Chick Flicks for People Who Hate Chick Flicks (hereafter referred to as "men")

For a guy, it's the classic dinner-and-a-movie dilemma. She's buying the wine. She's making the dinner. She's even promised a dessert so decadent and unhealthy it carries its own Surgeon General's warning. All you have to do is bring the movie. Simple, right? Wrong. Your previous attempts at cinematic bliss have been less than well received. It's not your fault that she's genetically incapable of appreciating explosions, car chases and guns the size of Volkswagens. Sure, you could make her happy with anything involving Drew Barrymore and a large amount of puppies, but your ability to fake enjoyment ran out during last weekend's marathon viewing of the Felicity box set. What to do?

Don't despair – the trick is to find the perfect wolf in sheep's clothing. Or sheep in wolf's clothing. There are plenty of films where the romance is hidden between think layers of humor, action, even horror. Just let out a soft sniffle at the appropriate moments (if you hear violins or a Louis Armstrong song on the soundtrack that's your cue) and she'll never notice that her chick flick has an Adam's apple. Added bonus, she might be so pleased she'll just take care of dinner and leave the DVDing to you next time too.

Five of the best:

Shaun of the Dead

A new genre, the Romantic Zombie Comedy (Rom Zom Com). Shaun has a few problems: his girlfriend is demanding more commitment, his slacker best friend Ed is becoming a burden, he hates his stepfather, and his job is a humiliating grind. Oh, and he wakes up one morning to find his town is being overrun by hordes of flesh eating zombies. Comedy action, horror, a little gore, and in the end true love triumphs (that's your cue to sniffle.)

The Lady Eve

In this 1940s classic rich, niave brewing heir Charles Pike (Henry Fonda) becomes the victim of a seductress swindler (Barbara Stanwyk, sexy enough to make you forget you ever saw her much later in a denture commercial) and her con man father. But of course the young couple fall in love, and then the truth comes out and he dumps her, not realizing that her feelings were now genuine. But where most films would happily bring them right back together again, this film sends them through an insane maze of false identities, manipulations, and cons on top of cons. You know there's a happy ending coming (sniffle) but the road there is more rollercoaster than garden path.

Heathers

Harken back with us to a simpler time. A time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the oceans were young, and Christian Slater made good films. OK, it hasn't been that long, but it has been a while. As if he knew that he only had a few great films in him, he made them count, and this was the best of them all. Winona Rider stars as Veronica, a high school girl newly ascended into the coolest clique in her high school, the Heathers. When she falls for bad boy Slater her uppity new friends naturally disapprove, and as you would expect dueling humiliations ensue. But as you wouldn't expect the film quickly moves from humiliation to serial killing. Sort of "Mean Girls" meets "Silence of the Lambs." Except funny. You might have a hard time figuring out where to sniffle.

As Good As It Gets

Helen Hunt tries to redeem, or at least deal with, Jack Nicholson as an obsessive-compulsive grouch who is 90% jerk and 10% poet. Sure, you're each loving different parts of this character, but a post-movie discussion where you drop words like "transformative" and "redemptive" and she'll never be the wiser.

La Femme Nikita

A gun packing assassin blasts through the Paris underworld in a bloody tale of destruction! Except that the assassin is a woman, and her ultimate goal is to be free from the pointless violence and to run away with the man she loves. Added bonus, it's a French film with English subtitles. She'll be thrilled you're broadening your cultural influences. You'll be thrilled that KABOOM! sounds the same in any language.