You might not love movies about love, but enough people around the world do to keep movies about the subject coming out on a near-constant basis. Really, cinema has never been starved of romantic movies, because the silent era had films like Wings and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, and then by the 1930s and ‘40s, there were classics like Gone with the Wind and Casablanca, to name just a couple.
But to look at some others that are (slightly) more recent, here are the best romance films – most of them quite popular and/or potentially influential – that have come out in the past 30 years. Love is not dead, at least for anyone who likes going to the cinema or otherwise spends a good chunk of their free time watching movies.
10. 'The Handmaiden' (2016)
To be fair, The Handmaiden and some other soon-to-be-mentioned movies are more than just romance films, but if love plays a decent role in the story at hand, they're worthy of consideration here. And The Handmaiden does manage to be quite romantic and certainly passionate at times, all the while also functioning as an excellent (and thrilling) film with a historical setting.
It takes place in the 1930s, and revolves around two con artists trying to swindle an heiress and her uncle, but complications arise when one of the con artists starts to fall for the heiress romantically. It’s a lavish film to look at, it proves intense at times, and also just feels like a believable and broadly emotional romantic drama, doing wonders with what might, on the surface, sound like a somewhat hammy or pulpy premise.
9. 'La La Land' (2016)
La La Land takes a premise that seems almost comically straightforward, about falling in love and having to deal with the inevitable challenges, and elevates it to new heights, marking a technical advancement for director Damien Chazelle. Really, describing the plot would be doing it a disservice, because two people meet, they fall in love, and then they find other areas of their lives pulling them apart, resulting in eventual emotional turmoil.
It's a movie that just wants to be about the love between two people clashing with the love one can feel for what might be their purpose in life; the love of art versus the love for another human being, and what happens when one has to be chosen for the other. If you're fortunate enough to have seven or eight hours to spare, La La Land would make for one part of an excellent triple feature alongside Cinema Paradiso (1988) and New York, New York (1977).
8. 'Y Tu Mamá También' (2001)
Y Tu Mamá También is pretty much just focused on three people throughout the majority of its runtime, but it still manages to feel oddly epic and sweeping thanks to the emotions it explores, and the amount of ground the characters travel. The latter is inevitable when you have a road trip premise, and the highly emotional stuff also makes sense when you consider Y Tu Mamá También is a coming-of-age movie (albeit an unconventional one).
There is a lot that this movie says about love and the meaningfulness (or lack thereof) of sex, and it does so in a way that’s probably a bit more soul-crushing than it is romantic in the traditional sense. But so long as you're okay with some heavy stuff, Y Tu Mamá También is essential, as far as the best romance movies of the 21st century so far go.
7. 'Call Me by Your Name' (2017)
Another romance movie with a simple plot, and a film that also tells a coming-of-age story, Call Me by Your Name might well be the movie to blame if you're sick of seeing Timothée Chalamet everywhere for whatever reason. But it’s clear to see now (and was honestly pretty clear in 2017) why this movie made him a star, and he’s a big reason why the film is ultimately so heartbreaking.
At its core, Call Me by Your Name is focused on the soaring highs and crushing lows of falling in and out of love for the first time, capturing the good and the bad, and ensuring that you, as a viewer, really feel it all. The film is a slow and sometimes even relaxing one, but it’s easy to fall into, and the atmosphere it conjures throughout is truly something special.
6. 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' (2019)
A film that successfully transports you back to the 1700s while telling an extremely moving and intimate story, Portrait of a Lady on Fire isn’t an epic in the traditional sense, but it looks grand and unpacks some understandably huge/passionate emotions. Things start simply enough, with one woman being sent to an island with the task of painting the portrait of another.
Then, the two start to fall in love, though it happens at a very slow pace that isn’t boring; more quietly hypnotic and realistic, just because of how gradual everything feels. Portrait of a Lady on Fire ultimately explores a love that can’t last, due to the way society functioned at the time the story was set, but it’s inspiring stuff while it does last, and the quiet tragedy of it all is as beautifully executed as it is soul-crushing.
5. 'Before Sunrise' (1995)
By 2026, Before Sunrise will no longer be a movie released in the last 30 years, but it will forever remain one of the most purely romantic movies of its decade. It’s a film about a chance encounter between two young people on a train, and follows them as they decide to spend the night together, with their possible romantic feelings for each other growing with every new scene.
It’s simple, but the act of falling in love when you're young can be straightforward, too, and that’s what Before Sunrise wants to capture more than anything else. There are sequels, too. 2004’s Before Sunset and 2013’s Before Midnight are also excellent (and arguably more complex/nuanced), but Before Sunrise is the most romantic of the three because it centers on the characters at such a stage in their lives.
4. 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (2004)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of the definitive break-up movies, so those looking for sunnier movies about romantic relationships might not find what they're after here. It’s about two people who undergo a process that removes the other from their memories, but even then, getting over an ex isn’t shown to be easy, especially when they find each other again.
Essentially, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is all about how falling out of love will always be hard, no matter what potential technological advancements in the future might allow. That speaks to the undeniable and inevitable human struggle that is a relationship falling apart, and whether you take comfort or find horror in the universality of such a thing is really quite up in the air.
3. 'All of Us Strangers' (2023)
It’s probably safe to call All of Us Strangers something of a modern classic, and a film that will continue to endure and/or haunt viewers well into the future. “Haunt” is a good word to use here, because All of Us Strangers is about ghosts, memories, loneliness, and the struggles of love, all of which can put a human mind under immense psychological strain.
That probably makes All of Us Strangers sound a bit heavy and intense, and… well, it is. But it is also romantic and quite beautiful, providing moments of catharsis alongside the confusion and heartbreak. It is one of the most emotionally impactful movies to have been released in recent memory, and there aren’t really enough nice things that can be said about it. It does just about everything it can exceptionally well.
2. 'Titanic' (1997)
Speaking of intense movies that are also romantic, Titanic is a monumental movie in scale and ambition, functioning as both a disaster movie and a film about a passionate love affair taking place right before tragedy strikes. On the fictitious cruise ship, two people from very different backgrounds meet. While the first half of the movie shows them falling in love, the second half mostly shows them trying to survive after the ship hits an iceberg.
There’s terror and passion to be found in equal measure here, and Titanic can also count itself as one of the worst movies an individual with a fear of water could ever watch. It’s a long film, but it does so much within that 3+ hour runtime that the epic length ends up being more than justified. As far as romance-heavy blockbusters go, they don't really get much better than Titanic.
1. 'In the Mood for Love' (2000)
Given In the Mood for Love is one of the best films of all time, it’s not too surprising to also call it maybe the best romance film of the last three decades. It does a lot without saying much, and though it is intensely romantic, it’s also very mild in terms of what you do see. The passion is felt, rather than witnessed, and the plot itself is also surprisingly slim, or borderline not even elaborated upon.
Two people have feelings for each other, maybe, and are drawn together because their respective partners are both cheating on them. Rather than feeling like some convoluted movie about a messy “love square,” In the Mood for Love just explores complex emotions in a sometimes abstract but always moving fashion. It’s intensely cinematic and impressionistic, and is therefore a bit hard to describe with words in a way that does it justice, but it’s earned its status as something of a modern classic for good reason.
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