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Arts & Entertainment

Staying In for Valentine's Day? How About a Romantic Movie?

Here are a few lovey-dovey favorites for V-Day viewing.

It's Valentine's Day, and romance is in the air. There are many ways to get your fix of Cupid, but sometimes you just want to sit back, snuggle and watch a romantic movie.

Here are a handful of picks made by yours truly that can be found at your neighborhood library, video store or local retailer. It's by no means a complete list, so please feel free to pipe up about your favorite.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

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This 2004 film is a head trip that digs itself into your heart. Jim Carrey plays the straight man, Joel, and Kate Winslet plays the zany Clementine. It starts with Joel getting a note telling him that Clementine has had all memories of their relationship erased, telling him not to contact her or mention it in her presence should their paths cross. Hurt, he decides to undergo the same procedure. However, as the erasure begins, and Joel backtracks through his time with Clementine, he decides those memories are too precious to lose and scrambles to hold on to them. It's a sweet, smart, exhilarating ride.

Shakespeare in Love

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This 1998 film focuses on young Will Shakespeare (played by Joseph Fiennes) struggling with a bout of writers block. He soon finds inspiration in the lady Viola de Lesseps (played to radiant perfection by Gwyneth Paltrow), in a forbidden but feverish love, which ultimately inspires his most famous play, Romeo and Juliet. The film takes some of Shakespeare's most memorable lines and shows how the play became the thing, wrapped in a love story that's equally doomed and wrapped in triumph.

Moonstruck

Cher won an Oscar for playing Loretta Castorini in this 1987 film. Her character gets stuck in a love triangle that easily grows two-sided. Early on she agrees to marry Johnny Cammareri (played by Danny Aeillo), but he heads to Italy to see to his dying mother. He asks Loretta to contact his estranged brother Ronny, played by Nicholas Cage, and she discovers a hot-tempered, fiery man–the opposite of his vanilla brother. They bicker, fight and fall in love, backed by a sparkling supporting cast and fun dialogue. A personal favorite: When Ronny tells Loretta he's in love with her, she slaps him and tells him to "Snap out of it!"

A Room with a View

This 1985 film stars Helena Bonham Carter long before she became the Harry Potter series' evil sorceress, Bellatrix Lestrange. Here she's a young, proper Englishwoman traveling to Italy with her chaperone. There they meet a father and son staying at the same inn, who offer to swap rooms after the ladies express disappointment at their room not having a view. There's a mostly chaste attraction between Carter's Lucy and the son, played by Julian Sands, but Lucy is already engaged to someone else. At first glance the movie may appear to be a proper British period piece, but with its restrained passion paired with the beautiful Italian and English countryside and surprising humor, this is a romantic home run.

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