Dick-Flick: A film that overdoses on gun action, or car action, or spy action, or sci-fi action or all of the above. And it tends to stint on the fluffy-cuddly bits. (I.e., the opposite of a chick-flick, really.)

Modern Tempted Hero/Heroine: This Mills & Boon hero is still alpha, but he’s also a whole lot of flirty fun—as are the women who can tame him. He’s gonna be smart, sexy and successful, but she’s going to be able to match him every step of the way. He could be Clark Gable’s hitch-hiking reporter in It Happened One Night, cartoon bad boy Flynn Ryder in Tangled or Jake Gyllenhaal’s flirty, dirty Viagra salesman in Love & Other Drugs, while she could be Meg Ryan’s orgasm-faking Sally in When Harry Met Sally…or Joanne Woodward’s Newman-taming smart cookie in The Long, Hot Summer. She’s gonna have to put her heart on the line with this guy—while making sure he never gets the upper hand!

Modern Romance Hero: This is the ultimate alpha male in the Mills & Boon universe. We’re talking the hot guy who’s at the top of his game. Powerful, protective, overpowering—a guy you don’t want to mess with (but secretly can’t resist). For the purposes of this movie-review book, we’re talking Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans, Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind or Daniel Craig in Skyfall—and larger than life in every respect.

Heart-Warming Romance: The home of Mills & Boon American Romance, Cherish Romance and Heartwarming Romance, featuring tough, tender and always relatable heroes and heroines. Look no further than Dear Frankie or It’s a Wonderful Life for a Heart-Warming Romance fix on screen.

Nekkid: That would be Hugh Jackman in Australia and Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal—and several other hunks I haven’t mentioned specifically—so you can be pleasantly surprised when you see the movie.

Romance-arama: A word that I am myself patenting to mean a film with enough different stories to make you dizzy. Coined here to apply to Valentine’s Day and He’s Just Not That Into You, but also applicable to such movies as Love Actually.

Series Romance: This is the stuff Mills & Boon is made of…small books with big themes, hot heroes, heroines just like you and a happy ending. Be warned: not every film in this collection has a happy ending, but they all have a whole lot of heart.

1) Oldies That Are Awesome

Who says you need CGI, SFX, 3D or even colour film to do some amazing storytelling?

It Happened One Night (1934): A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Screwball Romance

Directed by Frank Capra

Starring:

Clark Gable as Peter Warne

Claudette Colbert as Ellie Andrews

Walter Connelly as Mr Andrews

Jameson Thomas as King Westley

The 1930s in Hollywood were a golden era. There were glittering epics such as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, fabulously overblown women’s pictures like Dark Victory and The Women and a raft of acclaimed literary classics such as The Grapes of Wrath and Wuthering Heights…. But by far the most entertaining films of that golden age for me, and the films I return to again and again, are the glorious romantic comedies of Frank Capra. Because Capra’s comedies weren’t just funny and gloriously romantic, they were also heartfelt and genuine, shedding a healing light on the hard times of the Great Depression.

Escapism with an edge, I like to call it.

Now, Capra was a fan of Gary Cooper (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town) and later James Stewart (It’s a Wonderful Life), but my favourite of his rom-coms (and it’s got a lot of competition) has to be the time he cast Clark Gable as his leading man in It Happened One Night. This was Gable five years before he took on the iconic role of Rhett Butler in GWTW, and while the darkly handsome good looks, alpha tendencies and trademark playboy tache are already in evidence here, this is a younger, more playful and laid-back Gable—he’s supersexy, but his reporter, Peter Warne, is also witty, wonderfully contemporary and gets as good as he gives from his sassy heroine—Claudette Colbert’s runaway heiress, Ellie Andrews. So if we translate that into Harlequin terms, while Rhett is more of a Presents hero, Peter for me is all KISS.

Like most of Capra’s films, the story is simple and remarkably subtle, brilliantly clever and always character led.

Ellie has decided to tie the knot with ‘society aviator’ King Westley against her millionaire father’s wishes. Dad whisks her away to his luxury yacht to make her see sense, but she escapes—determined to make her way back to King, come what may. Enter our smart, jobbing reporter, Peter Warne, who’s on the lookout for a headline-grabbing exclusive. And Ellie’s race across the country to be reunited with her beau is it. At first Ellie’s reluctant, but after a spot of blackmail and the realisation that she needs Peter—because you see she has no money, very few clothes and she is not used to slumming it—they end up hitch-hiking and bickering their way across the country together.

Thus begins an often-hilarious, frequently heart-warming and also exceptionally sexy battle of wits that turns to romance, when Ellie finally figures out that Peter’s more of a match for her than King will ever be, and Peter figures out that his career isn’t as important as finding true love—and a woman who knows ‘the limb is mightier than the thumb’!

But don’t take my word for it. This film won the five big Oscars of 1935—namely Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay—can still charm the pants off you three-quarters of a century after it was made and, most important of all, put an end to men wearing vests (when Gable revealed his bare chest).

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