This year for our anniversary in May, my mom took Jackson out for a long morning walk, and we snuggled with our 2 week old daughter on the couch, and got to watch a movie and eat bacon wrapped dates. It was heavenly. Our movie consumption after Jackson was born dropped severely and involved watching everything on a low volume with closed captions and then nearly stopped once he started to notice what was on the screen. Some couples I know watch things after bedtime, but due to his general lack of sleeping, that was not really an option. So if the stars align, and we do get to watch a movie (usually in 25 minute installments), we are super picky, since we are averaging like four a year. (This May, we watched Hidden Figures, which was so good.)
We just passed our engagement anniversary on Labor Day, and to celebrate our 12 years of watching movies together with a ring on my finger, I thought I’d put together our 12 top date night movies. Here are my previous anniversary posts. (Also, here’s a picture of us the day we got engaged, in which we look like babies–very happy babies.)
Negotiating movies when you are married is an art, but I think when it’s done well it means you only watch the best of the best. We have kind of typical gender biases when it comes to movies: I’m totally willing to watch a mediocre romantic comedy, and Evan a mediocre action film. We have come to rely heavily on Rotten Tomatoes ratings, because they are annoyingly accurate about how good a movie is. If we find a couple possibilities at the library (where we get most of our movies, because we are that late in watching current movies, and the price ($0) is right ) we often go with the one with the highest Rotten Tomatoes rating.
In our early married days, of course, we had to share our favorites with one another, but most of our favorite date night movies from this list are ones we discovered together. One weekend when we’d been married about two years we got three movies from the library: Once, Some Like It Hot, and Ironman. It was the perfect flight of movies: they were all amazing and completely different. (I admit that now I think it’s amazing that we watched three movies in one weekend, and that was not a typical weekend.)
A few years later we had, what I consider, our perfect date. After work on a Saturday (we were tutors), we walked 4 miles to Chipotle, had dinner, stopped at the Whole Foods next door to get a pint of Luna and Larry’s Organic Coconut Bliss Cherry Amaretto Coconut Ice Cream, which we ate on our 4 mile walk back home, before spontaneously driving to a late showing of Avengers. (Now I can’t believe that I could stay up during a late show, but I still hold that everything else about that date still sums up my ideal date.)
I think that our list of 12 Date Night Movies is awesome, but of course movie watching is bizarrely personal. So to give you an idea if your version of the best date night movies matches ours, here is a snapshot of our individual favorite movies. My favorite movies (that don’t overlap in any other category) are Ever After, The Princess Bride, The Holiday, Hitch, Fried Green Tomatoes, Pride & Prejudice, Penelope, Anne of Green Gables, and Life is Beautiful. Evan on the other hand loves Chariots of Fire, Dead Poets Society, Inception, The Usual Suspects, Gladiator, Hero, The Prestige, The Great Escape, School of Rock and The Big Lebowski.
Also not on our list are our favorite series that we love to watch: Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Avengers, Indiana Jones, Pixar, Star Trek, Matrix, Oceans, Wallace and Gromit, Muppets, Men in Black, Sherlock Holmes, Guardians of the Galaxy, and X-men. (Except the X-Men: The Last Stand, that was terrible.) We cannot wait for the new Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindalwald! And while we have a lower threshold for gratuitous sex, violence, and language in movies, these are definitely not all safe-for-the-whole-family movies. Although I appreciate Tsh Oxenrider’s list of 11 family movies (one cross-over listing of Babette’s Feast) that argues especially for families with older kids good art is good for kids, even if there is some rough around the edges content.
For each movie, I’ve listed the year it came out, the parental guidance & Rotten Tomatoes rating, length in minutes, link to the trailer, and logline quote (the official pithy plot summary), and then my thoughts on why it’s good and a few favorite movies that have a similar flavor.
12 Awesome Date Night Movies
1. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
1. Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016 / PG-13 / 97% /101 min /trailer) “Ricky is a defiant young city kid who finds himself on the run with his cantankerous foster uncle in the wild New Zealand bush.” This is such a quirky film, with a fantastic setting in beautiful New Zealand and a rare blend of sweet and funny that’s not sappy. It reminds me a bit of a Up with a cranky old man paired on an adventure with a young boy, a Wes Anderson film, or Little Miss Sunshine in its blend of quirky, cinematographic, and sweetness.
