With less than two weeks left in the year, it’s a great time to look back at 2024 movies, and I want to talk about the state of the romance genre. I’m a hopeless romantic who always makes time to catch the latest love stories, from rom coms to emotional epics. This year, I caught just about every romance movie that came out, but I was surprised to realize that not a single one of my five favorites are typical movies from this genre.
Now, there are movies that didn’t make this list that I enjoyed that are more typical romance movies. The Idea Of You swept me away more than I realized it would, and I thought Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt offered up a classic Hollywood romance of sorts in The Fall Guy. I also thought a movie called Players was the best new rom-com for those with a Netflix subscription. But here are the romance movies that really blew me away this year:
Skywalkers: A Love Story
Believe me, I did not expect to have a documentary among my favorite romance movies of the year, but Skywalkers: A Love Story is definitely an epic entry to the genre. Especially because it’s a true story.
What Skywalkers: A Love Story Is About: The movie follows two daredevil “rooftoppers,” who free climb massive skyscrapers in their spare time to take artistic and viral photos. After Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus find fame separately for risking their lives to scale some of the world’s tallest buildings, they start collaborating and fall in love in the process. The documentary tells their stories before following the couple as they plan to break into Malaysia’s Merdeka 118 for their most daring adventure yet.
Why It’s One Of The Best 2024 Romances: Outside being a nail-biting and very impressive documentary, at its core, Skywalker: A Love Story has a compelling story to tell about a couple who are faced with real stakes when it comes to learning to completely trust each other. While most romances do not involve doing so at over 2,000 feet high up, there’s something universal about the couple’s jaw-dropping true story.
Stream Skywalkers: A Love Story on Netflix.
Lisa Frankenstein
Now, I absolutely do not condone falling in love with a corpse you magically bring back from the dead, but sometimes the power of movies means a ridiculous scenario like this can somehow end up making one’s heart float.
What Lisa Frankenstein Is About: After Diablo Cody famously made Jennifer’s Body in 2009, the writer returned to her horror comedy roots with Lisa Frankenstein, and it’s a blast. The movie is a fun spin on Frankenstein that has Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton), a teenager who is grieving the death of her mom, who finds herself restoring a corpse-turned-zombie from the 1800s (Cole Sprouse) through a series of violent acts across her small town.
Why It’s One Of The Best 2024 Romances: Lisa Frankenstein is an absolutely twisted take on a romance, but there’s something so honest about how it feels have big feelings as a teen. Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse are hilarious as unlikely partners in crime for emo kids and horror fans.
Stream Lisa Frankenstein on Amazon Prime.
Love Lies Bleeding
A body builder and small town murder? Didn’t think these two things would end up going with a romantic plotline, but here we are…
What Love Lies Bleeding Is About: Love Lies Bleeding has Kristen Stewart playing Lou, a gym manager in a rural New Mexico town in 1989 whose meets Katy O’Brian’s Jackie. Jackie is a body builder who is on her way to Las Vegas for a competition, but the two quickly become romantically entwined. Things really heat up between these two when they become involved in a murder in the small town that takes them both down a darker underbelly of crime.
Why It’s One Of The Best 2024 Romances: Love Lies Bleeding is way wilder than simply being a romance or bodybuilding movie, but I found myself particularly buying into the relationship between Lou and Jackie. It’s touching to see these two outcasts find each other, fall in love and immediately have the other’s back as things go absolutely sideways. And in a world where movies about lesbian couples are often tragic, there’s an unhinged joy about this love story that makes it so fun.
Stream Love Lies Bleeding on Max.
Challengers
Zendaya at the center of a love triangle between two fellow tennis champs doesn’t exactly amount to a lot of sparkly enchantment, but it does bring a stylish and sultry story to life that I can’t stop thinking about.
What Challengers Is About: The Luca Guadagnino directed project follows three tennis players across a 13-year period. It starts with best friends Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) being best friends who have a crush on the same star tennis player Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). When they both strike up the courage to talk to her together, they are invited to her hotel room where they all kiss, and Tashi says she’ll give her number to the winning player at their next match. This incites an ongoing competition across many years between the three that ultimately culminates at the ATP Challenger Tour.
Why It’s One Of The Best 2024 Romances: While we hope romance is always wholesome, oftentimes it does come with the baggage each person brings to the table when their heart is on the line. Challengers is an incredibly intriguing look at how love and lust can be used by people to get ahead, and how it in of itself can turn into a game.
Stream Challengers on Amazon Prime.
We Live In Time
Even the most straightforward romance on the list has its own curveball. We Live In Time is a love story about grief and the numbered days we have on Earth that is absolutely my favorite romance of the year.
What We Live In Time Is About: We Live In Time is about how a British couple, Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and Almut (Florence Pugh) meet, fall in love and go through challenges like Almut’s cancer diagnosis and the pair’s struggles to conceive a child. The twist is the movie is not told in order, but rather jumps back and forth through their life together.
Why It’s One Of The Best 2024 Romances: I already knew Garfield and Pugh being in the same movie would charm my socks off, but I wasn’t expecting the movie to say so much about the quiet and beautiful sacrifice that comes with having a romantic partner. It can simultaneously break your heart and allow you to live deeper than you ever thought possible. This is such a special movie, but also prepare with tissues and a very intense birthing scene.
Rent/Buy We Live In Time on Amazon.
Now that I've counted down my favorite romance movies of the year, check out CinemaBlend's favorite comedies and what upcoming 2025 movies are on the way.
