more practical. in fact, for our dating anniversary last week, i bough my husband a growler of hard cider. awesome gift, but hardly romantic. on valentine's day every year, i used to just go to a reading of the vagina monologues and go grab a burger. yeah. this was even after i got married (though i didn't drag my husband along for the monologues. just the burgers). we don't even do presents anymore. we claim that it's too commercial and forced, but it's really because we are cheap and strange.
anyway, here are some movie suggestions to get you in a romantical mood before v-day. none of them involve rachel mcadams or the notebook in any way. i even skipped titanic, since that's more of a coming-of-age story than a romance anyway. but if you're anything like me (and i have to doubt that you are, for various reasons), you'll enjoy them and they may make you feel like holding hands or making out or whatever it is you want to spend your valentine's day doing. here goes nothing:
1. stranger than fiction. when will ferrell buys maggie gyllenhaal flours instead of flowers? that's the easiest way into any baker's heart. and when she just has to throw the guitar down and make out with him? i feel that way about the hubs like, all the time. "i want you" is a good come on, i think, and it should be all that's needed.
2. the sound of music. they're in love from the minute he blows that stupid whistle, and you can tell. that's how real love starts anyway, isn't it? once you find youself getting annoyed but putting up with it anyway? then when they're dancing, there's no denying it.
3. moulin rouge. i'm a sucker for musicals, as you can tell. when she dies (sorry for the spoiler. hope you've already seen it!) and ewan mc gregor starts sobbing at the end, i am usually also sobbing loudly into my bowl of icing or whatever.
4. clerks 2. of course some kevin smith movie had to make the list, and the original clerks couldn't because it's really a bromance and nobody cares about the women. but in clerks 2 when dante and becky are dancing on the roof? too cute. of course, you shouldn't drop a pregnant woman, but that's neither here nor there.
5. almost anything with john cusack in it. i say almost because i think that he was in identity, which was supremely not romantic and just creepy, and 2012, which looked stupid, but for every one of those, he is in something like serendipity (one of my least favorites, by the way) or say anything or one crazy summer or my personal favorite, better off dead (i love how he saves that poor little french girl from his strange neighbors. and then they go to dodgers stadium. that's love). plus he's in high fidelity and even though i don't like that foreign blonde he ends up with in the end (i was hoping that reported at the end would pan out), he makes mix tapes, which as we all know are the ultimate expression of love and mean even more now in a era where you can just make a playlist for an ipod but that doesn't take any effort or barely any thought and it's hardly as romantic as a tape.
so from this you should be able to gather that the only things i really find romantic are booze and burgers and musicals baseball and mixtapes. this is true. it's a good thing that hubs also values all of these things highly (well, i think he's up in the air about musicals, but he'll come around eventually), so we make a reasonably decent pair.
what "romantic" movies do you recommend?

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