13 Best Movies For Your Next Date Night

In theory, any movie can be a date movie — depending on you and your date's tastes. But certain options are safer picks than others; you don't want to be Jerry Seinfeld and his girlfriend making out in the movie theater during "Schindler's List," after all. Someone who picks "Midsommar," arguably one of the most disturbing movies of all time, for a date night is almost certainly testing their partner (if this is you, we hope you pass), if they're not just sending a "we should break up before I have to burn you alive" message. Then there are the worst movies, films that nobody should ever bother watching, whether on a date or not.

Here are recommendations for 13 movies that should all but guarantee a great date. The films on this list are widely entertaining, artistically excellent, and contain at least some element of romance while also covering a wide range of genres, from classic comedies to moving dramas to action blockbusters, so varying tastes are provided for. Whether you and your partner are looking to laugh, cry, or both, you'll find something to do the trick.

Everyone knows and loves the 1991 animated musical "Beauty and the Beast," and sure, the Disney Renaissance classic is always a good reliable date night movie option. But if you're looking for a version of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's monster romance fairy tale you probably didn't watch hundreds of times on video as a kid, the 1946 live-action "Beauty and the Beast" film directed by French surrealist Jean Cocteau is the cartoon's qualitative equal and, in some ways, its superior.

An appeal to childlike wonder made in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" channels the strangeness of myth with a gorgeous gothic opulence and effects that still feel magical nearly 80 years later. Jean Marais — Cocteau's lover — gives a standout double performance as both the Beast and the villain Avenant, the forerunner to Disney's Gaston. His Beast is so charming that Belle (Josette Day) seems disappointed when he turns human in the end; Hollywood legend says Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich were even more upset about his transformation, both actresses reportedly pleading in the theater for "their" Beast to return.

The frank sex comedy of Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" must have been shocking for audiences when it was released in 1960. For today's viewers, the surprise is more likely to be just how well it holds up as sheer entertainment. The film stars Jack Lemmon as C.C. "Bud" Baxter, a man getting promotions at an insurance company by letting his bosses borrow his apartment for their affairs. Meanwhile, Bud is pursuing a relationship with elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), unaware that she's involved in one of the affairs going on in his apartment. Then he finds out, and things take a darker, sadder turn.

It's easy to understand how Billy Wilder got his reputation as one of the great writer-directors in Old Hollywood from watching "The Apartment." The film is hilarious until it very much isn't — and when it gets heavy, it's deeply moving as a story of lonely, broken people finding connections with each other and the struggle to be a "mensch" amidst the abuses of corporate culture. With much of the film set over Christmas and New Year's Eve, any repertory arthouse worth its salt should be booking screenings of "The Apartment" during the holiday season; a film as perfect as this one deserves to be seen as part of an audience.

"Harold and Maude" will not appeal to all couples, but if it clicks with you, it might be life-changing. Critics in 1971 hated Hal Ashby's dark comedy, and the premise alone will cause the heads of anyone obsessed with age-gap discourse to explode. And yet the unconventional love story between Harold (Bud Cort), a wealthy and depressed 19-year-old who's turned faking his death into an art, and Maude (Ruth Gordon), a fun-loving 79-year-old Holocaust survivor who embraces hippie philosophy and lives life to the fullest, has become a cult classic for a reason. If your comic sensibilities run darker and you can work past any initial ick factor of the premise, this proves to be one of cinema's most profoundly emotional romances.

If you like Wes Anderson movies or other quirky indie dramedies in that vein, "Harold and Maude" is the blueprint for that style of filmmaking. The film's ending is a serious tearjerker, but one that gifts the viewer with a more hopeful outlook on life and inspiration to stick it to unjust authority. Also, the Cat Stevens soundtrack will stay stuck in your head forever. "Well, if you want to sing out, sing out..."

Let's just let the grandpa narrator (Peter Falk) list out some of the things that make "The Princess Bride" the perfect date night movie: "Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles..." And yes, it is a "kissing" movie, but one with so much else going for it that those who don't usually go for romance stories will still be swept up in the tale of Princess Buttercup (Robin Wright) and Westley (Cary Elwes).

