Having to choose on Valentine's Day

Most of us don't have to choose on Valentine's Day. You either have a significant other or you don't. 

For those who have multiple families, well, I guess you do choose the one you like best and then you're on a business trip for the other one. But that's not a lot of people.

Of course, it's not actually Valentine's Day in the movie Eternity, it was only Valentine's Day when I watched it. And I had to choose to watch it over the other movie I planned to watch, which wouldn't have had a Valentine's Day theme at all. But when my wife and I finally watched the first episode of Pluribus with our dinner, that brought me on to AppleTV+, where I was reminded that Eternity is an Apple movie and it's only just been released on their streaming platform -- in time for Valentine's Day, of course. Whenever possible, I do enjoy a themed viewing. 

Pluribus was our only joint viewing last night. While my wife and I do sometimes watch a movie together on Valentine's Day, and it even sometimes has a romantic plot, it's not expected or even typical. You see, we don't really celebrate Valentine's Day in our house. Not that we've never celebrated it, but when we did, mostly in our earlier years, it was more for my benefit than for hers. See, her birthday is only five days later, and she is even more opposed to the tacky commercialism around Valentine's Day than I am. Americans are raised with a tolerance for this sort of thing; Australians, at least some Australians, are not.

And this year, there was a reason we weren't doing anything at all to acknowledge the holiday, but it's not something I need to get into right now. I'll just say it doesn't have anything to do with our relationship. It's external to that.

Anyway. Let's discuss the movie. 

David Freyne's film was my biggest accessible regret before my 2025 rankings closed. I could have seen it in the theater before that deadline, but I just couldn't make it work, in part because of the same unnamed thing that's been going on with our family for the past couple months. 

But I generally love movies with high concepts and movies involving the afterlife. One of my favorites, to which this bears more than a passing resemblance, is Albert Brooks' Defending Your Life. I had high hopes for a movie in which an elderly woman dies of cancer, and then in the afterlife has to choose whether to spend eternity with the husband of 65 years who died just a little bit before her while choking on a pretzel, or the husband who died 67 years earlier in the Korean war. She wasn't "unfaithful" to either of them in life because she was single when she met and married both of them, but now she's got a dilemma. 

The husband she lost in the 1950s represented only young love and endless possibility. He was handsome and charming. The husband she had for 65 years after that was a person whose every wart she learned over a lifetime of everything life throws at you. You could see why she might not want to spend a literal eternity with him after spending a figurative eternity with him on Earth. But also, she doesn't really even know the husband she lost 67 years earlier because they only had a couple years together and it was all unrealized promise. 

It's a more interesting dilemma than it is an interesting movie. I'm giving Eternity a marginal thumbs up, but I was more conscious of its missed opportunities than I was of its successful execution of the central dilemma. I was also really conscious of the earthbound nature of the sets. There are a few scenes that give us something with a true afterlife vibe, but I was continually noticing how most of the scenes were likely just shot in a hotel hallway somewhere. Maybe it would have been too much of a distraction, and problematic in a different way, to have the whole thing look like Pixar's Soul -- not to mention costly, which is likely the most relevant factor. But in a movie like this, you want to think more about the heavens than you think about Courtyard by Marriott. 

I think the movie probably did not want to wrestle with its more interesting existential concept, which it introduces as "the void." As lovely as some of the eternities appear to be -- and you can choose from multiple packages like you were choosing a vacation -- they are a single, final choice, so you have to select them carefully. If you try to escape from your eternity to get into another one, well, there's a small chance you'll succeed. But the greater chance is that they'll catch you and send you off to the void: which is just blackness for eternity, the closest thing to hell that exists.

Unless you are inclined to believe in heaven, we mostly think of death as a light being switched off and an end to consciousness. You're no more conscious of the time after death than you were conscious of the time before you were born. This film posits a potential eternal consciousness of nothingness, which indeed would make someone insane pretty quickly. But the film doesn't really go there. It doesn't show us this, only suggests that it exists. 

For reasons that I again won't go into -- but I've hinted enough at them that you might be starting to guess them -- Eternity was actually the most thematically appropriate film I could have watched on Saturday night, having nothing to do with Valentine's Day and having everything to do with early February 2026. Death was on my mind. And even though Eternity didn't grapple with it in as satisfying a fashion as I might have liked, any grappling with death is helpful in terms of coming to grips with it, and getting closure with it, in our own minds. 

On that cheery note, Happy Valentine's Day, for what remains of it in your time zone. 

Watching my Valentine's movie before Valentine's Day this year

There's being committed to watching movies at thematically appropriate times and then there is just being stupid.

Last year on Valentine's Day, I tried to convince my wife to watch Roman Holiday, the second movie in my monthly Audient Classics series, with me. She wasn't interested, so I watched it by myself.

Stupid, I told you.

As it turns out, my wife would have been interested in something else -- if you follow me -- only I didn't read the room correctly. We had not had a special dinner and though we did have a cocktail while starting our latest puzzle, it seemed to me that Valentine's Day was effectively being treated like any other night.

I won't make that mistake again, and to prove it, I watched the overtly romantic classic film on February 13th this year.

That film was Love Affair, a title I had heard before, but only got on my radar as something to watch because I saw it pop up on Kanopy the other day. One of my unofficial benchmarks for it being the new movie year -- yes, I'm still talking about "new and old movie years" -- is that I need to watch something truly classic, and a film released in 1939 seemed to fit the bill. 

