Forget the last-minute chocolate sampler that your significant other will give you tonight. Do you know what won't test your peanut allergy or go on clearance at midnight? A variety of your favorite big-screen love scenes that Movieline has carefully hand-picked for you, dear reader. From the traditional to the messy forbidden love, there is something on this custom Valentine's Day list for everyone -- even Cupid's non-believers. Enjoy, and as always, we'd love to hear about your own favorite love scenes below.
9. The Triumphant Love Scene: Rocky 2
Everything Rocky Balboa does is f*cking triumphant. Okay, guys? Whether it's naming animals, improvising training methods, expressing himself verbally or proposing to his girl Adrienne in front of the tiger exhibit at the zoo -- Rocky is triumphant. I hope that everyone's Valentine's Day is one percent as special as this scene is. But it's unlikely.
8. The Forbidden Love Scene: The Professional
Many Natalie Portman fans still consider her 1994 acting debut -- as an orphaned sidekick to Jean Reno's hit man in The Professional -- to be the Oscar nominee's best onscreen romance to date. (Sorry, No Strings Attached.) Had the unlikely love story been handled by another director or cast, this movie could have played out as a creepy, Lolita homage. Instead, The Professional showed an innocent, forbidden kind of love, portrayed best in this charades scene. (Fast forward to :54)
7. The Repressed Love Scene: Brokeback Mountain
Speaking of forbidden love scenes, Ang Lee depicted another kind of complex, unresolvable romance in this 2005 drama. In the scene below, love interests Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) argue over their torturous affair after a fishing trip. The tragic encounter is presumably their last interaction before Jack's death. (Spoiler alert, sob.)
6. The Dysfunctional Love Scene: True Romance
Just because you're a call girl named Alabama does not mean that you can't fall in love with an unassuming video clerk client, profess your affection for him on a freezing rooftop and then jump cut to your courthouse nuptials. If anyone is lucky enough to find him/herself in the same scenario (depicted in below) this Valentine's Day, remember to beware of briefcases filled with stolen cocaine. (Fast forward to 3:18.)
5. The Twee Love Scene: Juno
Widely known fact: Sometimes, the only way to cement a high school relationship with the cross-country runner who knocked you up while uttering "wizard," is to perform an acoustic duet with him on the sidewalk.
4. The Eighties Love Scene: Sixteen Candles
The most beloved coming-of-age comedies of the 80's ended with dreamy romantic gestures -- whether it was holding a boom box under your crush's window, giving the punk that you spent detention with a diamond earring, or sharing a fire hazard first kiss with your high school crush, as Samantha Baker did here in Sixteen Candles.
3. Your Mom's Favorite Love Scene: You've Got Mail
(Also known as "The Nora Ephron Love Scene")
Regardless of whether you're a fan of Joe vs. the Volcano, Sleepless in Seattle or this 1998 reunion of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, you can't deny the power of Hanks-Ryan Chemistry (copyright pending) -- or the loveliness of Ryan's line, "I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly." -- in spite of all the suffocating Upper West Sided-ness of this Nora Ephron flick.
2. The Open-Ended Love Scene: Lost in Translation
Oh, Bill Murray. Even though we'll never know what your character whispered to Scarlett Johansson in the streets of Tokyo -- or if you ended up divorcing your carpet sample-obsessed wife -- we'll continue adoring you, and this love scene.
1. The Long-Term Love Scene: Before Sunset
In the culminating sequence of Robert Linklater's two-part film series, Julie Delpy's character plays a waltz written for the American (Ethan Hawke) that she spent one magical night with, nine years ago, in this beautiful, simplistic scene.
BONUS: The Classic Love Scene: Casablanca
Rick + Ilsa 4Eva.
Due to embedding difficulties, click here.