At this point, "The Princess Bride" is a cliché pick for a date movie recommendations list, but clichés become clichés for a reason. It's the rare film that works equally well as an earnest fairy tale adventure and as a self-aware parody of such at the same time. Director Rob Reiner really knew what he was doing, cranking out classic after classic in the 1980s. His next film after this one, "When Harry Met Sally...," is another obvious-for-good-reason date night pick; it only misses this list because one film per director feels fair, and we already have "The Apartment" as a New Year's Eve-themed entry.

Ang Lee's 2000 martial arts drama "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" still holds the record of the highest-grossing foreign language film at the U.S. box office. The Taiwanese-produced Mandarin-language wuxia film grabbed international attention first and foremost for its fantastical high-flying action and astonishingly beautiful visuals, but it became a lasting classic because of the substance beneath all that style. At the heart of the story are two different romances.

The feelings between co-workers Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) are mutual but unspoken until the film's tragic end — it's complicated voicing such feelings when your crush is your dead friend's widow. Lee, who'd later direct "Brokeback Mountain," excels at exploring repressed longings; under his direction, a scene of hand-holding feels flat-out erotic. In contrast to Mu Bai and Shu Lien, the princess, Jen Yu (Shang Ziyi), acts on her passion, escaping her arranged marriage to seek out a life of crime and adventure with the bandit, Lo "Dark Cloud" Xiao Hou (Chang Chen).

"Once" is the most simple and straightforward romance film on this list. This 2007 Irish microbudget musical is so pared down and elemental in construction that the central characters don't even have names, listed in the credits as just "Guy" (Glen Hansard) and "Girl" (Markéta Irglová). Girl meets Guy performing on the street. Guy and Girl write and record music together. Guy and Girl then go their separate ways despite their unrequited feelings because she's married, and he wants to get back with his ex.

That's pretty much the whole plot, yet that bittersweet simplicity results in something genuinely heartfelt and emotionally evocative. Hansard and Irglová, already performing together as the group The Swell Season before "Once," started dating for real after filming wrapped, something director John Carney predicted would happen early on after witnessing their on-set chemistry. The catchiest of the film's musical numbers, the piano duet "Falling Slowly," won the Oscar for best original song, while a Broadway stage adaptation later won 8 Tonys.

Superhero movies used to be romantic; just think back to the Christopher Reeve "Superman" movies or the Tobey Maguire "Spider-Man" trilogy. Not so much these days. Unless you count whatever shippers think Steve and Bucky had going on, love stories are an afterthought at best in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thankfully, "Deadpool" is the glorious exception to the sexlessness of the modern superhero movie. The secret to the first "Deadpool" movie's success is that, even if you strip away all the self-aware meta-jokes, nerd fan service, and R-rated ultraviolence that define the franchise, it's still a rock-solid romcom at its core.

It helps that, unlike other cinematic superhero couples stuck in the PG-13 realm, Deadpool/Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) and his sex worker girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) get to actually make love on screen — lovingly, enthusiastically, and often hilariously. That's the factor putting "Deadpool" on this list over, say, "Spider-Man 2," which is similarly romantic and probably a better movie overall but not a better "Disney+ and chill" movie. Time your "Deadpool" date for March 8 (International Women's Day), and you might be in for a most interesting bedroom experience after the credits roll.

All of Makoto Shinkai's anime movies involve lovers separated by some sort of overwhelming force, be it scientific, supernatural, or just the ordinary process of growing apart over time. Critics can accuse him of making the same sort of film over and over again, but he struck gold in 2016 with "Your Name," his first mainstream crossover hit and the most beautiful expression of his recurring themes of longing across distance.

"Your Name" tells the story of city boy Taki Tachibana (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and country girl Mitsuha Miyamizu (Mone Kamishiraishi) — characters who won't meet in person until the very end of the film, but who develop a deep connection when one day they start switching into each other's bodies. The body swapping allows for plenty of comedy, while further fantasy twists push the narrative into different genres and emotional registers. Beyond just being a great romance, "Your Name" is also a powerful dramatization of a community coming together in the face of disaster. Amazing animation and rocking original songs from Radwimps complete the satisfying package.

