If you’re dating or married, Valentine’s Day can be a high-stress holiday: figuring out what to get your partner, how much is trying too hard, how much isn’t trying enough, where to go, what to do, what not to do, and whether this really is the right night to bring up that previously unmentioned lovechild. But if you’re, shall we say, between partners, February 14 is a miserable day indeed, an interminable blizzard of flowers and candy and bullshit. Who needs it? So if you’d like to shy away from the syrupy romantic fare typical of Valentine’s Day movie-watching, fear not; here are a baker’s dozen anti-romantic movies for your weekend wallowing (just click on the title link to stream them right now).
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The granddaddy of all “to hell with love” movies, and still possibly the nastiest of the bunch. Mike Nichols (making, shockingly, his directorial debut) brilliantly adapts Edward Albee’s searing play about a horror show of a married couple (played, voyeuristically enough, by horror show of a married couple Richard Burton and Liz Taylor) and their hellish evening of abuse and games-playing with a younger, not-quite-ruined-yet pair, played by George Segal and Sandy Dennis. (Streaming on Amazon Prime)