Only as I started watching, and not until around the midway mark, did I realize Leo McCarey's movie has the same plot as An Affair to Remember -- which is in fact a remake of Love Affair, released 18 years later. Interestingly, both films are directed by McCarey. It's like when Alfred Hitchcock remade his own The Man Who Knew Too Much.

An Affair to Remember is the one that gets referenced in Sleepless in Seattle and arguably has the bigger stars (Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, as opposed to Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne, the former of whom I'm not sure I knew). But I think I ultimately preferred Love Affair. There's just something so sympathetic about Dunne, and Boyer is very sympathetic for a Frenchman. (Sorry, any French readers who may be reading this, but your people are often portrayed as snooty or as unrepentant playboys.)

This is sort of a funny analysis because I think Kerr is great and Grant is probably my favorite classic actor among men. I just looked it up on Letterboxd and I also gave An Affair to Remember four stars, so whatever difference there may be between them, it's small.

And now that this is out of the way, I can enjoy Valentine's Day tonight totally unencumbered by my love of the cinema. The love of my life deserves my attention tonight.

No Valentine's movies for anyone

It's Valentine's Day, but is it really?

Actually, it isn't really in Australia -- that was yesterday. But for North Americans and Europeans reading this, it still is, or might still be, if you are reading this soon after I post it. 

Or sort of is not.

COVID is still running rampant many places around the world, and the timing is such that even a place where it hasn't been lately -- Victoria, the state that houses such metropolitan areas as Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo, and the state where I currently live -- is about halfway through a five-day lockdown caused by a breach at one of our quarantine hotels.

So even here people aren't feeling very Valentines-y this year. 

When I asked my wife if she wanted to watch "something special" on Sunday night, she said, "You mean you want to watch a romantic comedy?"

"Yeah, I guess no," I said.

And I really didn't want to. I wasn't feeling it. 

Valentine's Day is not a big deal in our household anyway, as my wife's birthday is just five days later. We usually at least mark it with cards, sometimes the occasional chocolate or two and probably a yummy dinner, cooked on our own stove. This year, we ordered takeout from a local Mexican restaurant. It's yummy Mexican and was, indeed, our one gesture toward Valentine's Day this year. Oh, and I wore a red shirt, which is my custom. 

The other gesture we usually make is to watch a romantic comedy. Last year, for example, was a real win with my second and her first viewing of Always Be My Maybe. 

This year?  

At least we went for something that would put a smile on our faces: the third-to-last episode of Schitt's Creek, the end of which we are drawing out as long as possible. As two of the main characters are preparing for their wedding, it at least had a chance to be romantic, though this particular episode was not.

Later, I watched the sci-fi movie Synchronic, which was not romantic either.

Onward and upward.

If you're enjoying a traditional Valentine's Day, more power to you. Let's all get vaccinated and meet back here this time next year to watch Sleepless in Seattle. 

Watch Maybe with your certainty

Or even if you’re not certain about the person. This won’t push them any closer to “maybe” status, and in fact, could push them toward that certainty. Or, I should say, push you toward that certainty, since you’re the one making the suggestion.

Okay, maybe watching a movie is not the way to go on Valentine’s Day, if you are truly trying to woo someone and convince them of your capacity for grand romantic gestures. But maybe they don’t like grand romantic gestures. Maybe this small one is just the ticket.

Always Be My Maybe was one of the true delights of 2019, the kind of movie I would have loved to get higher on my chart just because it’s the kind of old-fashioned romantic escapism we once loved, in an up-to-the-moment package. It landed at #29, which is still pretty high praise on a list that contained 146 titles.

My wife and I never do much more than watch a movie to celebrate Valentine’s Day, in part because she’s never really fancied grand romantic demonstrations, at least those that conform to the Hallmark parameters of this holiday, and in part because it’s only five days before her birthday. So we will, indeed, be watching Always Be My Maybe tonight, her for the first time.

I hope you don’t need a sell job on the movie, since you have Netflix and probably had the movie’s trailer start playing for you automatically when you lingered on it once in the selection list. Netflix needs to increase the time it takes to start playing the trailer when you linger, but that’s a subject for another day.

For today, Valentine’s Day, I invite you simply to turn on this very funny, very sweet story of two young(ish) Americans of different Asian ancestry (he’s Korean, she’s Vietnamese, though actress Ali Wong is actually of Chinese-Vietnamese descent) as they try to figure out if they are more than just friends. There’s also an incredible cameo, as discussed in a roundabout fashion (though you probably are already aware of it) several times on this blog.

Oh, and if you are just allergic to romance entirely, you could still watch it for the humorous songs of the in-movie band, Hello Peril, fronted by Wong’s co-lead, Randall Park. One of them relates to the cameo, but the others are funny too.

It’s easy because it’s on Netflix, and if you haven’t seen it already, you’re behind the times. So get on that, and have yourself a very happy Valentine’s Day.

Valentine's Day not quite cancelled

We were going to cancel it outright.

It was no reflection of anything that was going on between my wife and me, or in our lives in general. It's just that my wife has never cared all that much for Valentine's Day, in part because she tends not to be very sentimental, and in part because her birthday is just five days later. (There's also the fact that she likes chocolate-flavored things, but not actual chocolates very much.)

Me, I wore a red shirt as I always do, and would have been fine to celebrate February 14th as we mostly always have because my wife is very nice about humoring me.

But to be honest, I'm about as tired as she is with a busy start to the school year and just feeling run-down in general. Not finding a card, a gift to satisfy the sweet tooth, and a special themed dinner was fine with me.

But when she suggested watching Coherence on Valentine's Day, I drew the line.

