Sometimes we all need to cry. When this your mood, what movie to do you seek out? Bonus points if you can name one that doesn’t lose its impact even if you watch it over and over.
Julie: An Affair to Remember, with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant. I SOB when he sees the painting at the end. SOB. Kills me. I can watch it again and again. I’ve also cried at other movies, but can’t bear to rewatch. An Affair to Remember is that fine line of romantic melodrama that just works.
Jessie: I had a tough time with this question. I have never looked for a movie that gave me the opportunity to cry. It just isn’t my way of being in the world. That being said, some movies have made me cry. I can’t get through Forrest Gump without a few tears.
Edith: Bridges of Madison County. I don’t care what anybody else says, I love this movie and its hopeless romance. I cry through most of it every single time.
Sherry: I’ve cried my way through a lot of movies over the years from Disney to Love Story to classics like West Side Story. I guess I cry easily at movies!
Barb: It’s time to admit I’m a big blubberer. I’ll cry at books, plays, movies, TV shows and even commercials if you catch me in the right mood. For a good cry, I’ll go with Beaches, the female buddy movie where they don’t drive off a cliff at the end. But there’s always Terms of Endearment (sobbed through the book, too) or Steel Magnolias. For a sad time, call….
Readers. what movies make you cry? Is that a good thing or a bad thing.
I’m with Barb on Steel Magnolias and Terms of Endearment. But to be honest, I tend to avoid the movies that make me cry. We have a few on DVD that get me every time, and I’ve been known to skip those scenes!
I’m with you Annette, I try my best to avoid movies that will make me cry.
An Affair to Remember. Exactly what Julie said.
You are peas in a pod!
There was a new commercial on last night that involved Fathers and sons and growing up…I had tears in my eyes at the end. It was for Ameritrade, I think.
I know. Isn’t that funny? I do it, too.
Remember the Iams dog food commercial from years ago when Casey the Irish Setter and his “girl” start up a stairway and get older as they approach the top? His girl is encouraging him to get to the top as he slows down and struggles a bit with age. Even thinking about this makes me cry….
Yes, Affair to Remember. Also two other oldies bring me to tears: Brian’s Song, and Love Story.
Brian’s Song. Sports movie and tear-jerker.
Fiddler on the Roof causes flooding every time. Both the poignancy of the love between Tevye and Golde and then the leave-taking. Dr. Zhivago does the same.
Dr. Zhivago, always!
Sigh . . .
The leave-taking in Fidler slays me. My nephew was Tevye in the musical last year, and the scenes of being rounded up and forced to move had even more resonance.
I’m an easy cry. But the movies that I sob through are Random Harvest, The Way We Were, The Bridges of Madison County, and anything with a dog.
I think you’ve hit several of the Wicked’s “bring your hankie” movies, Paula.
The Way We Were, especially the ending. So understated, and so sad. (When my sister and I were in New York a few years ago, we walked past the Plaza Hotel where that scene was shot, and I was raving on about it–and she had no idea what I was talking about because she’d never seen it.) (Close second: when Tim Curry dies at the end of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.)
oh yes, this movie made me cry.
The Way We Were used to kill me. I wonder if it holds up? Must rewatch.
It took Tara and me forever to get through the opening to UP–and we can’t even talk about the movie now without tearing up a little….
I love UP!
Me, too. I love UP.
Imitation of Life. No matter how many times I’ve seen this movie, the tears start falling at the same scene.
I’ve never scene this movie. Adding it to the list.
Yes, Dru! I remember watching it on a Sunday afternoon as a teen and sobbing!
I love sad movies and sad stories, so I could write a list–and I will! Most recent sobs: The Fault in Our Stars, Silver Linings Playbook, Becoming Jane, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and The Book Thief. (Can you tell I love YA authors?)
The saddest movie ever made is the anime film Graveyard of the Fireflies set in post-nuclear bomb Hiroshima.
Yes, YA books are killer. Have never read Graveyard of the Fireflies. I want to lethargically cry, not be depressed for days…
It is an anti-war film, so it’s more thought provoking and upsetting than a simple tear-jerker, that is true. The ability to express a range of feelings is a sign of emotional health. In other words, crying over art is probably good for you.
Haachi, the movie based on the real dog in Japan who spent his life at a train station, waiting for his deceased owner to come home. It kills me every time.
A Dog’s Purpose, which came out a few months ago, about a dog that gets reincarnated several times, made me cry several times.
