Here, and 15 more great movies to cry about

Here, a dreamy, romantic drama based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, settles down to watch time pass on a single patch of land, from the dinosaur times to the present day. Things get a lot more interesting once the humans show up, though. 

We get to spend a lifetime watching families experience joy, grief and social changes, starting with an indigenous man and woman (Joel Oulette and Dannie McCallum). More residents follow, including Benjamin Franklin (Keith Bartlett) and his family in the 1700s, pilot John Harter and his wife Pauline (Gwilym Lee and Michelle Dockery) in the early 1900s, inventor Leo Beekman and pinup model Stella (David Fynn and Ophelia Lovibond) in the 1940s, World War II veteran Al Young and and his wife Rose (Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly), their son Richard (Tom Hanks) and his teen sweetheart and wife Margaret (Robin Wright), and Devon and Helen Harris (Nicholas Pinnock and Nikki Amuka-Bird) in the 2010s. 

Here moves us back and forth in time, digitally de-ageing Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in places as Richard and Margaret look over the choices they made, and what those choices cost – with Margaret giving up her dreams of seeing the world, and Richard putting away his art supplies to focus on supporting his wife and children. Is it worth it? That depends on who you ask, and when. 

While Here tells the story of everything that love can accomplish in just one place, we have plenty more places and love stories for you to explore, so stock up on your tissue boxes and prepare to give your emotions a workout. And if you’re enjoying the family love more than the romance in Here, we have a bit more love to share.

Stream Here.

Quick links

1. We Live in Time 

2. Am I OK?

3. A Star is Born 

4. Atonement 

5. The Constant Gardener 

6. Dear Zoe 

7. Past Lives 

8. Turtles All the Way Down 

9. The Good Half 

10. Mothering Sunday

No romance, just love!

1 The Fabelmans

2. My Penguin Friend

3. The Color Purple 

4. Hearts Beat Loud

5. Coming soon: Rob Peace 

6. Coming soon: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story 

11 great movies with all the emotions

1. We Live in Time

79% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Romantic comedy-drama. Get ready for a film that captures the way that loving someone completely remakes your world. We travel back and forth in time to explore 10 years of love between a chef named Almut (Florence Pugh), and Tobias (Andrew Garfield), the man she runs over with her car one day. The film takes us on an emotional see-saw as we celebrate small victories, find out devastating news, and as Almut and Tobias push and pull over their changing priorities and decisions about what their lives will be like together. Happily ever after means different things to different people, and at different phases of their lives. 

2. Am I OK?

82% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Romantic drama from married directors Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne. Jane’s (Sonoya Mizuno) perception of her lifelong friend Lucy (Dakota Johnson) changes radically when Jane announces that she’s moving to London, and Lucy decides to take the opportunity to reveal that she might actually fancy women more than men. As Lucy takes her first, shy steps into exploring her sexuality, Jane throws herself headlong into making sure that her bestie finds love. Lucy’s explanation of why she’s only coming out in her 30s will be balm to the heart of anyone who hasn’t followed a classic coming out script in their own lives. 

3. A Star is Born

90% Rotten Tomatoes rating

This musical romantic drama raked in 111 awards thanks to its sheer tearjerking power. Singer-songwriter Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) takes talented young Ally (Lady Gaga) under his wing and launches her into stardom when he invites her onto the stage with him to perform a duet of one of the songs she wrote, Shallow. It’s a meeting of minds, hearts, chemistry and passion! But while Ally’s star is on the rise, Jackson’s is waning thanks to his secret issues with addiction. After Jackson drunkenly ruins Ally’s time to shine at the Grammy awards, he’s sent to rehab, and Ally’s record producer, Rez (Rafi Gavron), moves to keep them apart so that Jackson can’t taint Ally’s public image any further. 

4. Atonement

83% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Golden Globe-, BAFTA-, and Best Picture Oscar-winning romantic war drama based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Ian McEwan. Starting in England in 1935, the deepening attraction between medical student and housekeeper’s son Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) and rich man’s daughter Cecilia Tallis (Kiera Knightley) is disrupted when Cecilia’s 13-year-old sister Briony (Romola Garai) accuses Robbie of raping her 15-year-old cousin, Lola (Juno Temple). What Briony started, the Second World War continues, as Robbie is sent to the trenches, while Cecilia becomes a nurse.