Coherence, a film I have out from the library, is a movie I very much want to see. But it's not a Valentine's Day movie. It has something to do with weird phenomena caused by Halley's Comet, or some other comet, flying overhead. I want to know what that weird phenomena is, but not on Valentine's Day.

We could let all the other traditional means of marking the day fall by the wayside, but not the Valentine's-themed movie.

So I went through our streaming services and came up with a list of ten options, which I later augmented to about 13 when I got an email from Kanopy specifically highlighting some of their options. Because why not, here's the email containing those ten items I sent to my wife, verbatim:

1) Hello My Name is Doris - Streaming on Netflix. If I remember correctly you might not have seen this. It's from the same director as that movie The Baxter that I think you really liked. It finished just outside my top ten a couple years ago. Stars Sally Field.

2) Forgetting Sarah Marshall - How about a classic? I saw that it was streaming on Netflix but of course we own it also.

3) The Feels - Streaming on Netflix. Care to be progressive by watching a lesbian romantic comedy?

4) Something Borrowed - Streaming on Netflix. (Probably bad) mainstream rom-com but I've never seen it.

5) How Do You Know - Streaming on Netflix. Copy the description from #4.

6) Hitch - Streaming on Stan. It's Will Smith so maybe it could be fun?

7) Eat Pray Love - Streaming on Stan. It's got Bali in it. 

8) Begin Again - Streaming on Stan. John Carney's follow-up to Once. I don't think you saw it but I could be wrong.

9) She's All That - Streaming on Stan. "Classic" romantic comedy that I've never seen.

10) Ali's Wedding - Streaming on Kanopy. This is Australian right?

11) None of the above.

I hoped she wouldn't choose #11, but I didn't want to be a movie-pushing tyrant so I did leave that option open to her.

She didn't choose #11, but she got close to it with #10, the only of the initial Kanopy options I'd listed. So the Australian movie won out. Not only Australian, but actually set in Melbourne, where I live.

And though we hadn't thought it likely to plan a special dinner, we did order take-in from a local Mexican place. I ate too much and got sleepy on a margarita and a beer.

Which didn't prevent me from really enjoying Ali's Wedding, which may be available on your own iteration of Kanopy if you're looking for something to watch tonight. (Though offerings do differ depending on your local library.)

I was worried this might be another version of something like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, only with Iraqi immigrants in Australia rather than Greek immigrants in America. Not having been a fan of that movie, I was more generally not looking forward to a quirky comedy that focuses on, and makes all the usual jokes about, a big, lavish wedding.

That's not this movie. In fact, the title is a bit misleading. There is indeed a wedding that ultimately plays an important role in the film, of sorts, but this is more the story of a kid who lies about his score on the entrance exam to go to university to become a doctor, in order to please his father, and all the repercussions of that choice. One of those is meeting and falling for an Australian-born girl of Lebanese descent. I won't even tell you if that's his future bride at the wedding.

It's a really sweet, and I presume somewhat realistic (it's based on a true story), look at life in a community of Muslim immigrants in Melbourne, who are fixed in their ways but ultimately show more humanity than we might initially have expected of them. Yeah, they've got set ideas about gender roles -- the Australian Lebanese girl has similar aspirations to become a doctor that her father is trying to squash -- but they're capable of surprising us, and being counterintuitively progressive members of the community at large. (Ali's father, a cleric, has also written a musical about Saddam Hussein.)

Overall it was just a really sweet experience and a better way to spend Valentine's Day, I'm betting, than Something Borrowed.

A Ruby red Valentine's Day

I've been stalking Ruby Sparks for months now.

Walk into almost any business that sells videos, and I'd glance to see whether they were carrying it. If so, whether it was at a miraculously cheap price.

Though I didn't want my third viewing of my #1 movie of 2012 to be a rental, I did take note at nearby Video Ezy of when it might leave the new release shelves and become a weekly rental. That would mean a lowering of the price to $1.90 (it's otherwise around $5) and a whole week as opposed to only three nights (and only one night when it's brand new.)

And so it was that I was in Video Ezy this past Tuesday, and it was finally gone from the new release shelves. Two of the three copies could now be found in a spot reserved for new weekly rentals, the movie's last stop before its final destination in the comedy section. (At least, I assume the comedy section is where it will belong.)

The third copy? For sale as an ex-rental, for only $9.95.

Ooh.

I had it in my hands. I was really going to buy it.

But then I thought about how I still don't have a job, and how our reserve of cash is seriously dwindling. I figured I'd have a lot easier time selling my wife on her first viewing of the movie if it cost me just under $2 rather than just under $10. And I didn't want to give her any external cause for carrying a bias into her viewing.

So I did something I rarely do: I rented a movie I knew I was going to one day buy.

That's alright. If I'm moving back to the U.S. in two years, I'd rather have a copy that can play there anyway.

Now that I could get the movie for a whole week, that made it a perfect candidate for our Valentine's Day viewing three nights later. Ruby Sparks may not profile as your typical Valentine's Day movie, but that's kind of what made it the perfect choice -- in the neighborhood of what a typical couple might rent, but far more challenging and intellectually stimulating.

It was one of those weeks where it was just one thing after another, one small defeat following on the heels of the one before it, and by Friday night we both seriously wanted to open a bottle of wine. It was hard to tell whether it would resemble anything like your typical Valentine's Day, with my wife only six weeks removed from a Caesarian and neither of us thinking of any of the usual Valentine's Day activities.

Well, I started things off on the right note with this ...

... (that's heart-shaped meatloaf, in case you're wondering) ...

... and after an episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine (a fairly romantic episode at that), it was time for Ruby Sparks.

