Valentine's Day is upon us. Tired of the roughly 68 movies involving John Cusack holding up a boom box for some ice princess he's better off without? Me too. Here are some suggestions for this most conspicuous of holidays that might surprise you. So stop giving money to the likes of Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts and try something new.

"Last Tango in Paris" (1972)

"Last Tango in Paris" is one of the first successful antidotes to the insipid triteness of the "romantic comedy." And, to little surprise, it was next to banned for twenty years.

"Tango" focuses on two people, each suffering from some malady of love's angry lessons, who find themselves together in a Paris hotel. Somewhat spontaneously, they conduct brutal, graphic, and resolutely desperate sex.

Each satiates something for the other that no amount of compromise seems to provide. And the movie appears to suggest that such a level of honesty between two people is something that can only exist behind closed doors, to be quickly forgotten.

"Wilde" (1998)

Oscar Wilde is one the most taught authors today. Being one of the world's most famous satirists, I believe Wilde would have found it curiously amusing that a society which condemned him of gross indecency one century prior would now laud him as a hero.

Covering the most successful and miserable years of Oscar Wilde's life, "Wilde" centralizes on the relationship the author incurred with a young man (played by Jude Law) that would indirectly lead to his conviction for sodomy.

Sad, clever, and blazingly truthful, "Wilde" is a movie about relationships that equally fronts their beauty and pitfalls without making excuses for somewhat, well…"queer" behavior.

"Thelma and Louise" (1991)

Ridley Scott is an amazingly versatile director. When one asks what a British-born director of sci-fi movies and period pieces would have to say about two women gallivanting about the countryside on a small mission of anti-establishmentarianism, Scott answered with "Thelma and Louise."

Although hard to market as a love story for the early '90s, "Thelma and Louise" is just that. Here, you have two women so disgusted by the gender battles of Podunk, Arkansas, that they find solace and acceptance in each other – making their suicide finale not so much an act of social defiance or desperation as a consummation. That's right, I said it. Get over it. And then go see it.

"Harold and Maude" (1971)

He's a man fascinated by death; so much so that every day presents a new opportunity for attempted suicide. She's an anarchist; someone so concerned with reversing order that she inadvertently constructs her own. And they're both funeral addicts. Oh, and in love.

Well, as in love as a twenty-something and a senior citizen who have no physical lust for each other can be. But "Harold and Maude" is more than just a movie about opposites attracting. It's about the very laws of attraction and how two people who fit together so nicely should consequently never join.

More importantly, it discusses oft-ignored topic of romantic love without intimacy. Definitely one to watch.

"Superman" (1978)

"Superman" was and will always be the ultimate love story for our generation. I believe that the relationship between Clark Kent and Lois Lane will go down as one of the most influential of the 20th Century.

We have an alien who looks human, but for whom a human relationship would mean compromising the lives of millions of people. But Superman defies his overwhelming altruism and chooses one person over the masses; one person whose life must be selfishly saved at all costs - even if it means reversing the very rotation of the planet.

Outlandish and scientifically absurd, yes; but quite possibly the most romantic cinematic moment...ever.

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