Top 10 Romantic Movie Moments
In time for Valentine's Day, we count down the love scenes that made us swoon
By Kim MorganSpecial to MSN EntertainmentHow many of you dread Valentine's Day? For those not happily coupled up, it's just a painful reminder that either you don't have a significant other or, even worse, you have a lousy one who lets you down. Who needs that kind of disappointment?
But it's not really the silly cards and ubiquitous boxes of cheap chocolates that we yearn for on V-Day. It's the fantasy that something wildly romantic could happen to us like it does -- where else? -- in the movies.
Silver-screen affairs may be a dangerous standard to apply to real-life romance -- but we watch these films and want these feelings for ourselves, no matter how unattainable or poignant they could be. So in honor of Valentine's Day -- and especially for those who are alone or disgusted by the "Hallmark holiday" pressure -- we present clips of our top 10 romantic movie moments. And remember, we're talking about moments, not romantic movies themselves (as you'll see by our first choice) ...
10. Goodfellas (1990)
Yeah, we know your reaction: "Goodfellas"? Didn't you say romantic movies? How on Earth did that land on this list? Easy... Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco's courtship is quite simply one of the sexiest in all of cinema. Director Martin Scorsese got how hot it is when a man realizes a good-looking woman cares enough to be angry with him, chiefly in the beginning of an attraction. So when Liotta's Henry Hill skips a date with Bracco's Karen, she hauls her car right up to him and chews him out in front of his friends: "You got some nerve standing me up!" Liotta's narration of remembering how, at that moment, Karen looked like Elizabeth Taylor only underscores the fires burning between these two. And the glances they share are so viscerally exciting you get goose bumps. It also doesn't hurt that Liotta never looked so good in all his life (you understand why Karen's nuts for this guy) and of course, the first date he eventually takes her on (remember the long tracking shot through the back of the night club right up to the front table?) is amazing. Seriously, for one second, you'll forget about the mobster hanging on a meat hook, or the wig salesman stabbed and stuffed in the trunk. No... really... you will.

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9. Out of Sight (1998)
How much fun can you have in the trunk of a car? According to Steven Soderbergh's "Out of Sight," a whole lot! Of course, it helps if you're stuck with either George Clooney or Jennifer Lopez, who play a prison escapee and a federal marshal. A quintessential study of how opposites attract (even couples on opposite ends of the law), "Out of Sight" works like a modern screwball comedy, with its crackling wit and sexy cool. And we love that Soderbergh created something of a classic movie moment with this cozy scene, as Clooney's bank robber discusses movies with the hijacked Marshal Lopez, who's not supposed to be enjoying herself this much. The camera movement, music and chemistry between the stars are so overflowing, you almost forget they are, in fact, in a trunk. And though this is blissfully romantic, we advise you not to try this at home.

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8. "Harold And Maude" (1971)
In "There's Something About Mary," Cameron Diaz's Mary called "Harold and Maude" the "greatest love story of our time." She may have been going too far ... but maybe not by too much. There's something to be said about oddball love stories, especially ones viewers have to be coaxed into understanding. The acting, brilliant direction (by Hal Ashby) and soulful songs (by Cat Stevens) here help produce the chemistry between 79-year-old Maude (Ruth Gordon), a life-force of whimsical energy and wisdom, and 20-year-old Harold (Bud Cort), a death-obsessed depressive. After meeting Maude at a funeral, Harold -- who enjoys shocking his mother with incredibly graphic but impressively fake suicide attempts -- experiences an awakening of not just amour, but of life itself. In this lovely scene, Harold has given Maude a coin charm punched with the words "Harold Loves Maude," something most people would cherish forever. But characteristic of Maude (and foretelling her later decision), she throws it in the water so they always know where it is. Harold's reaction is so surprised and sweet that you can't imagine Maude doing anything else with that charm. It makes you want to dunk every present you get into the bottom of a reservoir. How deep is your love?


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7. "A Place in the Sun" (1951)
There's nothing quite like young, tragic love. And George Stevens' "A Place in the Sun" understands this perfectly. By adapting Theodore Dreiser's masterful novel "An American Tragedy" with two of the most heart-stoppingly beautiful people in cinema (Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor), Stevens immediately puts the viewer in the lovers' corner, no matter what they do. But it isn't just their looks that make you swoon; it's the chemistry and fragile performances, especially by Clift as the lonely, lovelorn man trying to make something of his life. In this dance scene, Stevens utilizes close-ups that obviously reveal the actors' beauty, but also how much they could say with their faces. Clift may be blurting out that he loves Taylor, but his pleading, poignant eyes reveal so many layers of desire, you know something is haunting him even if you don't fully understand the circumstances (he has just witnessed his pregnant girlfriend drown and, frantically in love with Taylor, he's chosen to do nothing about it). It's a dance macabre, but one of the most spine-tinglingly romantic of all time.

