Image via United Artists
Published May 14, 2026, 5:04 AM EDT
Giulia Campora is a freelance journalist at the moment. Her longtime dream is to become an entertainment reporter and work for a digital or paper magazine in New York. She aims to give the most truthful news about celebrities, music, TV, and movies, with reviews and lists as well.
Sign in to your Collider account
Romantic comedies are movies that have shaped entire generations of men and women to make them believe in romantic happy endings. However, there are dramatic movies, like the most recent Wuthering Heights, or Titanic, that offer a more realistic setting for romance, with couples not having a happy ending or setting up the audience for a more interpretative conclusion (La La Land or Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind). So, romantic comedies are the most beloved movie genre right now, because they offer a lighthearted, comedic, yet tear-jerking story (tears of happiness, though).
Hollywood has produced countless romantic comedies throughout the years that have touched the hearts of many. Some examples are While You Were Sleeping or Only You. So, Collider has put together a compilation of titles that can be considered among the best romantic comedy movies since the famous 1977 masterpiece, Annie Hall. Without further ado, grab your favorite girlfriends and get ready to swoon over these romantic movies.
10 'Love Actually' (2003)
Image via Universal PicturesSet in the beautiful Christmas season, Love Actually is a holiday romantic comedy classic that is beloved by many. Not because of its stunning winter-like scenario that draws the attention of viewers, but also because of its love stories that shaped the lives of many generations. Furthermore, it is a very heartfelt and light-hearted movie that can catch the interest even of the most cold-hearted person ever.
The thing that makes Love Actually a timeless and iconic movie is the fact that it doesn't feature one love story, but ten different ones that intertwine together at some point in the movie. Set in London and directed by Richard Curtis, this film tells the story of various couples and characters, exploring the complexity of love and relationships. And that is what makes this movie feel more realistic than others to its viewers.
9 'Bridget Jones's Diary' (2001)
Image via Miramax FilmsLondon, the city where the storyline for Bridget Jones's Diary was set. The 2001 romantic-comedy, based on the novels of the same name written by Helen Fielding, tells the story of Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger), who is a 32-year-old woman who decides to take control of her life again after making poor choices. She decides to document her new decisions in a diary, to keep track of things she wants to do, like stop smoking or find true love. Specifically, that happens to her after all, as she finds herself in the middle of a love triangle with her charming boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), and the kind Mark Darcy (Colin Firth).
This movie is something that will make you feel that romance can happen to anyone if you put your mind to it. The portrayal of Zellweger as Bridget is light-hearted and whimsical, making you cherish this character till the very end. Furthermore, Grant and Firth will make you swoon in this movie, making it hard to choose who you want Bridget to end up with in the first place.
8 '10 Things I Hate About You' (1999)
Image via Touchstone PicturesOne of the most iconic performances of the late Heath Ledger and the phenomenal Julia Stiles, 10 Things I Hate About You, is truly what you would expect when watching a romantic comedy of the late 90s. If you are an alternative rock lover, this movie features a phenomenal soundtrack that you will undoubtedly enjoy. The chemistry between Ledger and Stiles sets up for their characters to be one of the most beautiful enemies-to-lovers pairings ever.
10 Things I Hate About You tells the story of Kat Stratford (Stiles), who is a beautiful teenager in high school, but comes across as abrasive and too aggressive towards the rest of the people in school, so she doesn't attract any boys, and she is okay with it. However, her sister, Bianca Stratford (Larisa Oleynik), wants to have a boyfriend. Their dad set a rule that Bianca cannot have a boyfriend until Kat does, so she goes on a detailed search for someone to matchmake with Kat with the help of her French tutor, Cameron James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who has a crush on Bianca in the first place. The boy chosen is a new arrival to school, Patrick Verona (Ledger).
7 'Serendipity' (2001)
Image via Miramax FilmsOne of the most accurate representations of the concept of fate, Serendipity is a movie that will make your hopeless romantic self soar. Specifically, in this film, the main leads are Jonathan (John Cusack) and Sara (Kate Beckinsale), who have a cute meeting in New York in their 20s. Jonathan falls in love at first sight, but Sara is more skeptical. So, they go their separate ways. But ten years later, the pair puts their trust into fate to see if they can coincidentally meet up again. Is it in their destiny that they are meant to be together after all?
Serendipity is a very good movie to watch during the holidays for its warm, winter vibes. Furthermore, as stated before, is a movie that leans a lot into the concepts of fate and destiny. It highlights that everything happens by chance, for a reason. Specifically, it's trying to tell its viewers that we don't go actively searching for what we want most, and that it will come to us eventually, which I find to be very beautiful.
6 'While You Were Sleeping' (1995)
Image via Buena Vista PicturesAnother treat for a hopeless romantic soul is definitely While You Were Sleeping. This movie stars Sandra Bullock as Lucy Eleanor Moderatz, a ticket clerk for the Chicago subway, and Bill Pullman as Jack Callaghan, the brother of her long-time crush Peter. When Lucy saves Peter from an oncoming train, she mistakenly lets the family believe she is Peter's fiancée, because she is captivated by how nice the family is to her, and she has always been alone in her life. Then she meets Jack, and sparks fly. Will Jack and Lucy fall in love?