5. The Constant Gardener

83% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Romantic tragedy based on the John Le Carré novel of the same name. Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), a British diplomat in Kenya, investigates the murder of his wife, Amnesty International activist Tessa (Rachel Weisz). The film flashes back through their first meeting, and the many different phases of their love and marriage, side-by-side with showing the corruption and cover ups in the pharmaceutical industry that Tessa was trying to expose. Justin’s investigation becomes a labour of both love and grief, as he tries to complete Tessa’s final project.

6. Dear Zoe

71% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Romantic drama based on Philip Beard’s novel of the same name. Sixteen-year-old Tess (Sadie SInk) blames herself when her three-year-old sister Zoe (Mckenzie Noel Rusiewicz) dies in a hit-and-run accident while Tess is meant to be watching her, but gets distracted by coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The tragedy tears their family apart, but their private grief gets eclipsed by the country’s reaction to the attacks. As her mom Elly (Jessica Capshaw) spirals into depression, Tess goes through her own complicated mourning process during which she goes to live with her dog breeder and drug dealer father, Nick (Theo Rossi), and falls in love with his neighbour, Jimmy (Kweku Collins), as they connect over their complicated lives.

7. Past Lives

95% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Thoughtful, gentle romantic drama about love and letting go. In 1999, 12-year-old Nora (Seung Ah Moon, with Greta Lee as the older Nora) leaves her best friend Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim, with Teo Yoo as the older Hae Sung) behind in South Korea when she immigrates to Canada with her family. Twelve years later, the two reconnect online via video chat, but Nora asks to take a break so she can focus on her writing. During the next 12 years that pass, Nora marries Arthur (John Magaro). But when Hae Sung visits New York City, the two meet to catch up about who they are now, who they might have been in past lives, and how much their connection, and Nora’s connection to her culture, has changed since they were kids.

8. Turtles All the Way Down

86% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Drama based on John Green’s novel of the same name. Aza Holmes (Isabela Merced) is trying to stay on top of things as she balances school life with learning to navigate the symptoms of OCD. In her case, OCD manifests as medical anxiety over contamination from unseen germs. Aza’s best friend Daisy (Cree) and her mom, Gina (Judy Reyes), are her dedicated support team, as she tries to figure out whether she’ll ever be able to (or even want to) kiss a boy, like her childhood crush Davis Pickett (Felix Mallard). When billionaire construction magnate Russell Pickett, Davis’s father, goes missing, though, Daisy sees a way for Aza to reconnect with Davis.

9. The Good Half

48% critic, and 96% audience Rotten Tomatoes rating

Romantic drama. Struggling Hollywood writer Renn Wheeland (Nick Jonas) is returning home for his mother Lily’s (Elisabeth Shue) funeral after deliberately avoiding his father (Matt Walsh), stepfather (David Arquette), and sister (Brittany Snow), while Lily was slowly dying of cancer. On the flight back, Renn makes friends with the quirky woman in the seat next to his, Zoey (Alexandra Shipp), who turns out to be a therapist. But Renn has a conflicted relationship with free-spirited women, since Lily’s impulsive nature led to all kinds of trouble during his childhood and stuck Renn and Leigh with being the “grownups” in their house. 

10. Mothering Sunday

77% Rotten Tomatoes rating

In this romantic drama set just after World War I, Jane (Odessa Young), the maid to posh Mr and Mrs Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), who lost their children during the war, is having a secret affair with Paul Sherringham (Josh O’Connor), the son of the Niverns’ neighbours, and one of the only young men in their area to have survived the battlefields. On her day off, Jane cycles to a secret rendezvous with Paul. Meanwhile Paul weighs up his future, and the crushing expectation that he’ll continue his family’s legal practice and legacy, while marrying someone suitable. But Jane has her own ambitions of becoming a writer and, as Mrs Niven miserably points out, she has nothing to lose. 

