Sometimes, I don’t need to over-think the romantic film recommendation thing. Sometime, the right selection is clear. And this week, I’m going with the obvious choice: Casablanca, Michael Curtiz’s 1942 masterpiece starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains.

If you haven’t seen it, you really should stop whatever you’re doing and track this film down. Like immediately. No, I’m not kidding.

But if you need more convincing, our setting is Morocco in the early days of World War II. Refugees are streaming out Europe only to end up trapped in purgatory-like Casablanca, unable to get out of the Vichy French-occupied (and thus German-aligned) territory without visas. Two such refugees are Bergman and Henreid. He’s a resistance leader and she’s his wife, a woman whose past with the bar-owner and hard-boiled cynic Bogart is at the center of the film.

Whether Casablanca is a romance or the true film equivalent of romance novel — meaning a courtship-focused narrative with a happily ever after — is an interesting question. (SPOILER ALERT) It ends happily from Henreid’s point-of-view and with the start of  “beautiful friendship” for Bogart and Rains. It also gave Bogart and Bergman closure. So the ending is ambiguous at worse and positive at best. (END SPOILERS) But even if the ending is atypical, it’s deeply romantic, often funny, and always smart.

I don’t believe that the cream rises to the top. The films that endure often stay around through a weird combination of marketing, nostalgia, academic interest, and serendipity. But in Casablanca’s case, the reputation and endurance is earned. I’ll be watching it tonight with some North African food and sangria.

With all that talk about the supermoon earlier this week, there was really only one choice for this week’s fine romance: Norman Jewison’s 1987 romantic comedy Moonstruck. Yes, the one with Cher and Nicolas Cage.

It’s about a widow (Cher; yes, really) whose life is finally turning around. She’s engaged to a man who, while she doesn’t love him, is nice. When he goes to Sicily to be with his dying mother, she agrees to try to patch things over with his estranged brother (Cage). He, it turns out, is not nice at all, but not nice in that alpha, bad boy “my hand was cut off by a bread slicer” way (I’m still not making any of this up). They end up having a torrid affair and going to Lincoln Center to see La Boheme. As people do.

There are subplots involving Cher’s family, etc., but really, all I can say to recommend this film to you is that enjoying it is entirely about suspending your disbelief and letting your emotions sweep you away. It’s ridiculous and over-the-top and somehow, that’s precisely how it tells the truth.

If it’s not obvious, I really love Moonstruck. If you haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen it in a while, my recommendation for tonight is Moonstruck, Chianti, Puccini, and many, many carbs.

It’s the longest day of the year, at least if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere. If I were a darker, meaner person, today’s fine romance selection would be one of the film versions of The Great Gatsby, in which Daisy Buchanan opines, “Do you ever wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it!” But since we haven’t missed it, we’ll have to watch something else. Hopefully something happier! My choice is Barefoot in the Park, a delightful romp featuring Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, and late 60s New York.

It starts with a wedding, that of young lawyer Redford and the Bohemian-aspirant Fonda. After the wedding comes their Greenwich Village apartment, which is truly the third character in the film and the marriage. It might be an atypical romance, but it is a rather adorable film.

I won’t discuss whether any of the DC and Boston apartments we lived in when we were first married might make the film biographically appealing, but I will say that it’s fun and surprisingly fresh. I’ll be watching it tonight with something fizzy and cool and suggest you do the same.

In light of this fascinating NPR story about the disappearance of women from movie screens, I thought this week’s selection should be a romance focused on women, but this was tricky. At first I thought I’d go with a romance that features strong female friendship — Real Women Have Curves or Pitch Perfect — but then I started thinking about the GLBT romances I’ve seen. And in my childhood in the 90s and early 00s, there weren’t many. But I can recommend Kissing Jessica Stein.

Starring Jennifer Westfeldt, Heather Juergensen, and Scott Cohen (plus cameos by what seems like half of indie Hollywood), it’s the story of a (straight) New York woman who’s fed up with the terrible dating scene, so much so that she answers a dating ad placed by another woman. The early dating scenes with Westfeldt and Juergensen are fantastically well-done. The conversations, the early relationship butterflies, the chemistry: it’s all great. I also really liked the film’s portrayal of the hesitancies of coming out.

While I wouldn’t want to spoil it, it’s important to know that the film doesn’t have a typical happy ending. Nor is it unproblematic. But I think it’s a very GLBT-positive film, and one that’s insightful and honest about modern relationships, so for that, Kissing Jessica Stein is this week’s fine romance.

Now go forth and watch movies about women! (And if you have recommendations for lesbian romance, on screen or on the page, I’d love them.)

It’s raining here. Like epically raining. While part me just wants to re-recommend Monsoon Wedding and call it a day, I can’t ignore that precipitation brings us many good romances, including today’s selection: Mike Newell’s Four Weddings and a Funeral.

As the title explains, it’s a film about a series of big gatherings and the emotions and complications they bring. At the first wedding, a confirmed British bachelor (Hugh Grant) meets an American girl (Andie MacDowell). After a series of hilarious interactions, they spend the night together…and then she goes back to America. When they meet again, at the second wedding, she’s engaged to somebody else.

The film introduces a host of tropes that would go on to become cliches — the cast of kooky friends, the big event gone bad, the highly structured narrative — but here, they’re fresh. I think it’s the unabashed emotion of Four Weddings, a movie that never fails to make me cry and to read Auden, that makes it work, that makes it seem original even on the twelfth viewing.

