Our Film & TV team aren’t as sentimental as you lovers might expect and, for us, Valentine’s Day is a welcome opportunity for some good old social anthropology. Put the Ben & Jerry’s away and get ready for a roasting based on what soppy movie you class as your go-to. Single or taken, we’re fed up with you all...

Inês Goes-Marlière (Staff Writer)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

You’re probably an MMLer with a superiority complex, and you’ve self-diagnosed what’s causing your love life to fail: it’s not your rusty rizz but English people. So you welcome your pending year-long escapade to Paris as an opportunity to penetrate a new culture in more ways than one. You think that the English have lost the key to romance and you’ll finally be wined and dined on your Tinder dates as you deserve. But after getting over the “she knows about wine” and “OMG she’s read Camus!” you’ll realise that ‘she’ is just as predictable as the home county rowers from whence you came. Your ability to converse in the language of love will not save you from the fact that people are awful everywhere (including yourself).

“10 Things I Hate About You is really 10 things that give me the ick”

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

If “emotionally unavailable” was a movie... Sadly, you can’t remember why this film is in your Letterboxd top 4 beyond your teenage fixation on Kate Winslet, and that it gives you major cool points with any ex-Tumblr aficionado. Like your inability to remember any plot line ever, you're unable to remain interested in someone for longer than this movie’s runtime. You’re the type to write your crush sonnets before ghosting them out of boredom or, as you put it, your “existential inability to love”. This Valentine’s Day, please consider swearing an oath of celibacy, to protect the rest of the Sidge-dwelling population from your emotional scabies.

Sarah Higgins (2nd year MMLer)

Friends with Benefits

You’re a flatcest-addled horndog. You don’t have to venture to the Revs smoking area to arrange a clinically emotionless sleeping arrangement; just head to your kitchen! Whenever that deal invariably ends in a hot, steaming mess and your friendship group is ruptured right down the middle, that’s when you hit the town. A club night for you is like ChristianMingle.com come to life! On the prowl trying to find your Justin Timberlake, the best you’ll go home with is a 2013 Justin Bieber lookalike instead. Remember to bring comfy shoes for the walk of shame!

About Time 

You’re either a male manipulator or a ginger apologist (same thing, some would say); either way, you crave paternal validation and yearn for the tender, loving embrace of Bill Nighy. A chronic over-thinker, you spend way too much time obsessing over your klutziest brain farts and have absolutely locked yourself in a cupboard, fists clenched and eyes screwed shut, in an effort to take it all back.

“Noah definitely would’ve written a crushbridge about Allie”

Imogen Barnes (Staff Writer)

The Notebook

You’re a Camfess fiend who loves the drama. Quick on the draw with behind-the-scenes intel about Gosling and McAdams’ real life turbulent romance (“did you know they actually hated each other while filming the movie?!”), The Notebook’s tear-jerking love story is positively packed with pathos and will give you full cathartic license to let your inner drama queen reign. Also, Noah definitely would’ve written a crushbridge about Allie.

Notting Hill

You’re a college puffer-wearing, Wednesday Revs-going normie. A self-professed creature of habit, you see no harm in sticking to what you know, and Britain’s favourite romcom fits the bill perfectly. After all, is it really Valentine’s Day if you’ve yet to get an eyeful of Julia Roberts’s 1000-watt smile or an earful of Hugh Grant’s trademark posh muttering? Like your standard Rumboogie, Notting Hill is littered with familiar faces but still manages to throw up a few surprises (“wait - what’s the guy from Downton Abbey doing here?”). Bound more by tradition than desire, you watch because you have to. And so, when Valentine’s Day rolls around like a long-anticipated Wednesday night, you sheepishly press play. But hey, if it ain’t broke…!

Kezia Kurtz (Film & TV Editor) 

When Harry Met Sally

I’m guessing you’re stuck in that awful, torturous, purgatorial back-and-forth of the Harry and Sally will they-won’t they sitch. Well, guess what? Unlike Ross and Rachel, no one cares if you will or you won’t! Stop saying you're just friends when we all know what's happening behind closed doors. And stop boring us with your talk of “the one”, only to go out and sleep with the fifth “one” this term. What’s the biggie with monogamy these days?

10 Things I Hate About You 

With poetry to make any English student cringe, 10 Things I Hate About You is that guy that turns up at your door fully decked out with boombox, chocolates, flowers and off-key singing. Maybe he’s doing everything right but somehow, for all his bad boy charm, you still feel lonely in his arms. With its naff rhyming couplets and its grand romantic gestures — all in the blasphemous name of Shakespeare — 10 Things I Hate About You is really 10 things that give me the ick.