Genre: Comedy, Romance
Actor: Desmond Chiam, Ilai Swindells, Jon Prasida, Rob Collins, Shuang Hu, Tzi Ma, Yoson An
Director: Shawn Seet
Is love in the air? It sure is all over streaming platforms, where there’s no shortage of romance to cuddle up to. From intimate dramas to love-fuelled adventures, here are the best romance movies and shows to stream now.
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Actor: Desmond Chiam, Ilai Swindells, Jon Prasida, Rob Collins, Shuang Hu, Tzi Ma, Yoson An
Director: Shawn Seet
Trying to make a mostly two-hander drama with one primary location is much harder than it looks, and What If unfortunately doesn't succeed in taking on the challenge. It has a list of relationship issues that it wants to address (which, to be fair, come off as plausible sources of tension once they're finally brought up) and the performance from Alessandra de Rossi is reliably affecting. But a lack of chemistry between her and JM de Guzman—as well as a tedious first half that shows us their characters' blossoming relationship in the cheesiest ways—makes it very hard to care about them when the arguing eventually starts. Without a strong dramatic foundation, the conflict feels shallower than it should. And without a good use of setting, it all becomes tedious to watch.
Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Alessandra de Rossi, Ana Abad-Santos, Chard Ocampo, JM de Guzman, Nicole Omillo
Director: Manny Palo
Even if it knows to keep its ambitions modest, Holiday in the Vineyards still doesn't find much to do for its small cast. The actors do what they can and certainly seem like they're having fun play-acting a warm Christmas romcom, but when all is said and done there simply isn't anything particularly striking about the collection of romcom-isms assembled for this movie. Even the film's premise—which seems to promise a unique clashing of values between a small town and big capitalist business—resolves things with little more than a pat on the back. It's certainly sweet on the surface, but these people we're asked to to spend 107 minutes with still feel like strangers to us by the end.
Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Alan Toy, Annika Noelle, Carlos Solórzano, Cullen Douglas, Eileen Davidson, Gregory Zarian, Josh Swickard, Kaleina Cordova, Manuel Rafael Lozano, Omar Gooding, Paul Witten, Sol Rodríguez
Director: Alex Ranarivelo
Bogged down by a platonic best friendship with a suspicious lack of communication and the repetitive use of tacky nicknames, Seasons never gains enough momentum to justify 108 minutes of uninteresting romance tropes. Carlo Aquino and Lovi Poe's chemistry is overshadowed by the glaring mound of unoriginal dialogue and drawn-out story. The lack of awareness and childish antics that culminate at the tail-end of a 15-year-long friendship are more disappointing than believable. With no external (or personal) struggles of their own, every sequence reinforces how flat and underdeveloped our leads are, as if they only engage with the world when close to, or thinking about, each other. Love-me/Love-me-not is never enough to carry the film.
Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Carlo Aquino, Lovi Poe, Sarah Edwards, Sheenly Gener
Director: Easy Ferrer
After a strong first act that has lots of fun playing with fake identities donned by its characters (and with a particularly entertaining supporting turn from Bill Nighy), Role Play slows down significantly and only ends up spinning its wheels. In its attempt to inject some more drama into the central relationship between Anna (who goes by Emma with her family) and Dave, the film articulates itself awkwardly, overemphasizes the obvious, and loses precious time for the plot develop in interesting ways. By the third act, Role Play practically teleports itself into entirely new circumstances, where the emotional stakes are neither high enough or clear enough to begin with.
Genre: Action, Comedy, Romance
Actor: Angus McGruther, Bill Nighy, Connie Nielsen, Cornell Adams, David Oyelowo, Dominic Holmes, Jade-Eleena Dregorius, Jonathan Failla, Julia Schunevitsch, Kaley Cuoco, Lucia Aliu, Moritz Berg, Reagan Bryan-Gudgeon, Rudi Dharmalingam, Simon Delaney, Sonita Henry, Stacy Thunes, Steffen Jung, Stephanie Levi-John
Director: Thomas Vincent
There’s no way to escape it– the plotline of One True Loves feels like the other side of Cast Away (2000), but instead of focusing on the survival aspect, it focuses on the wife trying to move on with grief. The original novel portrays Emma moving on through reclaiming her past, and learning to appreciate the roots she’s tried to forget with her lost husband. However, the film adaptation falters in depicting the personal, inner world of Emma, as it bungles through the timelines with Hallmark-esque quotes and disarranged scenes. It tries to save the film through its star-studded cast, but their decent performances can’t save the way the film is structured.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Actor: Beth Broderick, Christina Bach, Cooper van Grootel, Gabriella Garcia, Gary Hudson, Jacinte Blankenship, Jay DeVon Johnson, Jessi Goei, Kelvin Hodge, Lauren Tom, Luke Bracey, Michael OKeefe, Michaela Conlin, Oceana Matsumoto, Oona Yaffe, Phillipa Soo, Simu Liu, Tom Everett Scott, Victoria Blade, Wil Deusner
Director: Andy Fickman
Mae is a hopeless romantic looking for love and more clients for her custom t-shirts. After a meet-cute at the grocery store, she turns to an app called Missed Connections to find him. After they finally meet, Mae realizes he has a connection with someone else. Now determined to make him fall in love with her, she hires him to rebuild her website. As a rom-com, the comedy isn't particularly outstanding or noticeable. The romance, and Mae, are hard to root for, especially when her obsessions go too far, her slut-shaming goes unchecked, and it all lasts for 90% of the film without any real cathartic resolutions.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Actor: Chie Filomeno, JC Santos, Kelvin Miranda, Matet De Leon, Miles Ocampo