I must admit, I was nervous. Nervous like you get when you are finally putting your money where your mouth is. What if I showed this movie to my wife -- trying to avoid those surreptitious glances, constantly assessing her most minute reactions -- and she didn't like it? And had to strenuously find nice things to say to endorse my #1 ranking? Let's put it this way: I feared that high soprano lying voice. "YAA-uh. I LIIIked it."

Well, my reputation for recommending films is safe for one more day. "I really liked it" was her immediate reaction. It wasn't the "I loved it" I was hoping for, but you don't add the "really" if you don't mean it. Unless it's a soprano "really," but this wasn't.

Having talked about it for ten minutes afterward, she may have been tiptoeing toward "loved it" territory.

At the very least, it went nice with our wine.

Happy Valentine's Day to you and yours.

Lady's choice: Valentine's Day Edition

For Valentine's Day, and for the second night in our bi-weekly Tuesday Lady's Choice Movie Night series, I had what may have been a first:

I started watching a movie without knowing what it was.

Okay, there was that time in that hotel when pressing a button repeatedly on a non-responsive remote control accidentally ordered us Balls With Fury. (Which we quite enjoyed.) But this was the first time someone had curated a movie-watching experience for me, without me knowing what it would be.

See, it was my wife's choice of movie again -- she chose two weeks ago, as you will recall from this post. Getting to choose again was to make up for the way I had dominated our viewing agenda in January, in my push to finish up my 2011 rankings. And she had a choice for Valentine's Day, but she wanted it to be a surprise. Which was quite possible, since the Netflix account is in her name, and she gets the emails notifying us which movies have been shipped. I did actually have a little Netflix business to transact on Monday -- I added The House of the Devil to our instant queue -- but I was sure to avoid the through-the-mail queue. And so moments before the movie started, I still didn't know what it was.

Really, I'd have liked her to carry through the idea one step further. When she saw that the title didn't appear on the DVD menu, she told me to open my eyes. I was familiar enough with the image in the poster above to immediately know what it was. Too bad, as I'd have loved the chance to see if I could guess which movie it was before the title actually appeared on screen. (Don't know if I would have -- I'd forgotten that Jane Campion directed this film until last night.)

Bright Star is beautifully shot and quite powerfully acted, I think. I've been a fan of Ben Whishaw since his admittedly minimalist performance in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and I sung the praises of Abbie Cornish back in this post. But the real surprise in terms of the actors was Paul Schneider, erstwhile of the first and second seasons of Parks and Recreation and the early movies of David Gordon Green. I had to look him up afterward to make sure he wasn't Scottish, because he did an incredible Scottish brogue. I also learned, to my surprise, that The National Society of Film Critics bestowed their 2009 best supporting actor award on Schneider for this performance. He had to share the award with Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds ... but damn, Waltz won everything that year, making the feat impressive indeed. (Of course, it also highlights the quirks of this critics' group -- Schneider didn't get an Oscar nomination.)

Despite its evident strengths, Bright Star was, however, too long and too slow. We'd had wine with our pasta dinner, and it was really dragging us down. We probably needed a 90-minute movie rather than a 120-minute one. But we also probably needed a movie that felt like it went somewhere a little faster than this one did, and brought us a bit closer to the characters than the proximity we achieved here.

But there was one moment that was absolute perfection, both in terms of the holiday and my personal cinematic interests. I've written before that I love what I call Wax Stamp Movies. These are movies that either actually feature letters that are sealed by wax (usually red wax), or have the kind of production design that would include such a wax-sealed letter. Set between 1818 and 1821, Bright Star is such a movie. In fact, there were a half dozen different instances of wax stamps appearing on screen.

One in particular stood out. Fanny Brawne, played by Cornish, receives a prank Valentine card from Mr. Brown (Schneider). It's given to her as a way of mocking her, as their mutual contempt is thinly veiled. But it has the effect of making the lovestruck John Keats (Whishaw) jealous. Anyway, this couldn't have been a more perfect moment for our Valentine's Day, making Bright Star an unexpectedly perfect choice for our second Lady's Choice Movie Night. So of course I had to take a picture of the paused image, which you'll see below.

Hope you had a great February 14th.

Four days late, many dollars short

I thought it was a strange enough decision to release This Means War on Valentine's Day, a Tuesday, even before this past weekend at the box office came and went.

It's not your typical romantic comedy by any stretch of the imagination. Clearly, there are romantic comedy elements they are trying to emphasize, otherwise the Valentine's Day release date makes even less sense. But if you're going to release the movie on the actual holiday, the only way to capitalize on the general buzz created by the holiday is to get couples who are planning to see it that very night, on opening night. You'd be better off just releasing it the Friday before, like The Vow.

How much better off? Just ask The Vow.

The Vow led a jaw-dropping weekend at the box office with a staggering $41.2 million in domestic ticket sales. I don't know what the actual projections were for its performance, but I can only assume this shattered them. I mean, that's a blockbuster-sized opening. It's especially noteworthy given the fact that romance movies have become increasingly marginalized in terms of their mainstream box office potential.

But it wasn't just The Vow that performed mightily this past weekend.

I had checked the box office tallies on IMDB (something I do some Mondays, but not every Monday) to assess how The Phantom Menace performed in its opening weekend. As you remember from last week, I discussed that the Star Wars team has threatened to withhold the other 3D re-releases unless Episode I had a strong box office performance. When I saw it came in fourth, I figured that fans had indeed turned their noses up at it. But when I looked at the box office total next to it, I realized that wasn't really the case. Even in fourth place, Episode I hauled in $22.5 million. Not bad, really. Perhaps enough to give us Episode II.

