THE REEL: 5 movies to spice up your Valentine’s Day

Here are five movies to enjoy this Valentine's Day. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • The argument that love should be celebrated every day and not just on one specific day notwithstanding, there’s definitely something in the air about this day.

Valentine’s Day is finally upon us once again.

The argument that love should be celebrated every day and not just on one specific day notwithstanding, there’s definitely something in the air about this day.

How people choose to celebrate or observe this day is up to them: picnic, dinner, cards, a night out, a lunch date, cook-in, or simply an exchange of cards.

However, if you’re into something visual with that special someone, then you might want to watch the following flicks which are almost cultic to believers of love.

DEAR JOHN

This 2010 movie is about a soldier who runs into a girl from college, who is volunteering with some of her college mates in his beach-side hometown and a relationship ensues.

It is an adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' 2006 novel by the same name. Staff Sergeant John Tyree (Channing Tatum) is on leave in Charleston, South Carolina. Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) and other students are helping to build homes in the area.

The two cross paths when John helps Savannah to recover her purse from the ocean.

She introduces him to her world and he does the same. He eventually he goes back to the military, and the two exchange letters to keep the relationship going.

However, when he enlisted as part of the men who are to go off and fight in the Afghanistan war, the distance puts a strain in their relationship… Will such a love survive distance, the uncertainty of John’s safe return, or Savannah’s sensitivity?

TITANIC

This 1997 classic movie got released again in 2017 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the blockbuster’s release.

It’s hard to describe a romantic movie as a blockbuster, but the efforts that went into creating Titanic are way beyond what any love story, other than Avatar (both movies are directed by James Camron) have been put to.

This epic romance disaster movie follows Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) on a tragic sea voyage.

Rose is engaged to Cal Hockley (Bill Zane), from a high class English family. Her mother keeps emphasising to her about how her marriage to him will solve their financial issues.

Jack is young man trying to get his break in life.

In 1912, they both end up on the maiden trip of the ship Titanic heading from Southampton to New York.

Rose doesn’t really fancy Cal and she attempts suicide by trying to jump of the ship. Jack talks her into giving life another chance.

The two start seeing each other during the voyage and Rose realises that she actually prefers Jack to her fiancé.

Will a guy with the big bucks allow Rose to not only slip away from him, but into the hands of a man he deems as inferior?

WINTER’S TALE

While most romantic movies seem to have a more life-like expectations and approach to the subject of love, this 2014 flick is a fantasy tale. Peter Lake (Collin Farrell) is a thief raised by a supernatural demon posing as the gangster Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe). In a confrontation with Pearly, after Peter decides to leave the gang and is marked for death, he is rescued by a mysterious (winged at times) white horse, his guardian angel.

The horse encourages him to steal from a mansion where Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay) lives, a young woman dying of consumption (which just means tuberculosis), whose fever is so high she sleeps outside in a tent in the winter cold. Beverly discovers Peter preparing to rob the house. They proceed to tell each other their stories and fall in love.

Eventually, Pearly finds Peter and pushes him off the Brooklyn Bridge. How Peter survives this fall is the stuff of fantasy, of course, but he is 119 years old in 2014 and physically undiminished even though he has no memory of his past.

He has to save a girl, Abby (Ripley Sobo), from cancer as he believes her to be his miracle, while at the same time avoid Pearly’s radar, who still has it out for him after discovering he is still alive.

BREATHE

Breatheis a 2017 biographical drama film that was a directorial debut by Andy Serkis (you may remember him as Ulysses Klaue in Black Panther and Avengers Age of Ultron).

This powerfully emotive film portrays the story of Robin Cavendish (Andrew Garfield), who meets, falls in love with, and marries Diana (Claire Foy).

At this time, he has quit the army and is in the tea-broking business in Africa.

A short time after his wedding, in 1957, he gets posted to Kenya. In 1958, he gets struck down by polio and it paralyses him from the neck downwards.

He can’t breathe without the use of a mechanical ventilator and is flown back to England where the doctors give him only a month to live.

The movie is mostly about Diana’s resolve not to give in to the modern-day thought process that there’s a limit to the phrase “in sickness and in health, for better or for worse” in marriage vows.

She works tirelessly to try and find a cure for her husband’s ailment, or at the very least ensure he’s comfortable. She researches on technological as well as medicinal possibilities that could give her husband some sense of a ‘normal’ life, for whatever time he could have left.

If you need to see how far love can truly stretch, look no further than this movie.

THE VOW

This 2012-released romantic drama movie is also based on a real life event. Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Leo (Channing Tatum) are involved in a motor vehicle accident as they are coming from a husband and wife date-night.

Paige is tossed out of the vehicle, which gives a massive head trauma injury that forces doctors to induce her into a coma.

When she comes to, a few weeks later, she has no recollection of anything past her first years of college.

This means that the man she had been living with as her spouse for the last few years is a total stranger to her.

To make matters worse, she remembers her former fiancé, and her parents, who were in disapproval of the life she had chosen to live, as an artist rather than a lawyer, seize this opportunity to re-script her life.

Leo finds himself having to start the process of wooing his wife all over again even as she becomes rooted to the person she was, who is totally a different woman from the one he met.

Will she remember the life that she had happily chosen for herself and the man she later came to marry, or will these just be a memory for the husband to treasure for the rest of his life as his wife starts a new life without him?

These are some of the recommendations I got upon asking around. You may also want to check out The Notebook, Think Like a Man, and Kenyan productions like Disconnect, Rafiki, and Plan B (this one is actually showing at The Hub from tonight to February 17).

Have an enjoyable Valentine’s Day movie night!

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