Best Romance Movies from 2025 to View on Valentine’s
By ERMW Team
Thursday, February 12, 2026
If 2024 was the year of the blockbuster sequel, 2025 will be remembered as the year romance reclaimed its range. From high-concept sci-fi love stories to the triumphant return of our favorite British spinster, the genre proved it could still surprise us.
Looking back at the last year in cinema, these are the romantic films that defined 2025—ranked by their cultural impact, critical acclaim, and ability to make us swoon.
The Critical Darlings
1. Hamnet
Director: Chloé Zhao Starring: Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley The Vibe: Devastatingly beautiful. Undoubtedly the heavyweight champion of the year, Hamnet adapted Maggie O'Farrell’s novel with heart-wrenching precision. While the film deals with the grief of Shakespeare’s family, the core is the fierce, earthy romance between Agnes (Buckley) and William (Mescal). Their chemistry anchored a film that was as much about the endurance of love as it was about art and loss.
Best Moment: The quiet, candlelit reconciliation scene that secured Mescal his Oscar buzz.
2. Materialists
Director: Celine Song Starring: Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans The Vibe: Sharp, modern, and searingly smart. Following her massive success with Past Lives, Celine Song returned with a rom-com that felt more like a "rom-drama." Set in the high-stakes world of New York matchmaking, the film deconstructed transactional relationships versus genuine connection. Dakota Johnson gave a career-best performance as a cynic torn between a wealthy suitor (Pascal) and the "broke" actor from her past (Evans).
Why it worked: It refused to give easy answers about money and love.
3. Eternity
Director: David Freyne Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner The Vibe: Philosophical heartbreak. A high-concept A24 film that asked: If you could love someone forever, would you want to? In a future where death is cured, a woman (Olsen) must decide between an eternal life with her safe partner or a mortal life with a passionate stranger. It was the year's most debated ending.
The Rom-Com Revival
4. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Starring: Renée Zellweger, Leo Woodall, Chiwetel Ejiofor The Vibe: A warm hug from an old friend. Skeptics were silenced when Renée Zellweger returned for a fourth outing. Now a widow navigating the dating scene in her 50s, Bridget’s journey felt poignant rather than desperate. The film successfully balanced the grief of losing Mark Darcy with the hilarity of dating a younger man (Woodall). It wasn't just a nostalgia trip; it was a mature look at starting over.
5. A Nice Indian Boy
Starring: Karan Soni, Jonathan Groff The Vibe: Wholesome, cross-cultural joy. Based on the play, this film was the sleeper hit of the spring. When Naveen (Soni) brings his white fiancé (Groff) home to his conservative Indian parents, the resulting chaos is both hilarious and deeply touching. With a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score, it was praised for modernizing the "meet the parents" trope without losing cultural specificity.
6. You're Cordially Invited
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Will Ferrell The Vibe: Chaos comedy. It wasn't high art, but it was the funniest movie of the year. Witherspoon and Ferrell played representatives of two different wedding parties who double-book a venue on a remote island. Watching two comedy giants scream at each other for 90 minutes before finding common ground was the escapism audiences needed.
Genre-Benders & Sci-Fi Romance
7. The Gorge
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Miles Teller The Vibe: A Quiet Place meets The Notebook. This genre-mashing survival thriller surprised everyone by actually being a romance in disguise. Two elite snipers stationed in watchtowers on opposite sides of a massive canyon (guarding against something unknown) fall in love from a distance. The tension was high, but the romance was the true survival mechanism.
8. Love Me
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Steven Yeun The Vibe: Weird, wonderful, and post-human. In this experimental sci-fi, Stewart and Yeun played a buoy and a satellite—AI consciousnesses that fall in love after humanity has gone extinct. It sounds absurd on paper, but the film was a surprisingly profound meditation on what it means to be "real" to someone else.
The Hidden Gem
9. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Starring: Ella Hunt The Vibe: Meta, cozy, and bookish. For anyone who has ever romanticized Mr. Darcy to a fault. The film follows a woman whose obsession with Austen novels ruins her real-life relationships, until she attends a literary conference that forces her to confront reality. It was a small indie release that found a massive second life on streaming.
