Aditya Mandhane
So you met this person at a party and you charmed their socks off. Someone asks the other out and voila! You have yourself a date. Now experts say that planning a date is just as hard as getting one. You’re a cinephile, so you could go for the comfortable “Movie Night” Date and show off some of your movie mojo (like Jesse gushing about ‘The Breakfast Club’ in ‘Pitch Perfect’), but c’mon, you’re better than that! What you can do instead is to get inspired from the most romantic dates in cinema. And that is why I present to you the list of top date night movies ever. You can watch some of these really best good date night movies on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. Thank us later for these date night ideas.
10. The Notebook
Aah. The Notebook. The Holy Grail of rom-coms. Every girl’s romantic fantasy (because of its unrealistically dreamy lead) and every guy’s nightmare (also because of its unrealistically dreamy lead!) The film is chuck-full of potential iconic romantic fantasies, but the absolute capper is the lead duo’s soiree in a canoe in the middle of a gorgeous lake full of white ducks. This date has all the ingredients for romantic perfection – slow, intimate conversation, a hint of nostalgia, the breathtaking setting and some rain (which doesn’t dampen the spirits of our pair one bit). And the fact that the date ends with one of the most memorable kisses on celluloid adds a nice cherry on top.
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9. Crazy, Stupid Love
Of course Ryan Gosling is gonna feature more than once in a list about romantic dates! But this date strays far from the our classic previous entry (or any normal date for that matter). Hannah (Emma Stone) initially rejects womaniser Jacob (Gosling) when he makes a pass at her at a bar, but later, in a more vulnerable and “in the mood for a fling” stage, she accompanies him to his place. But instead of having a meaningless one-night stand, they end up deconstructing their own date and “moves” to seduce the other, leading up to hilarious conversation and an intimate connection. A handy tip before getting inspired from this date: Learn to do the ‘Dirty Dancing’ lift.
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8. 500 Days of Summer
‘500 Days Of Summer’ is a fleeting journey across the 500 Days during which Tom and Summer sing, dance, fall in love and out of it. An adorable sequence during this journey show them prancing across the Home Decor Superstore IKEA, pretending like they are in their own home. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zoey Deschanel’s undeniable chemistry lights up the screen as they dance their way right from the hall, the dining room and the two kitchens to the bedroom. The cutest low-budget date if there ever was one! Plus, there aren’t many dating scenarios where you get to use the line “Darling, I don’t know how to tell you this. But there’s a Chinese family in our bathroom!”
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7. Wall-E
Our favourite (and the only surviving) trash compactor Wall-E is lonely on a dystopian earth. Then he finds the probe robot Eve and falls head-over-wheels for her. He gives her the only plant on the planet as a gift, but Eve goes into standby mode. Wall-E takes her on a series of dates, none of which end too well for poor Wall-E, but Eve does befriend him in the end. The trash compactor’s innocent infatuation and relentless efforts to reactivate Eve make an endearing series of dates. Don’t take the scene too literally and take your date on a boat ride through muck though!
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6. Her
Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’ is a groundbreaking romance film for more reasons than one. Its concept of intimacy with a sentient OS is futuristic and yet, with digital technology developing by leaps and bounds, doesn’t seem so far away from reality. A particularly poignant scene shows our protagonist on a beach trip with “Her”, where she plays him melodies and he explains what sharing one’s life and growing with someone means, showing that sometimes the key to a glorious date is just the right kind of conversations with the right kind of people.
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5. Like Crazy
But sometimes, conversations are unnecessary. Sometimes all you need is the company of the person you like and that’s it. In ‘Like Crazy’, Anna, a British Exchange student who is deported from America and her love Jacob, spend most of the movie apart. But when they do meet, a wordless slow-dance is enough to rekindle the memories of all the sunsets they spent by the beach, the fun go-karting rides, the long walks and their affection for each other. So pro-tip: before having the wordless date, do care to have some awesome regular dates to reminisce about.
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4. Pulp Fiction
Did the wordless part in the last entry sound too cheesy to you? Well let’s make it cooler. In the wise words of Mia Wallace “That’s when you know you’ve found somebody really special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence.” This is just one of the many iconic lines from the ever-so-quotable Tarantino magnum opus ‘Pulp Fiction’. And while the film has more than its fair share of evergreen scenes, Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace’s date at the “Jack Rabbit Slims Club” is right near the top of the pile. The snappy dialogue, the vintage setting and the fiery dance sequence that turned John Travolta’s career around make for an unforgettable date. Sometimes dates need not be soothing like the waves, sometimes they need to spark a fire, ‘Pulp Fiction’ gets that damn straight.
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3. Annie Hall
Very few people can claim to understand love, with all its kinks and quirks and all its different kinds, like Woody Allen, as he displays time and again through his real, relatable takes on the most confounding topic in the world. But none of his films rival the sheer universal relatability of ‘Annie Hall’. The most engaging scene occurs on Annie Hall’s balcony, as new acquaintances Annie and Alvy talk cordially, but Allen ingeniously puts what’s going on inside their heads as “mental subtitles”showing their actual thoughts, which, more than 45 years later, still mirror what many of us have going on inside our heads. What dating tip does this scene provide, you ask? Simply that, try to be real with a person from the get-go, or your relationship might eventually go south like Alvy and Annie’s did. (But also draw the line at saying “I wonder what she looks like naked” out loud even if you’re thinking it!)
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2. Titanic
You’re nuts if you thought a scene from ‘Titanic’ wasn’t going to feature in this list. The film which taught romance to an entire generation worldwide and set a standard for every romance to follow. The film follows the aristocratic Rose and the commoner Jack on the doomed RMS Titanic, as they stand atop its helm, run amok in its aisles and dance like maniacs in a rowdy party in its third class quarters, but the date where Rose sensually poses as Jack draws a nude painting of her is the definition of a scorching hot date. You’d need some serious artsy chops to emulate this one, but I don’t need to tell you that it will be so worth it!
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1. Before Sunrise
The entire plot of ‘Before Sunrise’ is basically the most ideal first date of all time. Meet a stranger in a foreign land and discover a foreign city while you discover each other too, in the span of a day! Jesse and Celine’s long walk (and occasional ride) across the picturesque city of Vienna paints quite a pretty picture of budding romance. There’s just something liberating about an entire city which is unchartered territory, which makes conversations deeper and free-flowing, sunsets more beautiful and nights more starry. And there are mini-dates inside the big date if you want to get inspired in baby steps: Take a walk by the river, share a listening booth or mime phone conversations about each other in front of each other in an antique cafe. ‘Before Sunrise’ is a gold mine of inspiration for heartfelt romance, thus worthily capping this list.
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