Film ideas for a quiet Valentine’s Day on the couch

Bill Knight column for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, Feb. 12, 13 or 14           

Valentine’s Day is part feast day for the Roman martyr who died in 269 AD and a holiday honoring Juno, the Roman goddess of women and marriage. So “roman” is part of romance, right?

This week, besides candy and flowers, consider sharing a romance movie wth your sweetheart. There’s a lot there, from last year’s “Shape of Water” and “Beauty and the Beast” to 1997’s “Titanic” and “The Notebook” (2004), “Splash” (1984) and “Wuthering Heights” (1939). How to choose?

“Romance means not merely a love story,” the late critic Roger Ebert wrote, “but a love story told against the backdrop of exciting events, in the midst of which – as Bogie said – ‘The problems of a couple of little people like you and me don’t amount to a hill of beans.’ But they do.”

Here are ideas for movies to rent or stream:

“The African Queen” (1952). Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn are a crusty riverboat captain and a prim sister of a murdered missionary during World War I, brought together by circumstances. As the micmatched pair copes with Nature (“I hate leechies”) and threats from a German gunboat, they unexpectedly find love in the jungle.

“As Good As It Gets” (1997). Women may identify with single-mom Helen Hunt (waiting on tables, helping her sick kid, coping with her live-in mother). Men may identify with romance writer Jack Nicholson (his cynicism, if not his obsessiveness). Each won an Oscar in director James L. Brooks’ serio-comedy, co-starring Greg Kinnear in a tale of three people in need who help each other, feel their hearts thaw, and find more than friendship.

“Casablanca” (1942). Blending romance, intrigue and an exotic, timely backdrop (North Africa, early in World War II), the yarn about a tough saloonkeeper with a broken heart still works wonders. Add an able director (Michael Curtiz) and a superb cast (Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet and Paul Henreid), and timeless magic results.

“City Lights” (1931). Filmmaker and star Charlie Chaplin could have made a movie with sound, but he chose to make this his last silent picture, his best film. Again playing the Little Tramp, Chaplin falls in love with a blind flower girl and helps her in many ways, but he’s limited in what he can do. So he befriends a millionaire in order to get money to pay for an operation that may restore her sight. Echoing tender moments from O. Henry and the best part of just being alive, “City Lights” is endearing and innocent, and has one of the movie industry’s most memorable endings. (It co-stars Virginia Cherrill, a native of west-central Illinois.)

“The Goodbye Girl” (1977). It’s 41 years old, but this Neil Simon comedy has a fresh charm and enduring quality that contrasts with dated efforts such as other pretentious efforts. Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason star as incompatible New Yorkers forced to share an apartment.

“It Happened One Night” (1934). The first film awarded all the major Oscars, Frank Capra’s screwball comedy stars Clark Cable and Claudette Colbert in a fast-paced battle of the sexes – and classes. A hardboiled reporter and a runaway heiress on a bus trip from Miami to New York discover new points of view, and love.

“Moonstruck” (1987). Cher is excellent in this Oscar-winning, ethnic-flavored delight co-starring Nicholas Cage. Cher won the Academy Award as a stubborn, confused woman torn between fiancé Danny Aiello and his brother (Cage). Featured are Olympia Dukakis and John Mahoney, who attended college in west-central Illinois and recently died at age 77.

“On Golden Pond” (1981). Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn were old when they made this film, which soars above melodrama. Their ages lift their performances and the film’s impact. It’s engaging, humorous, touching and loving, in both a family sense and a sense of the ageless passion and commitment an elderly couple can have.

“Roxanne” (1987). Steve Martin wrote and stars in this modern retelling of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” with Daryl Hannah in the title role and Martin as the big-nosed, big-hearted “suitor.” Amusing misadventures, frank realizations and comforting resolutions make this light love story a keeper.

“Sleepless In Seattle” (1993). Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan somehow created a chemistry, although they share few scenes in this tale of a widower with a cute son who literally broadcasts his father’s loneliness, which comes to the attention of a fetching Eastern reporter. Writer/director Nora Ephron’s cast also includes Bill Pullman, Rosie O’Donnell and Rob Reiner.