So that means there were two other movies that made over $22.5 million this past weekend. Those being Safe House ($40.2 million) and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island ($27.3 million), which both probably qualify as very healthy returns on their projections. In fact, even the fifth and sixth place films cracked $10 million (Chronicle with $12.1 million, The Woman in Black with $10.1 million).

In essence -- maybe now that the football season is over -- audiences were just throwing their money at whatever was available on screen. You telling me This Means War wouldn't want in on that? One wonders if even its six-day total, tallied sometime this Sunday afternoon, will rival those totals.

Of course, one of the things I like to write about on this blog are release dates that seem over-crowded, especially when there are two movies that could speak to the same audience. Even without This Means War, February 10th was one of those release dates I almost wrote about. For about six weeks leading up to it, every billboard in town carried a release date of February 10th. Perhaps This Means War was the last to try to come out that day, and shifted forward to the 14th to avoid the bloodbath.

But a bloodbath implies that although there may be some winners, there will definitely be losers. In a very strange phenomenon, none of last week's new releases lost out. Even finishing fourth out of the new movies, The Phantom Menace can't be too disappointed because it's a movie most of its audience had probably already seen. Re-releases are known commodities that are already available on video, which makes them a tougher sell to begin with. Methinks this is probably one of the most successful openings ever for a re-release, which makes its fourth place finish quite easy to stomach.

But back to This Means War for a second. Is it possible that even the stars of this movie knew there might be something wrong with it? I'm thinking of one star in particular. Let's see which one it might be ...

Could it be ... this guy?

Nope, he's on board. He's got that sly smile. He's happy enough to be here.

Could it be ... her?

Nope. She took the same direction as the other guy. Sly smile, you're happy to be here.

What about ... this guy?


Yep. That's the one.

Is it just me, or does Tom Hardy look like a deer in the headlights here? Is Tom Hardy contemplating firing his agent? Is Tom Hardy pleading with us, asking us "What the hell am I doing here?"

Since making his first real mainstream appearance in Inception, Hardy has gotten very good notices in two films, both of which came out last year: Warrior, for which there was even some awards talk, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Those titles don't solidify him as some kind of indie darling, but they do seem like intelligent choices made by a selective person. (He's also in The Dark Knight Rises this summer.)

This Means War doesn't seem like the kind of movie he'd have chosen, if he had his druthers.

If you think you know that about him, it makes this poster even funnier. It really highlights the contrast between the expressions Chris Pine and Reese Witherspoon are making, and the blank stare offered by Hardy. Of course it's possible the photographer didn't want all three of them to be making the same expression. But it's more fun to think that Hardy was so unenthusiastic about this movie that he couldn't even play ball for the poster.

So if you're spending your Valentine's Day at the movies tonight, at least Pine and Witherspoon hope you'll consider This Means War.

Hardy's hoping you'll go to The Vow, so his agent won't try to get him more roles where he plays a lovestruck spy in a McG movie.

Should we spend Valentine's with Kate & Leopold?

My wife and I don't make a big deal about Valentine's Day, because it's only five days before her birthday, and we're usually trying to save our special activity for then.

However, we do like to honor it in minor ways. You know -- wearing red, eating a nice dinner (at home these days, since we have a baby), and watching a romantic-themed movie.

But as usual, we forgot to line up our Netflix queue so as to get just the right movie delivered to our house in time for the big day. And while Netflix streaming has plenty of options, they are not necessarily good ones. In fact, I went through the "romance" section, all 13 pages of it, and found only a handful of instant viewing options I thought were worth the risk. There were a lot of titles I'd never heard of -- probably for good reason -- and a lot more titles that somehow slipped into the romance category because the two main characters have a romantic subplot. Big deal -- almost every movie you see involves a love interest for at least one of the characters.

So I made a trip to the library on Saturday to pick up the three most promising titles. I skipped such marginal choices as Ever After, Leap Year and Love Happens, and came away with Say Anything ..., Love Story and Kate & Leopold.

For some reason, I thought my wife hadn't seen Say Anything ... She has, but she saw it for the first time within the last decade, and declared it a little bit dated. (I haven't seen it in 15 years -- she might be right.) And she'd also seen Love Story recently, which I've never seen.

So ... Kate & Leopold?

It has two thumbs up from Ebert and Roeper on the box. I always thought it seemed potentially cute, but probably not more than that. Potentially cute might be good enough for Valentine's Day ... or it might not. One factor in its favor is that it stars Hugh Jackman. Like my wife, Jackman is Australian. Perhaps there's some inherent interest there.

So I ask you, dear reader ... is Kate & Leopold any good?

At least, good enough for two people who celebrate Valentine's Day in a pretty casual way?

An exception to every rule

Just as I rushed to explain having watched Paul Blart: Mall Cop in this post, I figured I ought to hurriedly explain why you're seeing Valentine's Day listed among my Most Recently Seen movies.

Simple: It was an out-of-town movie. And when the stars align for you to see a movie when you're out of town, the novelty is such that you hardly care what it is.

Especially if the setting is something as cute as the Ojai Playhouse in Ojai, California, about 30 miles from Santa Barbara and 80 miles from LA.

But the Ojai Playhouse isn't just cute. In fact, it's state-of-the-art, which is a true rarity among the breed of financial losers known as the single-screen movie theater. Because I bemoaned the apparent approaching extinction of these theaters in this post, I was glad indeed to find one that doesn't seem to be teetering on the verge.

