Sometimes these cheesy predictable romcoms that flood streaming services around the holidays just don’t scratch any itch you might have for emotional cinema. Sometimes, we need good storytelling that isn’t neatly wrapped in a bow.

While our "Cuffing Season Cinema" movie list brought you more cozy and cute, this HOEliday watchlist leans into slow burning love, culty chaos, and films that understand desire in a deeper way!

Slow-Burn Classics

In the Mood for Love (2000): a masterpiece in restraint and desire full of atmospheric Hong Kong streetlamps, longing glances, and a soundtrack that feels like a throbbing heartbeat 

The Dreamers (2003): lush, youthful, Parisian, intimate - this one’s a sensual cinematic meditation on art, politics, and bodies in motion

The Holiday (2006): two women spontaneously swap homes for the holidays after tumultuous times, only to (of course) find unexpected love in the most satisfying ways. 

Cult Favorites

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975): a cult classic, communal ritual only disguised as a movie to remind us that it’s always good and healthy to be strange together

Blue Velvet (1986): a compelling tale of desire, danger, and the uncanny underbelly of suburbia

Eyes Wide Shut (1999): Stanley Kubrick’s psychic erotica that feels like a fever dream, exploring jealousy, secrets, and subterranean desire 

Beautiful Sadness

Edward Scissorhands (1990): first layer = snow, suburbia, softness, otherness, while the deeper layer unveils a fairy tale about being too tender for the world

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004): it could feel cathartic to imagine a world where memory erasure exists to ease heartbreak

Lost in Translation (2003): two strangers share a hotel room’s worth of intimacy in a neon-lit city 

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