10 Nerdy Movies to Stream on Valentine's Day
It’s that time of year again! Nerdy romance is in the air, and io9 is here to share 10 movies easily found on streaming services that make for perfect Valentine’s Day viewing. As always, you won’t find any standard rom-coms here; we’re bringing sci-fi, fantasy, and horror into the mix.
Ghost
We all remember the Patrick Swayze-Demi Moore pottery scene and Whoopi Goldberg’s Oscar-winning scene-stealing, but 1990's Ghost also has some legit scares. All credit to Vincent Schiavelli’s memorably eerie subway spirit, and also the scenes in which various bad guys are literally dragged to hell. (Stream on Max)
Edward Scissorhands
Another 1990 release, this throwback to Tim Burton’s whimsical goth era imagines Johnny Depp as a man-creature cobbled together by an eccentric inventor (Vincent Price, in one of his final performances) who falls for a suburban teen played by Winona Ryder. (Stream on Max)
Sliding Doors
This 1998 showcase for Gwyneth Paltrow—released the same year as her Oscar-winning turn in Shakespeare in Love, and also featuring her British accent—offers a look at the wildly different parallel lives (and wildly different hairstyles) a London woman experiences after making, or missing, a subway train home. The “what if” thing is a storytelling gimmick—but the twists and turns still might surprise you. (Stream on Peacock)
Mannequin
Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall star in this sweet but preposterous fantasy about a window-dresser who falls in love with a mannequin... who then magically comes to life. James Spader is the villain, Golden Girls’ Estelle Getty is the kindly department store owner, and Designing Women’s Meshach Taylor plays a “flamboyant” stereotype that reminds you this movie came out in 1987. Another reminder: “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” Starship’s aggressively catchy, Oscar-nominated theme song. Of course this movie has a cult following! (Stream on Max)
Kate & Leopold
James Mangold—of past Indiana Jones and future Star Wars fame—helmed this 2001 rom-com about a down-on-his luck 19th century British nobleman (Hugh Jackman, who went on to star in Mangold’s Wolverine X-Men movies) who blunders through a time portal and falls for a spunky career gal (Meg Ryan) in 21st century Manhattan. There’s so much fish-out-of-water comedy the movie almost doesn’t get to the falling-in-love part, but it eventually happens. (Stream on Max)
If You Were the Last
One of io9's “best movies you might have missed” of 2023, If You Were the Last stars Anthony Mackie and Zoë Chao as stranded astronauts who fall in love, despite—and also because of—their unusual circumstances. (Stream on Peacock)
I Married a Witch
This 1942 romantic comedy stars Fredric March as a politician descended from a Puritan witch hunter, and Veronica Lake as the newly freed spirit of a witch his ancestor once burned at the stake. Her convoluted revenge scheme backfires when she accidentally drinks the love potion she was planning to give to him... but many shenanigans later, he ends up loving her back anyway. The title’s kind of a spoiler, really! (Stream on Max)
Splash
This Ron Howard-directed 1984 classic stars Tom Hanks and Darryl Hannah as the man and mermaid who are destined to be together, with an excellent supporting cast that includes John Candy, Eugene Levy, and the Statue of Liberty. As a bonus, keep your eyes peeled for Disney’s brief but hilarious moment of bare-butt censorship. (Stream on Disney+)
Seance
A ghostly murder mystery is the main thrust of 2021's Seance, but sometimes the heightened emotions swirling around that set of circumstances—especially when the setting is an isolated girls’ boarding school—can lead to sparks flying. In this instance, they fly between the mysterious new student (Suki Waterhouse) and the only non-Mean Girl on campus (Foundation’s Ella-Rae Smith). (Stream on Shudder)
Yesterday
Danny Boyle directs Himesh Patel in this fantasy about Jack, a struggling musician who’s hit by a bus during a freak power outage... only to awaken in a world where nobody’s heard of the Beatles. Naturally, he capitalizes on this twist of fate to boost his career. Lily James plays his devoted manager whose love is far more valuable than his newfound fame—though, naturally, it takes Jack almost the entire movie to figure that out. (Stream on Prime Video)
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