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6. "Say Anything..." (1989)
Did Cameron Crowe know just how many boom boxes would be lifted in front of unsuspecting girls' windows when he made this little movie in 1989? Probably not... but he surely understood that countless men and women would relate to and fall in love with Lloyd Dobler, John Cusack's most iconic role. "Say Anything" stands out for simple yet oddly complex reasons -- chiefly that Lloyd is both a regular guy and an extraordinary one because he dares to be genuinely nice. Wow. There's a novel idea. Ask out the class brain and beauty (Ione Skye) and treat her well. And, if she dumps you because her psychotic father is overprotective? Well, lift that boom box high and blast the song that played while you were making love for the first time.

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5. "The Philadelphia Story" (1940)
Oh, how glamorous Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart make getting loaded... or rather, how would they put it? Sauced? Tight? Well, they are drunk anyway in a scene that's dreamy and tipsy and swoony. George Cukor's classic, sophisticated screwball comedy -- which also starred that dapper leading man, Cary Grant -- has the blue-blood Kate mesmerizing the working-class reporter Stewart, even if she's set to marry another man (who, of course, is not right for her). Hepburn's Tracy is continually called something of an ice goddess, but the tables are turned during this moonlight dip wherein Stewart utters lines that are music to her ears: "There's magnificence in you ... a magnificence that comes out of your eyes, in your voice, in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. You're lit from within, Tracy. You've got fires banked down in you, hearth-fires and holocausts ... you're made out of flesh and blood. That's the blank, unholy surprise of it. You're the golden girl, Tracy. Full of life and warmth and delight. What goes on? You've got tears in your eyes." Yes, we would too.

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4. "Punch-Drunk Love" (2003)
How we love the verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown, off-kilter, romantic comedy, "Punch-Drunk Love." No matter how you feel about Adam Sandler, he'll leave a lasting impression on you as Barry Egan, the Californian businessman and put-upon brother who falls for the ever-patient Emily Watson. So alien yet incredibly human is he in the movie, that he and director Paul Thomas Anderson frequently put the viewer into a state of Barry-phobia. It's perfectly illustrated in this scene in which Barry flies (for the first time) all the way to Hawaii just to see his beloved. His arrival is beautifully, though oddly scored to Shelley Duvall's "He Needs Me" from Robert Altman's "Popeye." Sandler, who had displayed talent before this, has never been so fantastically abstract, utilizing his scared-yet-angry-but-violent-little-boy persona with a darkness and sweetness that is simply sublime.

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3. "Out of the Past" (1947)
We could list more than one Robert Mitchum movie that gets our pulses pumping. That bedroom-eyed, barrel-chested stud (and a splendid actor, even if he said he was sleepwalking most of the time) is such a perfect combination of swagger, drollness and romance that we have a hard time disliking him even when he plays a psycho (as in "Cape Fear"). We're allowed to like him in Jacques Tourneur's seminal, moody noir "Out of the Past" -- a film that pits Mitchum against the overwhelming charms of Jane Greer. She will prove to be a baddie, and in this famous scene, she's all but warning him to run away from her. But oh so lyrically, Mitchum murmurs, "Baby, I don't care." We're just speechless. And we really wish more people would utter that sentiment.

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2. "The Apartment" (1960)
If you've never seen "The Apartment," we suggest you don't watch this clip. If you have, read on. Billy Wilder's Oscar-winning dark comedy laid the groundwork for the running-to-your-beloved scene so often copied in later films. Jack Lemmon, a too-nice office worker trying to climb the corporate ladder, is being used by his sleazy bosses for his apartment (they cheat on their wives in his cozy bachelor pad). He falls for one of the "other women" (Shirley MacLaine). Only she's not a floozy -- she's a flawed but ultimately warm human being. And she deserves to be treated with much more respect than Fred MacMurray is giving her. When she realizes that (duh!) the nice guy is better for her, she pulls the iconic movie moment of rushing to Lemmon with smiles and tears in her eyes. You saw it in "When Harry Met Sally" and you saw it in "Jerry Maguire." You even saw it, in a more hysterical form, in "The Graduate." But it's never been as powerful as in "The Apartment" -- especially when MacLaine's response to Lemmon's affirmation of amour is "Shut up and deal."

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1. "Casablanca" (1942)
It almost seemed too obvious a choice -- but then, come on, it's "Casablanca," one of the greatest love stories ever told. But why is it so enduring? Well, not just because of Ingrid Bergman's sad-faced, pouty-lipped, dewy-eyed gorgeousness. Or Humphrey Bogart's soulful, heartbroken "of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world" performance. Not even for "As Times Goes By" -- a song that's so inexorably linked to "Casablanca" that it's impossible not to think about trenchcoats, fedoras and fez when you hear it. It's the story itself, of an exiled, cynical American (Bogart's Rick) who runs a club in World War II Casablanca, where he just happens to bump into his old flame (Bergman's Ilsa). What makes the story unique is the romantic conflict: Ilsa's husband is Resistance leader Victor Lazslo (Paul Henreid), a noble guy both Rick and the audience cannot possibly dislike, which sets up an ending that's as romantic as it is melancholy. Yep, Rick sends her packing with his "hill of beans" speech that still gets us, no matter how many times we watch it.

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