Which means the owner is probably taking a bath on it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

From the outside, it looked like it might indeed be one of those theaters -- dumpy, continuing to exist mostly because they haven't spent any money on upkeep since the 1970s. The movie titles (they had a couple features sharing one screen) were displayed in those letters you hang on the sign using one of those magnetized poles. Having stepped inside, I now recognize it as a retro touch, but at first it struck me as a sign of datedness.

I'm kind of surprised we even got to the point of stepping inside. We were only in Ojai in the first place as a quick, low-cost road trip for my wife's birthday, and I expected we'd spend more of our time exploring the small town's offerings than sitting in a movie theater. Then there was the little matter of the movie playing two hours after our arrival, at 1:30: Valentine's Day, the romantic comedy that had been ripped by critics from northern Maine to southern California. But she found there to be something potentially charming about the theater as well, and surprised me by saying she would be willing to venture a viewing of Valentine's Day. I didn't realize she'd be quite as eager as I was to let circumstances obliterate our standards.

Stepping inside, though, we discovered a theater lovingly kept up by its owner. The snack bar and ticket counter were quaintly gathered into one shared area, raised about a foot above the rest of the lobby. The snack offerings were written out tastefully on a chalk board, with different colors of chalk, and a professional level of chalk calligraphy. The lobby had nice new burgundy carpeting, and posters of several movies coming soon to the theater, in shiny new frames.

The man from whom we bought our tickets was almost certainly the aforementioned owner. He was a smiley man with black hair in his late 40s-early 50s, and he had the math skills of a person who certainly didn't have to sweat every penny. When my wife handed him a twenty for two $8 matinee tickets, he handed her back three fives and two ones. Now, we are trying to save money, but she was too honest to let him charge us $1.50 per ticket. When she told him he'd undercharged us, he took back one of the fives. Which still meant we were getting two tickets for the price of one. We didn't feel the need to correct his math a second time.

The theater was simply stunning. The seats were new and comfortable, leading to the conclusion that the theater had been gutted and refurbished sometime within the last three years, maybe even more recently than that. Along the walls were giant, stately black and white portraits of movie stars -- a young Robert Redford, a young Jane Fonda, a young Omar Sharif. It was all extremely elegant and tasteful.

I needed to relieve myself, and the next surprise was the restrooms. I can't vouch for the little girls' room, but the little boys' was astonishing -- marble counters, black and white tile, fancy soap, immaculately clean. The only -- and I mean only -- reason I was glad that Valentine's Day was just over two hours long was that it allowed me to visit the bathroom again afterward.

On my way back into the theater, I saw a framed, oversized screening schedule for the Ojai Film Society, complete with a picture and a blurb about each film. All very nicely done. And good taste, too. It appears that every week this theater gets a new, acclaimed independent feature, which has a single Sunday afternoon screening in addition to the feature that plays regularly. The Maid was the current selection. They may be a couple months old -- films like Broken Embraces and A Single Man were on there -- but if you're a local in this small artsy community, you'll probably tolerate that wait, perhaps not even notice it. My wife told me she'd seen an ad up for the film society while I was in the bathroom. For a yearly investment of $125, you got to see 36 films. That's right, (basically) first-run features in a beautiful theater for an average of $3.47 per movie, all year long.

And what price did we have to pay for all this opulence, and getting to see a newly released movie for only $4 apiece? We had to pretend we liked it. Upon exiting the theater -- with bleary expressions on our faces, caused by 123 minutes of keeping track of 45 different characters we didn't care about -- we found the man in the exact same place, behind the ticket counter/snack bar.

"So, did you have a good time?" he asked, huge smile still on his face. Not did we like the movie -- but did we have a good time.

"Yeah, thanks," I said. And then, more honestly: "Beautiful theater!"

Would that every small theater could be owned by rich people with poor math skills.

Truth in advertising

The first time I heard there was a movie called Valentine's Day scheduled for release (when else) this February, I thought, Hollywood has finally done it: Removed all pretense of trying to make us think we're buying a piece of art rather than a commodity.

This is the first movie I can remember being quite this naked about wanting to top the box office on Valentine's Day weekend. It would be like calling a movie Christmas or Fourth of July. They'll get close -- like Independence Day or A Christmas Carol -- but never just the name of the big box office weekend in question, flapping around there in the nude for all to see. Last year's I Hate Valentine's Day is a good example of dressing the title up with even one layer of irony/artifice/removal.

But nope, Valentine's Day it is. I should mention that it's far from the first movie to be called Valentine's Day. In fact, IMDB cites half a dozen examples from the last decade alone. But those movies were either made for TV movies, short films, or foreign films.

So Garry Marshall's Valentine's Day, the one coming out today, is the first one we can actually call out for being so blatant about its intentions. It basically says, "Look, honey, you don't even have to think about it. This is where you should plop down your thirteen bucks on Valentine's Day weekend."

It's even got the "a little something for everybody" approach mastered by He's Just Not That Into You last year, with a record fifteen (15) different familiar faces on the poster. (I have no idea if that's a record, but it should be.) If I didn't know this movie was supposed to be a Robert Altman-style look at a single Valentine's Day in the lives of a half-dozen couples, I might be tempted to call it He's Just Not That Into You 2. That number 15 worries me, though -- it's an odd number, so somebody's getting left out in the cold.

