When a Man Loves a Woman

When a Man Loves a Woman opens with one of the oddest (and, frankly, creepiest) meet-cutes I have ever seen in a movie: Alice (Meg Ryan), sitting at a bar in broad daylight (it looks like she's just finished lunch), already wincing at unwanted attention from the guy sitting to her left at the counter, is approached by Michael (Andy Garcia), who asks her to pick up his laundry for him, bring it to his hotel room later that night. “I'll pay you,” he says. “Thirty bucks. That oughta cover it.” At first, she's irritated, and then she's amused, flirting back.

Then – right after my boyfriend shouted, “Oh, come on, Meg!” and I scribbled something in my notebook about how women alone in bars are always assumed to be prostitutes – the scene takes a cutesy, unexpected turn.