I’m sure there are others. I’ll have to think.
I think you have a theme going here…
Oh yeah.
I’m with Julie. Being a HUGE Cary Grant fan, I can’t tell how many times I’ve watched this and despite knowing the ending by rote, I’ve a box of tissues next to the bowl of popcorn. And I think if that great scene in Sleepless in Seattle ( another fave) where Rita Wilson cries her way through explaining the plot.
I’m a huge Cary Grant fan, too. My favorite is The Philadelphia Story.
Oh, my! So many. I cry easily. The Woman In Gold, Stepmom, Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan. The list goes on and on. I cry at commercials. 🙂
Big ol’ sobber here, too. Saving Private Ryan. Yes.
Barb, that’s so funny. We should watch movies together – I want to see you cry. You usually strike me as pretty unsentimental (well, except when you talk about Viola…).
I’m a complete marshmellow.
Generally, a good cry over a good movie is fine, except that I really get red-eyed and runny-nosed! I ALWAYS cry at Forrest Gump and An Affair to Remember, plus many others, (“Return to Me” and the “The Time Traveler’s Wife” are other examples). However, when I was a kid, “Family Movies” always included an animal dying or being hurt, so THAT kind of movie-cry I avoid at all costs. For example, I have never seen “Old Yeller”; I can’t imagine seeing the one about the train station.(It’s killing me to think about it.)
We’ll be talking about animal movies at the end of the month, Tonette.
Return to Me is one that always gets me even though I’ve seen it a dozen times. When the dog, Mel, won’t eat and hen David Duchovny flips that lever and Sydney enter his new habitat … I’m tearing up just thinking about it.
Frozen’s Do You Want To Build a Snowman breaks my heart when Ana leans against the door in resignation. 🙁
I just saw Frozen for the first time. (I have a granddaughter in the target audience.) So impressed with Kristen Bell’s voice work.
I cry at the end of “Sliding Doors,” because I am a Monty Python fan, and I would like my survivors to smile and move forward.
I love Sliding Doors!
Sleepless in Seattle, in a good way! I cried at the independent film The Champions which tells the tale of some of the Vick dogs that were rehabbed at Best Friends and then went on to live the good life with wonderful adoptive homes: Handsome Dan, Cherry, and Little Red (who just passed away earlier this year).
One of my high school friends wrote Sleepless in Seattle.
Huh – I thought Nora Ephron wrote it!
According to IMDB, the writing credits are
Jeff Arch … (story)
Nora Ephron … (screenplay) and
David S. Ward … (screenplay) and
Jeff Arch … (screenplay)
I went to high school with Jeff Arch. Nora Ephron also directed.
I’m with Sherry. I cry easily at movies. I can still remember trying desperately not to cry during the final 15 minutes of Toy Story 3 since I was in the theater with a group of friends. Heck, the opening of Up gets me (as does the end).
I cried during all the Toy Stories, but especially one and three.
All of these movies make me cry. I’m going to go out on a limb here with a very obscure title – FLUKE. It’s about a man who dies in a car accident and is reincarnated as a dog (and tries to reconnect with his family, among a few other things he has to do in the process). So good, so sad.
It must be the Pisces in me but the one movie that “haunts” me still and I always cry buckets is Somewhere in Time…
Color Purple, The Way We Were, and Lady Sings the Blues — blinded by tears, had to be led from the theater. I cried reading THE DAY NO PIGS WOULD DIE with my students, who first laughed and then told me not to hide my tears, so I didn’t. Later when we lost a very sweet student to an “accident” with his father’s gun, I declined the counselor’s offer to take over my class and said, “No, I want these students to see that they matter.” One of the less-motivated students asked, “Are you saying you’d be sad if I died?” I looked him in the eye and said “Yes, I would be sad. You matter.”
Crying now more over reality than fiction . . .
You’ve Got Mail, The Best of Me, To Gillian on her 37th Birthday, Labor Day.
These came to mind, but I’m sure there are more because I cry very easily at tender movies.
Two movies made me cry. Sophie’s Choice for obvious reasons. But the one that made me have to leave the theater and go to the restroom was Ghost. I saw it a few months after my father died. Her grief and her ability to feel his presence after his death mirrored my own experience. Despite the strong reaction, I still like the movie and still watch it from time to time. In an odd way, it was also comforting.
I don’t cry but I get choked up at times. Recently it happened at the movie, Dean by Dimitri Martin.