What's even funnier is that there are four additional names listed on the poster, who didn't make the cut for the finite real estate within that heart-shaped enclosure. That's a total of 19. We shouldn't be surprised to hear three of the four names that were excluded, as they are all over 60: Kathy Bates, Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo, who may have appeared in every single one of Garry Marshall's films. (Jesus Christ, I wasn't kidding -- I just looked it up on IMDB, and they have sixteen (16) joint ventures.) The fourth name, Eric Dane, has reason to be pissed -- he's only 37, and is attractive enough that they nicknamed him "McSteamy" on Grey's Anatomy. His rivalry with "McDreamy" (Patrick Dempsey) just got a notch more serious, as Dempsey made the poster.

Other funny inclusions in the cast:

1. Julia Roberts. Damn, she must really have a soft spot for her Pretty Woman director. You'd think it would be Marshall who would owe her after Runaway Bride.

2. Anne Hathaway. Funny, because I likened her to a young Julia Roberts in my review of The Princess Diaries nine years ago.

3. Jamie Foxx. Really Jamie Foxx? I thought you were a serious actor now.

4. Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner. This movie is crackling with immediacy ... except that the two Taylors are now broken up.

5. Jessica Biel and Jessica Alba. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.

6. Bradley Cooper. Hard to believe, but he's apparently the only one who appears in both He's Just Not That Into You and Valentine's Day, though doesn't Emma Roberts (bottom) look a lot like Jennifer Connelly in this picture?

7. Ashton Kutcher and Topher Grace. It's a That 70's Show reunion! By the way, I never like to pass up an opportunity to say that I hate Ashton Kutcher.

8. Queen Latifah. Since there are exactly two black actors in the cast, does that mean she's getting paired up with Jamie Foxx? Talk about tokenism.

9. Jennifer Garner. Wasn't there a time when Jennifer Garner didn't take every crappy romantic comedy that was thrown her way?

10. George Lopez. I just figured out which of the 15 gets left out in the cold. There's no Latina in the cast, so Lopez must be the lovable, asexual clown. Unless he's gay and getting together with Elizondo.

Anyway, I'm not going to see it.

Not until November, anyway.

Ha! Joke's on you, Valentine's Day.

Ten date movies you might not have considered

Come on, admit it. You're a romantic at heart.

No, you don't like to be force-fed the date movies that Hollywood says you're supposed to like. You're just not that into He's Just Not That Into You. But you do like to watch something romantic around Valentine's Day, just like you like a good scare around Halloween. It's whether there are brains behind these scares or sighs that makes the difference.

Since you instinctively recoil from anything released between February 1st and 14th each year, especially if it stars Drew Barrymore or Matthew McConaughey, and you've already worn out all the classics, like When Harry Met Sally ..., you need another method for discovering a good date movie. A date movie that doesn't come prepackaged for the lowest common denominator, but still gives you that tingling sensation of a perfectly constructed love story.

What to do?

Well, I've decided to make your burden a little lighter in the form of ten good date movies you may not have considered. They're not obscure in the sense that you've never heard of them, but maybe you never saw them as a date movie in the first place, or maybe I don't think they ever got their proper due. I just hope I haven't waited too long to tell you about these gems. By publishing this on February 11th, I'm hoping you technically still have time to promote one of these to the top of your Netflix queue for a Saturday delivery. Either that or go seek them out at your local video store, if you trust their inventory. (Warning! Renting a movie on Valentine's Day not recommended as a date option for people in a relationship less than two months!)

And don't think me overly romantic -- I know there are just as many of you who like to snub your nose at this Hallmark holiday and watch something totally profane in protest, as well you should. But your choices for that particular goal are limited only by your own imagination, and I can't help you there.

These are not ranked -- I know, what a shock -- so I will just list them in alphabetical order. (Compulsiveness, however, still requires me to use a numbering system.)

1. The Baxter (2005, Michael Showalter). Writer-director Showalter stars as the guy from the title, but that's not his name -- it's his character type. In a brilliant riff on romantic comedies as an institution, the film posits that a "Baxter" is the guy in every movie love triangle who loses out -- he's the safe doofus who's a tad too boring for our heroine, so he gets left at the altar. Think Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle. The Baxter is told from his perspective, and told perfectly. But don't fret for poor Elliot Sherman (what a perfect name) -- he's got a love interest of his own in the form of the darling Michelle Williams. Elizabeth Banks and Justin Theroux are hilarious as the other members of this quartet. Showalter is part of David Wain's troupe of alumni from The State, so fans of Role Models and Wet Hot American Sumer should also like it.

2. Before Sunrise (1995, Richard Linklater). If you think Linklater is too chatty by half, and the presence of Ethan Hawke only makes it worse ... well, you might be right. But Before Sunrise was made long before that reputation had been cemented for either of them, and it's far more earnest than jaded/superior. Before Sunrise is the consummate love story for the intellectual, as two travelers (Hawke and Julie Delpy, who have great chemistry) collide in Vienna, and proceed to immerse themselves in each other's thoughts and life philosophies over the course of a single day together. The thoughtful dialogue leaves viewers feeling like they've consumed a large and satisfying meal, and Linklater's focus on only these two characters heavily invests viewers in their apparent soul connection.

3. Confetti (2006, Debbie Isitt). This British import follows Christopher Guest's mockumentary tradition, but diverges from Guest by refusing to indulge in the kind of misanthropy that's become his style of late, especially in For Your Consideration. Instead, director Isitt loves these characters: three couples competing in a magazine-sponsored competition for the most novel wedding concept, in exchange for having their ceremony paid for, and a $500,000 home for the winners. A fourth couple, the gay wedding planners who help each couple execute their chosen concept, are also smartly, subtly, and sweetly realized. Rarely does a film that's going for laughs show such insight into the different ways that relationships work.

