5 SF Movies To Watch On Valentine’s Day

It’s here, the most dreaded holiday of the year: Valentine’s Day. Where you’re stuck watching a crappy romantic comedy and praying for death.

Fortunately, you don’t have to suffer, not if you know how to play it. There are plenty of romantic movies that aren’t absolutely godawful, and also happen to be interesting to nerds, as well.

So, if you’ve got a significant other with a taste for weepies, save yourself with these five movies. For some reason, a lot of them involve time travel.

#5) Somewhere In Time

Starring Christopher Reeve, and based on Richard Matheson’s book “Bid Time Return”, this tearjerker is about a man who goes back in time to find the love of his life. Yeah, we know, we know, but it’s a great performance from Christopher Reeve, who never quite got his due as an actor after “Superman” typecast him, and continuing the weird “Superman” theme, this was directed by Jeannot Szwarc, who’d later make “Supergirl”. Seriously.

Also, it uses the “self-hypnosis” gimmick from “The Butterfly Effect”, so that’s a nice weird moment.

#4) Starman

No, not the DC Comics character. This is a romantic action movie directed by John Carpenter. An alien comes to Earth after hearing the gold Voyager record, and assumes the form of a woman’s dead husband. As you may have guessed, they fall in love, but the movie shows both the sweet and ass-kicking side of Carpenter.

#3) Happy Accidents

You probably know Brad Anderson from the creepy “Session 9”, but he’s also got a light touch when it comes to romantic movies, and this is actually one of his best. It’s better not to get to into the details, but it’s a pretty touching movie.

#2) The Terminator

Hey, Kyle Reese goes back in time because he fell in love with her photo, and he dies to save her. And consider he got sent to the 1980s, the decade of awful fashion and worse pop music. That’s love, right there.

#1) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Simultaneously a science fiction film and one of the most honest movies about relationships ever made. A lot of this rings painfully true if you’ve ever been in a rocky relationship. The movie so precisely dissects so many problematic relationships at once, you have to see it a few times to really get the sense of it.

And, hey, doomed tragic romance is great for Valentine’s Day!

image courtesy Universal Pictures

×