This movie's premise is somewhat peculiar, not to mention creepy. But the beautiful portrayal of Bullock and Pullman ensures that watching While You Were Sleeping makes your heart feel warm, and quite satisfied with its ending. What I mean by that is the fact that this movie makes you feel at home with its huge family-centric theme. So, what are you waiting for? Go watch this movie now!
5 'Pride and Prejudice' (2003)
Image via Universal PicturesOne of the best enemies-to-lovers movies, Pride and Prejudice is a romantic-comedy/romance drama that is set between the late 1970s and early 1800s. An adaptation of the famous novel written by Jane Austen, this movie is deemed by fans to be the most accurate representation of the enemies-to-lovers trope. The main couple begins by disliking each other, so there is lots of witty banter, to the point that they begin to yearn for each other.
In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) is a middle-class woman who lives with her family in the countryside of Britain. She is the eldest daughter, so she faces pressure, especially from her mother, to find a husband as soon as possible, since she is 20 years old. When she attends a ball with her family, she meets the mysterious Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen). The catch? He is reserved and arrogant, so the pair have to try to open themselves up to each other.
4 'Notting Hill' (1999)
Image via Universal PicturesAn iconic late 90s romantic comedy, Notting Hill is still considered to be one of the most comforting movies. Specifically, this movie highlights the beautiful chemistry between Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. Furthermore, it highlights humor and wittiness with its comedic one-liners, alongside very emotional moments, so it's the perfect recipe for a romantic comedy movie.
Notting Hill tells the story of William Thacker (Grant), a British and awkward man who owns a bookstore, and believes he will meet the girl of his dreams, but he is the most awkward person you could ever meet. One day, a celebrity, Anna Scott (Roberts), walks in to find a book, and he falls in love at first sight, also because he has been a fan of her work for a while. This movie makes you see the more realistic side of love, in some way, because it's not easy. That's the premise that made this movie a timeless classic.
3 'Only You' (1994)
Image via TriStar PicturesWhat would you do if a fortune-teller confirmed you have a soulmate, and she knows his name? Well, that's what happens to Faith Corvatch (the iconic actress Marisa Tomei) in the movie Only You, who finds out in her childhood, at a state fair, that a fortune teller says that her soulmate is a guy named Damon Bradley. One day, she sees a person who resembles the guy's description, but she is dating a foot doctor. So, she tells her best friend she wants to go to Venice and find her soulmate. And so she does, alongside her.
When Faith arrives in Venice, she meets a random, yet handsome stranger named Peter Wright (a young Robert Downey Jr). Will she fall in love with him instead, or be able to find her soulmate? This movie is heavily underrated and should be appreciated more. This movie was phenomenal because of Tomei and Downey Jr's powerful chemistry. So, go watch Only You now if you still haven't.
2 'Moonstruck' (1987)
Image via MGMImagine you are already engaged to a man, but you fall for his brother instead. This is what happens in the classic 80s romantic-comedy Moonstruck. This movie is considered to be one of the most beloved romantic comedies ever. However, television host Joy Behar didn't think so when she claimed that it gave a wrong Italian representation to the world.
Directed by the famous director Norman Jewison and written by John Patrick Shanley, Moonstruck tells the story of Loretta Castorini (portrayed by the famous icon Cher), an Italian-American bookkeeper who is in her late 30s and lives in Brooklyn. Since her first husband died a few years prior due to an accident, she decides to accept the hand of a great man, named Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello). Everything is going fine till his estranged brother, Ronny (Nicolas Cage), comes into the picture. Both Loretta and Ronny can't help it, but find themselves in a passionate, all-consuming love affair. Will they end up together, and will she stop her story with Johnny? Or not? Well, all you have to do is watch it to find out.
1 'When Harry Met Sally' (1989)
Image via Columbia PicturesA romantic-comedy classic, When Harry Met Sally is one of those movies that aged very well. It's a film you can definitely watch at a hangout with friends. That is because of its witty and comedic scenes, especially the scene of the two main leads in a diner, which will make everyone in your friend group obsessed with this film. Furthermore, this movie has phenomenal on-screen chemistry between the main leads, which ensures it becomes part of your top list.
When Harry Met Sally tells the story of a man, Harry Burns (Billy Crystal), and a woman, Sally Albright (Meg Ryan), over the course of 12 years. The couple first met in Chicago during college, through acquaintances, as they drove together to New York, vowing to remain only friends. But a decade later, they end up meeting again in New York. In this movie, the pair date different people throughout the years, as they keep having chance encounters, not realizing that it's destiny that wants them to be together in the first place. This movie is a light-hearted, yet kind of dramatic version of the friends-to-lovers trope, and simply hilarious. You won't regret watching this iconic film.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?
Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
FIND YOUR FILM →
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.
ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?
AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible.
AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM →
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
Release Date July 12, 1989
Runtime 96 minutes
Writers Nora Ephron
English (US) ·