6 movies with no romance, just emotions

1. The Fabelmans

92% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Family drama. Steven Spielberg draws on his own childhood and youth to create this movie about a young filmmaker coming of age. While Sammy Fabelman’s (Gabriel Labelle) mom Mitzi (Michelle Williams), family friend Bennie (Seth Rogen), and his sisters all encourage him to chase his dreams, his dad Burt (Paul Dano) sees his dream career as more of a cute hobby. Mitzi and Bennie’s affair shakes up Sammy’s family, leading to a divorce as the Fabelmans move to California. But Sammy persists and even wins the admiration of his bullies when he plays his film for his classmates. What seems like a fairly ordinary story becomes a Golden Globe-winning emotional masterpiece in Steven Spielberg’s hands.

2. My Penguin Friend

86% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Heart-melting live action movie based on a true story. In May 2011, Brazilian fisherman João Pereira De Souza (Jean Reno) saved a young Magellanic penguin that had been caught in an oil spill on Ilha Grande beach near Rio de Janeiro. He took the bird home and nursed it back to health, and nicknamed it DinDim (pronounced Jin-Jin, and played by about 10 different rescue penguins). Caring for DinDim allowed João to reconnect with life, and to slowly heal from the death of his son. And for years afterwards, the 4.5kg little penguin made an epic journey between Patagonia and Rio to continue his holiday visits with his favourite human in Brazil. 

3. The Color Purple

81% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Musical drama based on the novel by Alice Walker that’ll play your heartstrings like a fiddle as it centres on love and sisterhood between women. Sisters Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, with Fantasia Barrino as the older Celie) and Nettie (Halle Bailey, with Ciara as the older Nettie) are torn apart when Celie is forced to marry the emotionally and physically abusive Albert “Mister” Johnson after having multiple children as the result of being raped by her father, Alfonso (Deon Cole). Nettie runs away after Mister tries to rape her, too. But Celie develops a new kind of sisterhood with Mister’s daughter-in-law Sofia (Danielle Brooks), and his ex-lover, Shug Avery (Taraji P Henson), who both encourage her to believe in herself and not submit to men’s abuse – until Celie is strong enough to walk away.

Also watch: The 1985 film of The Color Purple, with Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, which has a 73% Rotten Tomatoes rating. 

4. Hearts Beat Loud

92% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Musical comedy-drama about family love. Widowed Brooklyn-based record shop owner Frank (Nick Offerman) urges his daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) to start a band with him after a song they recorded together, Hearts Beat Loud, goes viral. But Sam has her own life to live, and the time Frank wants to pour into music, is the precious little time she has available to date her girlfriend, Rose (Sasha Lane), before she moves to the West Coast to begin her pre-med course. Despite Sam’s continued resistance, Frank starts a band, named We’re Not A Band, and both he and Sam secretly write more music. But when a talent agent dangles a record deal in front of Frank, he goes too far with his band idea.

5. Coming soon: Rob Peace 

Stream from Thursday, 31 July   

75% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Biographical drama based on the book The Short and Tragic Life of Rob Peace, written by Rob’s real-life friend and Yale roommate, Jeff Hobbs. Jackie Peace (Mary J Blige) holds down three jobs to raise and provide for her brilliant son, Rob (Jay Will), after his dad, Skeet (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who also directed the film and adapted the book for screen), is arrested for murder when Rob is just seven years old. Rob’s interest in science lands him a scholarship to Yale university, but while working towards his degree, he is sidetracked by his desperate efforts to raise funds to appeal his father’s conviction. Given the state of the US justice system, that’s like throwing money and hope down a hole. 

6. Coming soon: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story 

Stream from Friday, 25 July

98% Rotten Tomatoes rating

This BAFTA- and Critics Choice-winning documentary will trigger all your emotions. 

Actor Christopher Reeve rose to fame playing Clark Kent/Superman (1978-1987), but he demonstrated a new kind of heroism after a near-fatal horse-riding accident in 1995, which left him paralysed from the neck down. As his family rallied round him during his recovery, Christopher used his fame to advocate for research into spinal cord injuries, and for improved legislation around rights and care for disabled people. This film was made in close cooperation with Christopher Reeve’s widow Dana, and their children, Alexandra, Matthew and Will.