Our Favorite Romantic Movies

Good morning and Happy Monday! We hope that your Valentine's Day was spent with someone you love. And if you live on the East Coast, we hope that you stayed warm during this very chilly weekend!

This week we want to extend the love of Valentine's Day by sharing some of our favorite romantic movies! And we hope that you'll feel free to share your favorite romances with us in the comments.

Nichole Christoff

MOVIE: The More the Merrier from 1943

WHAT IT'S ABOUT: Determined to do her duty as a patriotic American during the uncertainty of World War II, Connie (Jean Arthur) sublets half of her Washington, DC apartment to ease the housing crunch. Connie counted on a respectable lady roommate, but when the doddering Mr. Dingle (Charles Coburn) cons his way into the lease, things seem all right--until he sublets half of his half to the handsome Joe Carter (Joel McCrea). Sparks fly even though Joe doesn't fit into Connie's Washington, DC world, and Joe is due to ship out on a secret mission. Add in the mores of the wartime 1940s and the machinations of the ornery Mr. Dingle, and hilarity ensues.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT: First of all, Jean Arthur is a treat. Cute, quirky, energetic, smart, strong, and able, she's the lady I'd love to be. Joel McCrea as Joe is an everyman, and he plays the strong silent type to a T. Charles Coburn's shenanigans are hilarious due to sharp writing, but also his deceptively cuddly demeanor. This movie was released in 1943, right in the middle of the uncertainty of World War II, and that's a very real part of this story. No one knows if they'll have tomorrow, just like our 1940s grandparents--and just like our military members and spouses, today.

FAVORITE SCENE/FAVORITE LINE: After Connie and Joe accidentally end up on a date, thanks Mr. Dingle's maneuvering, Joe walks Connie home--and he can't keep his hands off of her. Walking down the street, his hands are at the small of her back, the nape of her neck, her shoulders, ear, and throat. She's like a toreador with her cape as she politely but firmly redirects his touch. All the while, they cling to small talk about everything else except their feelings for each other and the fact Joe must leave for his dangerous mission. But they can't resist their attraction and end up in a mind-melting kiss that's a turning point for the remainder of the film. This scene is never out-of-bounds when it comes to 1940s propriety, but don't let that lead you to assume it's old-fashioned, cute, or quaint. It's smokin'!

Misha Crews

MOVIE: Enchanted April (1991)

WHAT IT'S ABOUT: In post-World War 1 England, four unhappy women from different backgrounds pool their resources to rent a castle in Italy for the month of April. As the wisteria and sunshine of San Salvatore works its magic on their troubled souls, the women begin to come into their own, and love soon follows.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT: So many things! The women are well-drawn and beautifully acted by Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson, Polly Walker and Joan Plowright. Their love interests (Alfred Molina, Jim Broadbent and Michael Kitchen) are quirky, flawed, as well as attractive and heroic in their own unconventional ways.

This film is a symphony of happiness, but it's never cloying or overly-sentimental. It's funny, beautiful, and so lovely that you can feel your spirits rising like an armful of balloons.

FAVORITE LINE: There are too many to count, but here's one of them: "In my day husbands and beds were very seldom mentioned in the same breath. Husbands were taken seriously, as the only true obstacle to sin."

MacKenzie Lucas

MOVIE: The Ugly Truth

WHAT IT'S ABOUT: Plot summary as listed on IMBd (Because who can do it better? Right?) "A romantically challenged morning show producer is reluctantly embroiled in a series of outrageous tests by her chauvinistic correspondent to prove his theories on relationships and help her find love. His clever ploys, however, lead to an unexpected result."

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT: I adore enemies to lovers stories. Period. This movie is the epitome of that trope. *:) happy.

FAVORITE SCENE/FAVORITE LINE: My favorite scene is the salsa dancing scene. What I love about it is you can physically see the sexual tension building for these two in this scene.

Lisa McQuay 

MOVIE: Sense and Sensibility

WHAT IT'S ABOUT: Two sisters navigating love in Regency England.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT: So much of what you know comes from what isn't said but portrayed subtly through body language and inflection.

FAVORITE SCENE/FAVORITE LINE: "What can I do?" - Colonel Brandon "Colonel, you have done so much already... " - Elinor "Give me an occupation, Miss Dashwood, or I shall run mad." - Colonel Brandon, Sense and Sensibility

Keely Thrall 

MOVIE: I Love You Again (1940)

WHAT IT'S ABOUT: William Powell is a con man with amnesia. When he comes back to himself after a hit to the head, he plots to rob himself-and his business-and skedaddle. The only thing he doesn’t count on is falling in love…with his wife, Myrna Loy.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT: The chemistry between Powell and Loy is present in all their movies, but this might be the sweetest and kookiest of the bunch. Watch for the cooing, Bill dancing solo, and Myrna debating whether or not to give her guy another bang on the head to re-“cure” him of amnesia. I prefer my romance with a big splash of laughter and these two are pros at delivering both. They have such a good time on screen together that it’s impossible not to join them.

FAVORITE SCENE/FAVORITE LINE: “Ever since you got off the boat, you’ve been chasing me like an amorous goat. You’ve tried your darnedest to make me fall in love with you and now you have. So from now on, I’m going to do the chasing, and believe me, brother, you’re going to know you’ve been chased.” ~ Myrna Loy just before she lays a kiss Bill Powell.

Private Eye Spy

James Bond.

Napoleon Solo.

Kelly Robinson.