2. Babette’s Feast
2. Babette’s Feast (1987 / G / 96% / 103 min /trailer) “Two devout and elderly sisters allow their cook, a French refugee, to prepare a feast in honor of their late father’s 100th birthday, despite their spiritual concerns over the sensuality and decadence of French cuisine” This was a film my parents, especially my dad, loved when I was growing up, and the little glimpses of it I had I thought were really boring. But now as an adult, I think this movie is so great–subtitles and subtlety and all. It’s perfect to make an evening of cooking an extra special meal together (or inviting friends over to do the same). It reminds me a little of Chocolat in tone and theme, and Julie and Julia in food and relationship.
3. Hidden Figures
3. Hidden Figures (2016 / PG / 93% / 127 min / trailer) “An incredible & inspiring untold true story about three women at NASA who were instrumental in one of history’s greatest operations – the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit.” There are so many things about this movie I loved and thought were amazing– but one of the smaller parts was the role of the husbands of these women supporting them in their work. It reminded me a bit of Made in Dagenham and Joy with that theme of girl power and supportive husbands, The Help and The Secret Life of Bees in terms of a 20th century race relations in the south, and Apollo 13 and October Sky in terms of a great space race age drama.
4. Cool Runnings
4. Cool Runnings (1993 / PG / 76% / 98 min / trailer) “When a Jamaican sprinter is disqualified from the Olympic Games, he enlists the help of a dishonored coach to start the first Jamaican Bobsled Team.” I know that this breaks my rule for only going with 90% or above movies on Rotten Tomatoes, but I protest that Rotten Tomatoes does not get it right with this movie. It’s so great and funny and really stands the test of time. Besides, it was my surrogate grandfather Jimma’s favorite movie, and he had impeccable taste. Cool Runnings a great sports movie about relationships and dedication that joins some of our favorites like — The Blind Side, Remember the Titans, The Sandlot, Whip It!, Field of Dreams, and of course Evan’s beloved Chariots of Fire.
5. Silver Lining’s Playbook
5. Silver Lining’s Playbook (2012 / R / 92% /122 min / trailer) “An unexpected bond forms between a formerly institutionalized man and a woman recovering from her own tragedy.” This movie is one of the (rare) instances that the movie was better than the book (and the book was pretty good). The main characters are both so flawed and funny and raw and ones we root for. It reminds me of Away We Go, Lars and the Real Girl, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in terms of how it is both sad and funny and not like a typical romantic comedy at all, and yet has a happy ending. It also, while very different in tone, shares some themes with the wonderful films A Beautiful Mind and Good Will Hunting.
6. Midnight In Paris
6. Midnight In Paris (2011 / PG-13 / 92% / 94 min / trailer) “While on a trip to Paris with his fiancée’s family, a nostalgic screenwriter finds himself mysteriously going back to the 1920s everyday at midnight.” Normally, I find Woody Allen films a little heavy on the philosophical dialogue, and while there are hints of that in this movie, it’s such a great one for starting conversations about what makes us happy, and of course we, as two history majors, could throw around the question of when/where we would go back in time to visit for a long time. In terms of playing around with time and life’s meaning, it reminds me a bit of Groundhog Day (or its more action packed cousins Source Code and Edge of Tomorrow), The Truman Show, Stranger than Fiction, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and in terms of beautiful and exotic settings Amilie, Exotic Marigold Hotel, and A Good Year.
7. Once
7. Once (2007 / R / 97% /86 min / trailer) “A modern-day musical about a busker and an immigrant and their eventful week in Dublin, as they write, rehearse and record songs.” This movie is so different that it’s hard to describe, but at its core, it has an amazing musical album that comes to life in this indie film with unlikely characters. The same director also made Begin Again which is a lot more of a pop album, and over all shinier than Once, with bigger names and a fun NYC setting. It also reminds me a little of the classic and wonderful That Thing You Do in the story of a band and a great song.
8. Some Like It Hot
8. Some Like It Hot (1959 / NR / 96% / 120 min / trailer) “After witnessing a mob hit, two musicians join an all-girl jazz band and masquerade as women in order to elude the Chicago mobsters, and befriending a beautiful singer and a wealthy business magnate.” I am not, as a rule, drawn to old black and white movies, because I think they are sometimes a bit inaccessible. But this movie is so funny– situational comedy, physical comedy, witty banter–it’s got it all. (A bit along the lines of the I Love Lucy Show). It has a little bit of the humor of Tootsie or Mrs. Doubtfire in its men-disguised-as-women stick. And it joins my other small list of black and white movie favorites: Roman Holiday, Casablanca, and Sabrina.
