'Past Lives,' the Start of Oscar Season, and the Top Five Most Romantic Movies of All Time

'Past Lives'

Past Lives 2023

Celine Song's directorial debut, autobiographical in spirit: Nora and Haesung are childhood friends in Seoul, separated when her family emigrates, who reconnect online 12 years later and then again in person 12 years after that, once she's married to Arthur in New York. It's built around the Korean concept of in-yeon (fated connection) and shot in a plain, unshowy style; the opening scene's mystery pays off in the closing one. Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro star; produced by Christine Vachon's Killer Films.

In conversation

Celine Song on

Past Lives 2023

Song on writing the script while on staff at 'Wheel of Time,' the autobiographical distance between herself and Nora, and staging the six-and-a-half-minute closing walk to the Uber on East First Street: which direction each character had to move (toward the past, then toward the future), and the unplanned gust of wind that hit at the right moment.

Celine Song on

You Hurt My Feelings 2023

Song's answer to the show's closing question about the last great thing she's seen: Nicole Holofcener's film with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, whom she calls the funniest person on earth.

The Top Five Most Romantic Movies of All Time Sean and Amanda's individual countdowns, argued out together

Picked by Amanda Dobbins

Phantom Thread 2017

A last-minute swap-in, revisited on a recent London trip with friends: a portrait of a marriage that finds the romance in the everyday.

Picked by Amanda Dobbins

The Age of Innocence 1993

A second Daniel Day-Lewis pick after Phantom Thread. Scorsese's most overlooked film, about a couple who don't end up together.

Picked by Sean Fennessey

Love & Basketball 2000

Gina Prince-Bythewood's debut, picked as a natural double feature with Past Lives: two childhood friends whose lives keep intersecting and pulling apart.

Picked by Amanda Dobbins

Moonstruck 1987

Loves it, refuses to call it a rom-com, on the grounds that its happy ending is earned with real heartache along the way.

Picked by Sean Fennessey

Reds 1981

Warren Beatty's nearly three-and-a-half-hour epic about Jack Reed and Louise Bryant. A personal pick for him; Amanda and her husband, separately, also watched it early in their own relationship.

Picked by Amanda Dobbins

Portrait of a Lady on Fire 2019

Celine Sciamma's romance, which she thinks owes a debt to the Wong Kar-wai films that follow on this list.

Picked by Amanda Dobbins

Happy Together 1997

Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong-to-Argentina breakup story with Tony Leung. She left In the Mood for Love for Sean on purpose.

Picked by Sean Fennessey

In the Mood for Love 2000

His wife Eileen's favorite Wong Kar-wai film, though she actually prefers 2046.

Picked by Sean Fennessey

Brief Encounter 1945

David Lean's 90-minute film about two married strangers who fall for each other at a train station, adapted from a Noel Coward play. Another one of his wife's favorites.

Picked by Amanda Dobbins

Casablanca 1943

Had to be here; its ending speech is echoed directly in Past Lives' own.

Picked by Sean Fennessey

Before Sunset 2004

The best ending of the century, he says, though knowing where Jesse and Celine end up in Before Midnight changes how it plays.

Also mentioned raised along the way

Honorable mentions Sleepless in SeattleAn Affair to RememberBringing Up BabyLost in TranslationWild Mountain Thyme

In passing Everything Everywhere All at OnceHow to Blow Up a PipelineBeau Is AfraidBlackBerryBefore SunriseBefore MidnightShowing UpThe Many Saints of NewarkSpider-Man: Across the Spider-VerseMoonlightUnder the Silver LakeFifty Shades of GreyDeuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo

Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads

TV The Wheel of Time

Ads Netflix (FIFA World Cup Launch Edition)NOS EnergyBoar's HeadTalkAboutPD.com

Podcasts 60 Songs That Explain the 90s