Clockwise from top left: You and I Are Polar Opposites (Screenshot); His Motorbike, Her Island (Image: Kadokawa Haruki Jimusho); O.C. And Stiggs (Screenshot); Minnie And Moskowitz (Screenshot)
The first AVQ&A of 2026 is very on theme for the holiday: Staff Writer Matt Schimkowitz asks: What is your pop-culture Valentine to the world?
As always, we invite you to contribute your own responses in the comments—and send in some prompts of your own! If you have a pop culture question you’d like us and fellow readers to answer, please email it to [email protected].
You and I Are Polar Opposites’ rom-com shenanigans come with a refreshing twist
Anyone who has weathered hours of will-they/won’t-they antics only for the story to end right when the relationship gets to the hard part—actually dating—will be happy to hear that the ongoing romance anime You and I Are Polar Opposites takes a different tack. Within the first episode, our prospective couple, the fashionable but deeply self-conscious Miyu Suzuki and the quiet but self-assured Yusuke Tani, have started going out after the former confesses to the latter. While they seem like an unlikely pairing on the outside, Suzuki’s inner monologues explain that she’s into the loner Tani because he is confidently himself, while she struggles with what others think (in another welcome move, events are presented from her perspective instead of the guy’s). The series dives into these characters’ insecurities and the speed bumps of young love while rarely shedding its good-natured, upbeat vibe, an element accentuated by a colorful City Pop aesthetic and an extended cast of lovable teen doofuses who bounce off each other in amusing ways. If you’re in the mood for something sweet, it’s hard to do better than You and I Are Polar Opposites. [Elijah Gonzalez]
Minnie And Moskowitz
Considering all of the punching, car-horn honking, and yelling in it, this 1971 film by the great John Cassavetes is, in the end, incredibly sweet, a love letter to an odd couple (Gena Rowlands’ Minnie Moore, a bookish and cynical museum curator, and Seymour Cassel’s Seymour Moskowitz, a freewheeling and open-hearted parking valet) who just shouldn’t work. “You got my nose busted, you lost my job, you stiffed me for a hot dog,” he shouts at her, frustrated. Later on, after a fight morphs into a confession that his love for her will never fade, she turns his mustachioed mug toward her and studies it, shooting back: “Seymour, it’s not the right face. That’s not the face I dreamed of. You’re not the guy I’m in love with.” These two people have essentially nothing in common—save for liking Humphrey Bogart movies—and yet when the movie finishes with them married and goofing around in a sunny Los Angeles backyard surrounded by family, it feels earned. If you’re looking for an offbeat indie romance, they don’t get better than this. [Tim Lowery]
His Motorbike, Her Island
The filmmaker behind the legendarily strange Japanese horror-comedy House, Nobuhiko Obayashi also directed one of the most romantic biker movies ever made. His Motorbike, Her Island is a nearly delirious film of leather, oil, metal, asphalt, and rain, but these elemental images are simply debris strewn from the collision of two dreamers: ultra-handsome Kawasaki enthusiast Koh Hashimoto (Riki Takeuchi) and forward free spirit Miyoko Shiraishi (Kiwako Harada). Their chance encounter unfurls the delinquent world of ’80s bōsōzoku through big feelings and Lynchian iconography, a bit like his own rebellious romance Wild At Heart. Obayashi’s alternation between black-and-white and full color gives the whole thing the sense that it’s made from memories in different states of disrepair—and a cousin of something truly fantastical, like The Wizard Of Oz. And, in this blurry mix of memory and fantasy, the film truly accesses the rush of young romance. [Jacob Oller]
Daniel Day-Lewis’ mocking recitation of Eleanor Lavish’s Under A Lodger from A Room With A View
Ismail Merchant and James Ivory’s adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Edwardian romance, A Room With A View, isn’t hurting for passionate gestures or romantic vistas. (No wonder Charlotte (Dame Maggie Smith) insisted on her hotel room’s titular feature.) A love-triangle among Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter), her fuddy-duddy fiancé Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis), and her dashing vacation hookup George (Julian Sands) grows untenable when Cecil finds a passage in a recently published novel inspired by George and Lucy’s Florentine fling. “Look, Lucy, three split infinitives!” Cecil ridicules, unaware that he’s reading a beat-for-beat reportage of Lucy and George’s affair. In his mocking tone, Cecil conjures their romance and his fiancée’s impropriety, pushing the romantic tension between Lucy and George to the brink as one yearns for the other from three feet away. The scene is the perfect Valentine, both gently funny and thrilling, ending in a sincere declaration of love that could melt our overheating world’s heart. [Matt Schimkowitz]
Come To My Garden by Minnie Ripperton
Within the past decade or so, it feels like Minnie Ripperton’s “Les Fleurs” has become one of the most reliable needle-drops in film and television, appearing in everything from Us to The Idea Of You. It’s not hard to see why it’s caught on; it’s a gorgeous, sweeping track and quite possibly one of the most dramatic pop songs ever. But it’s just the first track of Come To My Garden, Ripperton’s 1970 debut album, a smorgasbord of taste and musicality. Arriving after a decade of Burt Bacharach’s iron grip on pop music, the album was hardly a hit in its time, and probably sounded a little corny next to Led Zeppelin and Creedence Clearwater Revival. But what is love if not corny? Ripperton’s vocal was one of pop’s purest instruments, and the arrangements across the album are beyond lush. Listening to Come To My Garden feels indulgent, but that’s not a knock; when better to indulge than Valentine’s Day? [Drew Gillis]
Three Of Us
If, like me, anyone’s a huge fan of Celine Song’s affecting Past Lives, then let 2023’s other melancholic movie about an unexpected love triangle win you over. The Hindi-language Three Of Us isn’t anything like the loud, colorful Bollywood a lot of people tend to expect. Co-written and directed by Avinash Arun, it focuses on Shailaja (Shefali Shah), a woman with dementia who decides to return to her birthplace one final time while her memories of it are still somewhat intact. As she travels alongside two men—her supportive husband and her childhood lover, whom she reunites with in her hometown—Shailaja reconciles with her feelings for each of them. This movie’s strength is that it communicates romance intrinsically through silence and in the powerful glances shared between characters. It’s a moving tale about closure, the circle of life, and the stories we choose to keep alive inside us. This one might not be all about a happily ever after, but it’s still a grounded and unhurried Valentine’s Day watch (and it’s currently streaming on Netflix). [Saloni Gajjar]
O.C. And Stiggs
Culture gives us many examples of a hatred so pure and powerful that it becomes a perverse kind of love, and few movies pursue single-minded contempt more obsessively than Robert Altman’s ill-fated teen sex comedy parody O.C. And Stiggs. Unlikable Phoenix high schoolers O.C. and Stiggs (Daniel H. Jenkins and Neill Barry) devote all of their time and attention to violently harassing insurance salesman Randall Schwab (Paul Dooley) and his family (Jane Curtin, Jon Cryer, Laura Urstein, Victor Ho)—idle, vulgar, rich conservatives flourishing in the cultural backwater of Reagan’s America. They take the energy most ‘80s movie teens spend on trying to get laid and direct it exclusively at fucking with Schwab, with every decision they make and action they take aimed at that goal; similarly, Altman’s film is unwaveringly devoted to calling bullshit on the rampant soullessness of the suburbs, teen comedies, and the ‘80s in general. It’s just as passionate as any great love story, only in reverse, and a good bit funnier. And if you really need some romance, well, O.C. and Stiggs are so obviously in love with each other it hurts. [Garrett Martin]
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