Director: Jelise Chung
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Actor: Charithra Chandran, Charles Camrose, Daisy Jelley, Dhanushka Anson, Guz Khan, Kunal Nayyar, Lucy Punch, Madeline Holliday, Maisie Peters, Nick Frost, Sebastian Croft, Tanner Buchanan, Tim Downie
Director: Alex Pillai
One would hope that, even with a premise like this, My Life with the Walter Boys could have some sort of emotional center to pin everything down, but if the first two episodes watched for this review are any indication, the series is too content playing out as an odd romantic fantasy. It's not even necessarily that this show skirts the grey area of falling for one's foster brothers; it's that all of these romantic feelings sprout up far too abruptly. It doesn't help that the rest of the series that surrounds these cliche moments of teens staring longingly at each other seems to be caught between wanting to be a serious study of grief and a typical fish-out-of-water young adult drama. In either mode the show is dull, and all its production values can't conceal how contrived so much of this story is for no reason.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Actor: Ashby Gentry, Connor Stanhope, Corey Fogelmanis, Jaylan Evans, Johnny Link, Marc Blucas, Nikki Rodriguez, Noah LaLonde, Sarah Rafferty, Zoë Soul
What a waste of a premise, and what a waste of Woodley’s talents. Based on the short story “The Robot Who Looked Like Me” by Robert Sheckley, Robots has some clever things to say about the state of advanced tech and its role in society, but its clumsy, heavyhanded approach fumbles the execution. There’s an awkward and unfinished feel to Robots that doesn’t make anything about it believable—not the technology, not the convoluted story, and certainly not the romance. And except for Woodley, none of the characters seem likable. The male-dominated cast makes constant jokes about fatness and femininity, presumably for the sake of satire, but they end up participating in the very things they’re supposedly calling out. It’s not nearly as smart nor as charming as it thinks it is, and if you’re looking for an alternative, I would recommend the far superior German film I’m Your Man, which accomplishes everything Robots tries to be and more.
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction
Actor: Barney Burman, Case Matthews, Casey Messer, Charles Grisham, Chelsea Edmundson, David Grant Wright, Emanuela Postacchini, Hank Rogerson, Jack Whitehall, Jackamoe Buzzell, Keith Campbell, Kevin Foster, Leslie Fleming-Mitchell, Nick Rutherford, Paul Jurewicz, Paul Rust, Richard Lippert, Samantha Ashley, Samantha Gonzalez, Shailene Woodley, Tiffany Adams
Director: Anthony Hines, Casper Christensen
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Actor: Benjamin Bratt, Brooke Shields, Miranda Cosgrove, Rachael Harris, Sean Teale
Director: Mark Waters
Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Aida Nurmala, Caitlin Halderman, Greesella Adhalia, Jourdy Pranata, Tiwi Helmer
Director: Ainun Ridho
Unfortunately, it isn't enough to have cartoonishly attractive people do silly things in the name of love for an entire feature film. This premise is undeniably fun at first: the pace is snappy, the locations are pretty, and there are more than a few intentional laughs buried within the film's fast-paced dialogue. But the longer Love Tactics 2 goes on, the more idiotic its characters seem and the more it feels like they don't actually deserve the love they supposedly earned in the previous movie. It greatly underestimates how frustrating it is to watch people fail to communicate over and over again, not out of any goodwill, but out of pure pride and jealousy. Sure, the leads provide plenty of eye candy, but after seeing how little they actually get to work with, watching them becomes an act of secondhand embarrassment.
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Actor: Atakan Çelik, Bora Akkaş, Ceyhun Mengiroğlu, Demet Özdemir, Deniz Baydar, Hande Yılmaz, İpek Tuzcuoğlu, Kerem Atabeyoğlu, Melisa Döngel, Şükrü Özyıldız
Director: Recai Karagöz
Genre: Comedy, Romance, TV Movie
Actor: Adam Hose, Ashley Dulaney, Darla Delgado, Demi Castro, Erin Cahill, Jeremy King, Jesse Kove, Jim R. Coleman, Lily Jane, Martin Kove, Rod Grant, Sasha Andreev, Susan Gallagher, Tymberlee Hill
Director: Conrad de la Torres III, Michael E. Brown
With uninteresting characters and an aggressively bland story right from the start, Choose Love fails to establish any stakes worth caring about, no matter what choices we make throughout. Any sense of novelty from playing this choose-your-own-romcom vanishes once you notice how certain decision points lead to the exact same idea, or are blatantly disregarded by the character you "control" anyway. Choice is a complete illusion here, and the fact that we're only asked to participate when it comes to some of the most inane dilemmas only highlights how the film's protagonist isn't acting like a rational, adult human being with any self-respect or regard for others. Sure, people are inherently flawed and it can be fun to see how disastrous this situation can get through our own manipulation, but by the end there's still no believable spark to be found. It feels like a cop-out no matter what.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Actor: Avan Jogia, Benjamin Hoetjes, Blair Strang, Jack Bright, Jacque Drew, Jesse Griffin, Jordi Webber, Laura Marano, Lucy Wigmore, Megan Smart, Nell Fisher, Scott Michael Foster
Director: Stuart McDonald