When you connect with someone on a dating site, although you can build a rapport by exchanging online messages, the time will come when you’ll want to meet face-to-face. The obvious question is which venue would be ideal for your first date? Rather than fretting about outside locations, especially in the current Covid climate, our top recommendation would be snuggling on a couch and watching Netflix. While some couples find rom-coms irresistible, surely it would be better to get the adrenaline flowing with an action movie? Here are our top five recommendations from Quickflirt dating consultants.
White Boy Rick
Directed by Yann Demange, this feature is a biographical take on the remarkable life of the titular Rick. A white youth who gets involved in a drug-running black gang amongst Detroit’s 1980s crack epidemic, the narrative balances on a knife’s edge when Rick agrees to become an FBI informant (at aged 14, the youngest in history). As well as Richie Merritt’s strong performance as Richard Wershe Jr., Matthew McConaughey, his onetime rom-com persona long abandoned, excels as Richard Sr., a seedy gun runner desperately struggling to protect his family during troubled times.
Jungle
A long way from his debut as the child wizard Harry Potter back in the Noughties, Daniel Radcliffe is Israeli Adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg, who is persuaded to hike into the uncharted interior of the Amazon rainforest in search of a mysterious indigenous tribe. They further into this hostile landscape he ventures with his colleagues, the more alarming the obstacles they must confront. The straightforward premise will have you and your partner on the edge of your seats, and the fact the screenplay is based on a real story makes for even more gripping viewing.
The Truman Show
Peter Weir’s film is a disturbing expose of society’s burgeoning obsession with reality TV, in particular the ‘Big Brother’ style programs that sometimes seem to treat their contestants with all the integrity of scientists observing the behavior of captive lab animals. Truman is played by Jim Carrey, downplaying his customary comedic gurning to portray the subject of a TV show whose entire life unfolds on screen, his loved ones merely acting their roles. There is genuine pathos when he begins to suspect the truth behind his cossetted existence.
Nightcrawler
Jake Gyllenhaal is Lou, a photojournalist who heads off into Los Angeles after the sun has set, intent on immersing himself in the city’s violent underbelly, filming car accidents and criminal activity, before selling his voyeuristic footage to the highest bidder. He soon discovers he has a knack for sensing where the most lurid stories will unfold, and when they don’t do so within a certain timeframe, he expedites matters. Rene Russo is a TV station executive who seeks to broadcast Lou’s increasingly sordid film clips, mindful of her audience’s insatiable demand to be thrilled by humanity’s darker side while ignoring the ethical issues prompted by crime being reduced to clickbait.
1917
If you’re looking for a truly nail-biting climax to your first date, check out Sam Mendes tribute to his grandfather, and the generation of young men so needlessly slaughtered on French and Belgian fields during the 1914-1918 conflict. Filmed in two continuous camera shots, 1917 plunges the viewer straight into the action as we follow two British soldiers tasked with delivering urgent news across ‘no man’s land’ to halt a frontal assault destined to flounder in a trap set by their German enemies. George MacKay and Dean Charles Chapman star as the plucky Tommies facing the squalor of the mud-churned landscape, barbed wire, rats, snipers and intransigent officers.