It seems like everyone loves Timothée Chalamet. The girls and the gays have been hot for him for a while now, and if being the Lisan al-Gaib didn't get the straight bros on board, his ESPN appearance sure did. The ever-growing fandom for this young movie star will keep his Oscar-nominated performance as Elio in "Call Me by Your Name" on many couples' watchlists, even if his co-lead Armie Hammer (playing the older love interest, Oliver) is much less appealing these days.

A coming-of-age story of bisexual awakening set in picturesque rural Italy during the summer vacation of 1983, "Call Me by Your Name" captures the fleeting passion and deep heartbreak that comes with first love. The infamous peach scene is the subject of all the memes, but it's the monologue from Elio's father (Michael Stuhlbarg) about experiencing sorrow with joy and that final closing credits scene where Elio feels all of them that will stick with you long afterward.

If you love this and want more date movies directed by Luca Guadagnino, "Bones and All" is a horror romance with another great Chalamet performance, while "Challengers" offers a complicated love triangle where all three corners connect.

The best-reviewed movie Judd Apatow ever produced, "The Big Sick" tells the true story of how comedian Kumail Nanjiani (playing himself) met his future wife Emily Gordon (Zoe Kazan) — and how a life-threatening illness changed their lives forever. In the film, Kumail is caught between his traditional Muslim family's plans for an arranged marriage and his secret hook-ups with Emily. Emily breaks up with him just before she falls ill, and while she's hospitalized, Kumail gets to know her parents, Beth (Holly Hunter) and Terry (Ray Romano).

Directed by Michael Showalter from a script by the real Kumail and Emily, "The Big Sick" is one of the best-written rom-coms of the past decade. The cast brings the right amount of humor to keep it a fun and breezy watch even in its sadder moments; Ray Romano, in particular, steals the show with his comic delivery. Bonus points for including the funniest joke ever made about 9/11.

If you and your date are looking for a great lesbian period drama, you need to see "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" if you haven't already — and if you've already watched it, you know why it's on this list. Céline Sciamma's 2019 film has made many more prestigious lists than this one, most significantly being the newest film included on the 2022 Sight And Sound 100 Greatest Films Of All Time Critics Poll.

The movie takes place in 18th-century France, following an artist named Marianne (Noémie Merlant). She's hired to paint a portrait of a noblewoman named Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), who is set to be married, which she does not want. During her time spent on a remote island with Marianne, it gradually becomes obvious what she does want. A work of the sapphic gaze, where the appearance of a man counts as a jump scare, "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" builds in power to an ending certain to make you shed some tears (but don't worry, the lesbians don't die; no "Bury Your Gays" here!).

Does "Lovers Rock" count as a film or as a feature-length episode of a TV miniseries? Industry awards like the Emmys categorized all five of Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" installments as television, but some of them played film festivals, and several film critics groups gave them movie awards. It didn't help that the series came out in 2020, when the line between "movies" and "TV" became extra blurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. For our purposes, though, let's just say "Lovers Rock" is a film, and one of the best ones to watch if you and your date just want to vibe.

Where the other four "Small Axe" movies/episodes deal with major historical events in the history of London's West Indian community, "Lovers Rock" is a time capsule of pure joy. It centers on a reggae house party in 1980, and two particular partygoers, Franklyn Cooper (Micheal Ward) and Martha Trenton (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn), who hit it off there. The music, dancing, and cinematography make this party a delight to visit with your own lovers. The slow dance and sing-along to Janet Kay's "Silly Games" is a standout showstopper.

"RRR" is the least romance-focused film on this list. While the courtship between Bheem (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.) and Jenny (Olivia Morris) across culture and language barriers is cute, it's only a small part of the 3-hour film — but that's about the only thing in "RRR" that could ever be described as "small." What the film lacks in romance, it makes up for with cinema's most epic bromance and exhilarating action scenes. The "friends to enemies to best friends forever" arc of Ram (Ram Charan) and Bheem, characters based on historical freedom fighters who never actually met in real life, will give you and your date something to cheer about every few minutes.

Maybe it would be a more natural choice for this list to include "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge" or one of the many other great Indian romance films instead, but this Oscar-winning blockbuster is probably the easier sell to viewers unaccustomed to the rhythms of Indian cinema. Also, speaking from personal experience, "RRR" makes a really great date movie, especially if you're able to it see on the biggest screen possible.