5 Greatest Romantic Movies of the Last 5 Years, Ranked

2 weeks ago 15

Published Feb 14, 2026, 9:10 AM EST

Samuel is Collider's List Flex Editor (previously Lead List Editor), which means he's pretty much always hovering around Collider's List department. A writing and editing automaton based in Nashville, Tennessee, and sometimes Los Angeles, Samuel has been working in entertainment journalism for over 10 years.

Samuel is the guy who talked to Betty White about vodka and hot dogs. Chaz Ebert once pinched Samuel's cheeks after a screening of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, when Samuel told her that Roger was and forever is his hero. William Friedkin once jokingly called Samuel "dad" at a screening of Samuel's favorite movie, The Babadook. Forbes once called Samuel a "sneering critic" because he disliked Don't Look Up.

Two major brands have trusted Samuel with curating their respective lists of the 100 Best Movies of All Time. Samuel wrote one of these lists in its entirety.

Other career highlights include appearing on KCRW and meeting Joe Morgenstern, and also spending 50 minutes talking to Tommy Wiseau on a landline (which was awesome).

Samuel loves his job and is rarely actively not doing it.

There's really no way or no need of sugarcoating the simple fact that we're living in dark and uncertain times. That seems to be one of the few things most people can agree on these days. To say much of anything to the contrary would really just come off as insincere if not outright repellent, so let's just leave it there: there's a lot of darkness and uncertainty out there right now.

There's something to be said for romance in dark times; it would appear there's more of an appetite for it than ever when the world seems bleak. Just look at how Heated Rivalry took off. The debut season of Canada's sexy, sweet gay hockey romance in many ways overshadowed the drawn-out finale of the once-phenomenal Stranger Things. People went nuts for Heated Rivalry. Connection seems to be something worth celebrating now more than ever. Modern loneliness is never out of the conversation, and a lot of people think they're in love with their ChatGPT app. The following great movies are enough to inspire hope that romance isn't dead. These are the most perfect romantic movies of the last half-decade.

5 'Decision to Leave' (2022)

"The wise man admires water, the kind man admires mountains.” A study in restraint and subtlety from a great filmmaker who was once known for anything but, Decision to Leave stars Hae il Park as a detective investigating the mysterious death of a rock climber, all the while falling for the deceased's wife (Tang Wei).

Some fans of the director's older, more iconic work might miss the absolutely unbridled, inspired explicitness of something like Oldboy, but Decision to Leave is a layered, stunningly crafted modern film noir about seemingly infinite longing. Decision to Leave was notably entirely snubbed by the Oscars, as was the director's 2025 follow-up, No Other Choice. Both snubs on their own, much less back-to-back, have caused a considerable amount of outrage from fans and critics alike.

4 'Past Lives' (2023)

Celine Song's Oscar-nominated drama stars Greta Lee and Teo Yoo as childhood friends from South Korea with an emotional connection that spans a quarter-century, even as fate and one family's emigration become formidable obstacles. From a rather extraordinary opening shot through a bittersweet ending, Past Lives is a remarkably confident and emotionally mature debut film, all the more astonishing for the fact that Song hadn't so much as been on a film set before making it. Past Lives is tightly controlled filmmaking that feels entirely effortless and real.

The director's 2025 follow-up, Materialists, was overall well-received by critics and at the box office, thanks surely in part to the name cast of Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal. Materialists can't match the emotion, authenticity and invention of Past Lives, but the actors are charming, and it was undeniably interesting to see Song work within a more familiar, mainstream rom-com space.

3 'Challengers' (2024)

Luca Guadagnino's best movie to date is a sports movie, and a study of relationships; perhaps it's more of a movie about the work that goes into long-term friendships than it is about romance, but it's about all of this. Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist star as best buds Patrick and Art, who vie for the same girl, Tashi (Zendaya) as youths. All are tennis prodigies with contrasting levels of talent and drive; fate and the industry of professional sports drive the three in unexpected directions.

Over a 13-year time span, these three become pretty miserable, broken people; we also come to care about them intensely because the writing and acting are so good. Patrick is a true talent who lacks discipline and lives in chaos. Art is loyal and determined, but he lacks agency, and frankly he could use to grow a pair. Tashi becomes so single-minded she's close to heartless. The final minutes of Challengers are some of the most thrilling stretches in modern cinema memory; everything converges on a match point that Guadagnino films as a pure rush of adrenaline. Though the ending is intentionally ambigous, it's clear that, within a mere instant, everyone has changed. Challengers delivers on more than what you could even reasonably expect from a sports film; it's one of the greatest films ever in the genre.

2 'Anora' (2024)

Sean Baker's sprawling, Palme d'Or and Best Picture-winning romantic dramedy stars Mikey Madison as New York sex worker Ani, who marries Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the immature and spoiled son of Russian oligarch Nikolai Zakharov (Aleksey Serebryakov). It's hard to overstate just how fun, how hilarious, how exhaustingly entertaining the vulgar modern Cinderella story is in a first act that may seem a little directionless on first watch. Reality hits in act two; the film gains astonishing emotional weight. The real love story here sneaks up on you. Igor (Yura Borisov), one of Zakharov's goons, appears to fall madly for Ani. Or maybe he just really comes to care for the girl as the rich and powerful put her through the ringer. Maybe it's both.

Like many of the greatest comedies of the Depression era, this is a film about the haves and the have nots. Anora is about the cruelty and the reach of the billionaire class, and the helplessness of those at their mercy. On the more hopeful side of things, it's a film about the power of being seen versus being looked at. Anora is, simply, the ultimate movie about how disconnected the modern, greed-driven world has become. That Igor and Ani even make some kind of connection in the end is a miracle. Sean Baker and Anora's historic Oscars victory (Baker became the only filmmaker in history to win four Oscars in one night for the same project) is one of the most inspired moves in modern Academy history. They got it right.

1 'All of Us Strangers' (2023)

British filmmaker Andrew Haigh has one of the strongest track records around, with critical darlings like Weekend, Lean on Pete, and 45 Years under his belt. He did his best work to date with the haunting supernatural romance All of Us Strangers, loosely based on the novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada. Andrew Scott delivers a career-best performance as Adam, a Londoner who begins a relationship with Harry (Paul Mescal), a handsome neighbor who approaches him one night in drunk despondence. The film is a low fantasy and a mystery; to give away much of the plot would be to give away the revelations that make the film such a moving experience.

It's not too much of a spoiler to say that All of Us Strangers is as much a family drama as a romance, with Claire Foy and Jamie Bell delivering excellent performances as Adam's long-deceased parents. The subtle fantasy elements make the film a unique and innovative study of grief, and the transcendent, perhaps phenomenal nature of connection. All of Us Strangers is sad in a way scarce few movies have the guts to be. It's no kind of overstatement to call this the best film of the 2020s so far. It isn't any kind of overstatement to call it one of the best movies of the 21st century, or even of all time. It's a tragic, transformative experience that offers something like healing just in how incisive and recognizably human it all is.