9. The Bourne Identity
9. The Bourne Identity (2002 / PG-13 / 83% / 119 min / trailer) “Pulled from the sea with two bullets in his back, Jason Bourne discovers he has the skills of a very dangerous man and no memory of his violent past.” I surprise myself in how much I really do love the first Bourne movie, but I do. I love his relationship with Maria so much (and that’s also why the other films in the series aren’t my favorites.) In thinking through themes of free will and fate it reminds me of Minority Report and GATACA, and in terms of having a number of aliases–Catch Me If You Can and general resourcefulness in the face of incredible adversity–The Martian.
10. The Three Idiots
10. The Three Idiots (2009 / PG-13 / 100% / 170 min / trailer) “From the moment Ranco arrives at India’s most prestigious university, his outlandish schemes turn the campus upside down–along with the lives of his two newfound best friends.” This Indian Bollywood film was recommended to us by some Indian students we tutored, and while we know almost nothing about Bollywood films, this seems to be a universal favorite. Usually, our students would say they hated Bollywood movies and that their parents watched them all the time, but when we would ask them about this movie, they would say, “oh yeah, except for that one.” And for good reason, it’s wonderful, funny and gets at the heart of choosing a career and calling while navigating family obligations. The only thing to keep in mind is that it is incredibly long, nearly 3 hours! In its campus setting it reminds me of the French film L’Auberge Espangole, in terms of navigating parental-vocation expectations Bend It Like Beckham, and The Joy Luck Club (I’m sure there are dozens of other movies with this theme that I can’t think of right now.)
11. Moon Rise Kingdom
11. Moon Rise Kingdom (2012 / PG-13 / 93% / 94 min / trailer) “A pair of young lovers flee their New England town, which causes a local search party to fan out to find them.” Normally, I find Wes Anderson films a bit much (or parts of them at least), but I thought this was such a sweet, quirky movie, with only one scene I’d skip. It reminds me a lot of Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Grand Budapest Hotel (although Moon Rise Kingdom is cleaner), O Brother Where Art Thou, Big Fish, and Forest Gump in terms of whimsy, evocative setting, quirky sweet tone, and old time story telling.
12. Easy A
12. Easy A (2010 / PG-13 / 85% / 92 min / trailer) “After a little white lie about losing her virginity gets out, a clean cut high school girl sees her reputation tarnished until she decides to use the rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing.” This movie is so smart with its odes to John Hughes movies, witty parent-child reparte (but also great parents), and Scarlet Letter homage. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but reminds me of classic John Hughes movies like Pretty in Pink, 16 Candles, or Ferris Buller’s Day Off, and more contemporary ones like Pitch Perfect and Juno.
If these 12 movies don’t resonate with you, or you want more ideas you can check out datenightmovies.com which lets you put two movies in (your pick and your date’s pick) and it generates movies you both might like. For us it suggested the films It Happened One Night, Sideways, Enchanted April, Her, Lala Land, Heart Beats Loud, andCinema Paradiso. (We since have watched LaLaLand and enjoyed the song and dance parts, but the rest was pretty depressing.) And if you’d like your movies to be even cleaner you can get them through clearplay, which edits out the graphic and explicit content. We’ve never tried it, but it’s nice to know it’s an option.
I didn’t think that in our young childless years of early marriage we watched an extraordinary number of movies, but putting this list together makes me realize that we watched quite a few, and that many of our memories as a couple involve movies. There was the movie we watched 20 minutes after we started dating — The Constant Gardener of which I remember about 2% because I was completely distracted by sitting next to Evan on this awkwardly angled futon, and wondering if we should snuggle in front of his roommates, since we had held hands for the first time only a few hours before. Or 2 weeks later the first time we kissed was after watching the movie Fearless. Or how when I visited him in Maryland during our long-distance engagement I cried through most of Dead Poets Society because I was so sad to be leaving that afternoon to go back to Illinois.
(photo of our engagement picnic)
But even more than those movies marked moments in our early life together, over the past dozen years the films we’ve watched have helped to create the fabric of shared experience and story in our life. Movies, shows, books, parties, family gatherings, church sermons and fellowship hours, long car ride talks and countless conversations over meals all help to create our own unique marriage. It’s the material for our analogies, references, and inside jokes. A few years ago, a study came out that watching movies (especially ones with romantic conflict) and then discussing them with a spouse was just as statistically effective as marriage therapy in keeping young married couples together. And while I don’t think you should skip therapy, there is something about setting aside the time, and talking about fictional problems that has a way of undoing the knots of the real problems in your life.
How about you? What are your favorite date night movies? Do you think we’d like the movies datenightmovies.com suggested?