4. Defending Your Life (1991, Albert Brooks). Not nearly enough people are aware of what I consider Albert Brooks' best movie, this sweet, charming, and extremely funny look at the recently deceased trying to argue for the legitimacy of how they spent their time on earth. If it sounds like a downer that the film's leads -- Brooks and an exceedingly relaxed Meryl Streep -- are dead from the outset, then you're in for a wonderful surprise. Rarely has a film with real substance been so light on its feet, and Brooks' conception of the afterlife is quirky and fun. You may be able to eat as much food as you want without gaining weight, but the heart still falls in love with just as much glee, and just as much potential for breaking.

5. The Guru (2003, Daisy von Scherler Mayer). Not to be confused -- PLEASE -- with last year's Mike Myers vehicle The Love Guru, this is the story of a young Indian man who comes to America wanting to be an actor, but ends up playing the role of a guru who gives sexual advice to rich people, with the help of a porn star. Not what you had in mind for a date movie? Well, consider that Heather Graham is the likeable porn star, Marisa Tomei is a sweetly dopey rich person, and Jimi Mistry is the hopeful young man with charisma to spare, and you've got a truly endearing fairy tale with a nice sprinkling of Bollywood in it. I sing the praises of this underdog movie whenever I can, and I'm always hoping to make more converts.

6. Kissing Jessica Stein (2002, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld). Because its subject matter is totally different, it's impossible to accuse this movie of stealing from When Harry Met Sally ..., but it does borrow one essential ingredient from that film's success: From its soundtrack to its excellent use of the city as a stage, it makes New York City seem like the best place in the world to fall in love. Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergenson are terrific as two intelligent New Yorkers who are trying on lesbianism for size, and the great thing about the film is, it presents their experimentation without reducing it to a simplistic gimmick. There's a pretty dynamite heterosexual relationship in the film as well, plus a scene between Jessica and her mother (Tovah Feldshuh) that still gets me after about four viewings.

7. Once (2007, John Carney). This may be cheating a little bit. After their wonderful performance at the Oscars last year, and then winning the trophy itself, and then amazing intimate audiences around the world as the touring band The Swell Season, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are not under the radar. But if you haven't seen this film, you may think it's only about the music, about creating art with your bare hands. In addition, Once is a splendid love story, even if it's not one that proceeds along a traditional course, or one that ends up like you might expect it to. Anyone who hasn't seen this one-of-a-kind gem should make it a priority, Valentine's Day or no.

8. Return to Me (2000, Bonnie Hunt). A seemingly forgettable romance about a widowed architect (David Duchovny) who falls in love with the woman who received his wife's donated heart (Minnie Driver) may seem not only contrived, but a little perverse. But trust me, there's something wonderful about this movie, something beyond the chemistry of the leads and the sweetness of their performances. It's just the kind of movie that leaves you feeling good, and it needs no further intellectual justification than that.

9. Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991, Anthony Minghella). You know the late director for his sweeping romance The English Patient, but did you happen to know how skilled he was at capturing life-sized romance? Truly, Madly, Deeply could be called a British Ghost if that didn't tend to cheapen the exquisite subtlety and heartwarming magnanimity of Minghella's movie, which features a dead musician (Alan Rickman) returning to comfort the woman (Juliet Stevenson) he left behind as she grieves his loss. Despite the essential fantastical quality of the setup, this is a very grounded look at love and loss, and how memories can help a person cope and move forward. And it's not nearly as sad as I've made it sound.

10. Wriscutters: A Love Story (2007, Goran Dukic). What is it with this death theme? As in Defending Your Life, the characters in this film are already dead -- but unlike Defending Your Life, here, they all killed themselves. In fact, Wristcutters takes place in an afterlife populated entirely by suicide victims. But does that make it bleak? Hardly. Wristcutters isn't lying when it calls itself a love story, as this film establishes a tone of wonderful wistfulness, its characters discovering things about themselves that would have made their lives worth living -- and might in fact make their afterlife worth living as well. The tentative and low-key fondness that develops between Patrick Fugit and Shannyn Sossamon plays out in very satisfying ways, and really, you won't feel the least bit depressed. Trust me.

Bonus Material! (Since you haven't been reading long enough already)

Five Movie You Might Think You Should Watch on Valentine's Day, But Shouldn't:

1. The Break-Up (2006, Peyton Reed). Trust the title. It stars Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, and they actually struck up a relationship on set. But this movie is basically one long argument. That doesn't mean I think it's bad -- you just shouldn't see it on February 14th.

2. Date Movie (2006, Aaron Seltzer). Don't trust the title. Anyone who sees this movie on a date will break up immediately afterward, because it had to be somebody's bad idea to go, and that person deserves whatever happens to him/her.

3. Paris Je T'aime (2007, various directors). Again, don't trust the title. In almost none of the 18 vignettes in this film will you feel the romance of Paris. In almost all will you feel pushed and pulled in different directions by a concept that should have stayed at the concept level.

4. P.S. I Love You (2007, Richard LaGravenese). In the first scene, Hilark Swank and Gerard Butler are going to have a 10-minute screaming match. Then in the next scene, he's going to be dead of a never-before-mentioned illness. Then, she's going to follow an intricate design of posthumous clues he's set out for her to find her bliss. Yes, it's as bad as it sounds.

5. Shopgirl (2005, Anand Tucker). This is what happens when mopey meets gloomy. Steve Martin narrates the film and constantly says things like "Ray Porter felt loss" and "Ray Porter was sad." Too bad, as Clare Danes really tries to be charming in this film.

Happy Valentine's Day, or not, whichever you prefer.