Hugh Grant had quite a run there with romantic comedies in the 90s and 00s, but this might very well be my favorite. (Or should I say, favourite?) He’s adorably awkward. And Andie MacDowell is smart and warm — you want to be friends with her, which is what sets the 80s and 90s romantic comedies apart from those of the present. So if somehow, you’ve avoided it, or haven’t seen it in a while, my recommendation for tonight’s fine romance is Four Weddings and a Funeral, perhaps paired with something hot and rum-y.

I have a weird thing about place, season, and the things I read/watch. Sometimes when it’s Christmas, you just have to watch a holiday movie, sure. But for the bulk of December, I need Lawrence of Arabia. And Top Gun. And other movies involving hot weather and sand. Sure, I read A Moveable Feast on a Parisian vacation, but also le Carre and Hurston. And the right choice for today — when it’s 90 with 90% humidity and loads of golden sunshine — is, I think, a romantic comedy that starts during the holiday shopping rush. I’m speaking of course of one of the only good Hollywood romantic comedies of the past fifteen years, Serendipity.

After the ultimate meet cute, John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale share a lovely New York evening. They’re both involved with other people, but … but nothing. Refusing to give him her number or her name, Beckinsale sends a book out into the cosmic void with her contact info and calls it a night. Years later, they’ve both moved on. Until Cusack finds the book.

Now, I have issues with the film’s misreading of Love in the Time of Cholera (see my Goodreads review here), but it’s impossible to have issues with John Cusack. John Cusack in all the movies, I say. Even Kate Beckinsale manages to be charming, and she gives us access to John Corbett doing a Yanni impression and Molly Shannon being hilarious. It’s all sweet, lovely, and serendipitous. And if you need an anecdote to summer, I commend it to you tonight.

So I had some terribly exciting news yesterday, but in typical fashion, you’re going to have to wait for it. Believe me, it’s good.

In the meantime, in honor of Memorial Day, my fine romance Friday recommendation is A Very Long Engagement, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2004 drama about World War I, starring Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, and Marion Cotillard. It’s a really lovely movie — Jeunet and Tautou’s follow-up to the better-known Amelie — about a group of soldiers who shoot themselves during the Battle of the Somme in an attempt to get sent home from the front. They’re caught and face court martial. Tautou’s character, who suffered polio as a child, spends the movie attempting to figure out what happened to the men, one of whom is her fiance.

As you’d expect if you’ve seen Amelie, the film looks amazing. The cinematography, the costumes, the use of the French countryside, etc. are all gorgeous and do an excellent job setting the tone. The film is a triumph of mood, really, using color and music to create shifting atmospheres. It’s also oh so romantic as you wonder how precisely the central couple — Tautou and Ulliel — will get back to one another.

I’d recommend pairing it with a nice beaujolais and Adam Hochchild’s haunting non-fiction account of World War I, To End All Wars.

I don’t know about where you’re at, but here, it’s hot. We’d been enjoying a nice spring and suddenly this week, summer arrived with heat and humidity leading the way. In honor of the shift in season, this week’s fine romance is Summertime, an underrated 1955 romanced directed by David Lean starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi.

It’s the story of an American secretary who has been saving her entire life for a big European tour. She stops in Venice for a few weeks, meets a silver fox Italian and, well, sparks fly.

I’m making it sound cliched, however, and Summertime is anything but. While the step up is predictable enough, nothing about the movie is quite what you expect. The cinematography is gorgeous — Lean was clearly getting ready for Lawrence of Arabia; the acting terrific; and the score haunting. And seriously, Brazzi can brood like no one’s business. While summer is still a novelty, slurp this one down with a bellini tonight.

There are moments in life — like when you’re trying to finish writing your dissertation, revising a novel, getting your two-year-old to stop biting his sister, and figuring out what you’re going to do with the rest of your life  — when you need Bette Davis.

“What would Bette do?” is a question that I have actually asked myself. The woman was always a tower of strength on screen. Sometimes she’s not at the beginning, but by the end, she’s found her way in a hostile world and she’s found her man too and she absolutely won’t apologize.

Everyone knows All About Eve — and I adore the central relationship in that film — but Now, Voyager is more focused on the romance. So this week’s fine romance recommendation is Irving Rapper’s 1942 weepie with Davis and Paul Henreid.

It’s the story of a frumpy, introverted Boston Brahman spinster who gets some new clothes, goes on a cruise to South America, and falls in love with Paul Henreid. As one does. Warning: it doesn’t feature a traditional happily ever after, but I don’t think you’ll care because Bette Davis will teach you how to live.

I read a number of posts this week about the dearth of good romantic comedies in Hollywood these days (see, for example, Smexy Books). The near-absent of this genre from mega-plexes everywhere confuses me because they’re relatively cheap to make and they appeal to female viewers, who often feel under-served in the current market. Thankfully, there are always the romantic comedies of the past on cable. And today, I’m recommending Only You, Norman Jewison’s Italian travelogue featuring the delightful Robert Downey Jr., Marisa Tomei, and lots of terrific mid 90s fashions.

This film is a riff on The Importance of Being Earnest, except in this case, it’s the importance of being Damon Bradley. Tomei’s character got the name off a Ouija board when she was a kid. She’s given up that silly fatalism until, on the eve of her wedding, she finds Damon Bradley, chases him to Italy, and he turns out to be Robert Downey Jr. Hijinks ensue.

I couldn’t find the clip that I wanted — the late night walk across Rome — so you’ll have to settle for the trailer. But really, this movie is charming and romantic and beautiful and you should watch it with pasta and wine tonight. And then come back here and explain to me why movies set in Italy are always better.