From childhood on, I think I've seen every film and television episode featuring those fictional super-spy guys at least a dozen times. And as a grown-up, I still love to catch them when I can. But you know what? Even in childhood, I wondered why should guy spies get all the fun?

That question, and my grown-up answer, is how I came to write The Kill Shot (Random House Alibi), Book #2 in the Jamie Sinclair series, which hits the virtual shelves this week!



The Kill Shot stars Jamie Sinclair, a private-investigator-turned-security-specialist who was raised by her tough-as-nails father. Of course, after an upbringing like hers, Jamie's no shrinking violet. Still, she has a soft spot in her heart for stray dogs and a particular military police officer named Adam Barrett.

So when Jamie travels to London to safeguard a State Department courier at the insistence of her demanding father, she can handle an ambush or two...until a would-be assassin opens fire on her on the cobblestone streets of Covent Garden. Worse yet, someone takes down the assailant with a single kill shot and Jamie could swear the face of the shooter belongs to Barrett himself. Except Barrett is supposed to be 3,000 miles away.

So who's lying?

And who's spying?

Jamie must find out when that single kill shot plunges her into an international game of cat-and-mouse.

You can pick-up your very own copy of The Kill Shot here or anywhere e-books are sold. And I hope you will. Because with Jamie on the case, those guy spies really don't get all the fun!

I Can't See You

Last night I got together with some writer friends and we analyzed a movie. We've done this every year for five years now. This year we analyzed "It's Complicated."  

I can't speak for all of us, but for me, personally, I'm fascinated by structure, and since I (nominally) lead the movie discussion, structure is always our jumping off point.

Over the years I've collected several structures for us to look at. Michael Hauge's Heros Journey; Blake Snyder's Save the Cat; the fabulous Leigh Duncan's plotting arch; and this year we added Victoria Lynn Schmidt's heroine's journey from her book,  45 Master Characters, Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters.

Every year it gets easier to pick out the different elements (e.g., Theme Stated, Turning Points, Dark Night of the Soul). I like to think I'm learning these elements along the way. I'm not a detailed plotter, which is to say that I don't sit down and plot my story out scene by scene, turning point by turning point, before I start writing. So my hope is that by going over the structure this way in other stories, these elements will come out more naturally in my own stories.

One of the most fascinating twists in our yearly movie discussions is the question of whether or not the things that work in a movie can work in a book. And of course the answer is often no. Movies are visual. Books are internal. But sometimes you can achieve the same effect using a different technique.

The thing that stood out to me this year, in "It's Complicated," was the way that Meryl Streep's  character, Jane, couldn't see Steve Martin's character, Adam.

Michael Hauge calls it "the journey from identity to essence." According to Hauge, in most good stories, a character starts out fully rooted in their identity and ends up fully in their essence. He often uses the movie Shrek as an example.

In "It's Complicated," Jane's journey is kicked off by her youngest daughter leaving for college. As for many women, the empty nest has Jane questioning her identity. One of the ways she addresses this is by starting the process of getting her kitchen renovated. Adam is the architect assigned to the project, but until Jane has started to progress from her "identity" toward her "essence" she overlooks Adam. The way he has to keep re-introducing himself to her is a running joke and it was, for me, a lovely element of the story and an elegant way to show Jane's progress along the way to her happy ending. 

I've been trying to think of a book that uses a similar device but it was a long weekend and my brain is tiiiired, so I'm throwing it out to YOU, dear reader. Can you think of a story where the hero/heroine overlooks somebody/something important until they change enough to be able to recognize what's good for them?

What about Marianne and Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility?

Forever Young

“Getting old,” my 83 year-old neighbor once assured me, “is hell.”

Though I’m less than half her age, I’m beginning to see her point. A click in the knee after too many stairs, a crick in the back after a morning of gardening . . . All these things are catching up with me. Are they catching up with you, too?

The way I figure it, everybody gets old and nobody likes it. Sure, with age comes wisdom, but wisdom can be hard to spot when you look in the mirror or have to tote the laundry down to the basement. And it doesn’t matter how many years you actually have on you. At the relatively young age of twenty-six, weren’t you already complaining how you couldn’t eat a plate of Grandma’s pasta without going to the gym the next day?

If my father-in-law describes himself as old, that description might be accurate. A career military man who signed up for service before World War II, he’s in his nineties, now. And life is taking its toll. We go to visit him often and when we do, we take him out for ice cream, or to count ducks from his deck. We also be sure to play lots of Big Band music when we’re gathered in the living room. After all, Big Band was the soundtrack of his youth.

Recently, while Jo Stafford’s lilting voice sang about love and happiness over soaring strings and peppy horns, I turned to my father-in-law. I said, “I heard that soldiers, airmen, and sailors loved Jo Stafford’s songs so much, you boys called her GI Jo. Is that true?”

Like Atlas, he shrugged and I could see all the cares of old age weighing on his shoulders. “I guess.”

“Did you like her?”

When I asked that question, an amazing thing happened. My father-in-law’s spine straightened. His eye brightened. Again, he said, “I guess.”

But this time, he let loose with a twenty-year-old’s mischievous chuckle—and in that moment, he was young again.

Many things can put us in touch with our younger selves. Particular music, certain movies, and of course our favorite books can turn back time in a heartbeat. But I think the bottom line here is that our younger selves haven’t left us. We’re still young in our hearts and minds no matter how much we age. And if we want to feel young again, maybe all we need to do is remember that—and listen to a little Jo Stafford.

Now it’s your turn to tell the Rockville 8. No matter your age, what makes you feel young again?