The Notebook - especially in the end.

Mike Leigh's SECRETS AND LIES: It's in the midst of a birthday party, in which tempers flare, many truths are bared. Everyone ends up showing his/her true colors, which is both bitter and cleansing for one troubled family. Me? I'm doing pretty well until the photographer's secretary, a rather posh girl who's been coolly looking on to all this family brouhaha, suddenly turns to the patriarch and wails, "Oh, I wish I had a Dad like you!"

I haven't seen the movie, but once you said something in regards to your friend Kookie, about truth being cleansing. The problem is, things that are said can't be unsaid.

The movie sounds good, though.

It's a masterpiece, really. Staggeringly artistic and moving, IMHO.

I seldom can stand to watch THE GOOD EARTH starring Paul Muni and Luise Rainier. The most heartbreaking scene is when Paul Muni's character cannot kill his friend, the ox. Many year ago, Dr. Laura, a radio personality some deplore, remarked that much of what we human beings need to know about life is in the movie "The Good Earth." Like Dr. Laura or not, she scores 100% on that observation. Could "The Good Earth" have been better enacted by an Asian cast? NO, because the original book and screenplay was of unreproachable truth about human beings, family and marriage. There simply isn't a better movie about what it is like to ba a husband, a wife, or in a family.

The Color Purple makes me cry in three different very strong scenes. I can hardly stand to watch it, yet every now and then I need to connect with the characters. This is one of the best humanist movies ever.I hurt when I watch it and wish my own sister could feel what I feel when I see it.

I've never known why certain scenes in "Stormy Weather" make me sob like a baby. Perhaps it's the happy ending when Lena Horne and Bill Robinson get together and have a family. There was something sweeter than sweet about what a relationship can be. Oh, yes, I love "Porgy and Bess" as presented on PBS more than a decade ago. That was where my heart is and I'd sob.

of them are irrepressibly sweet and laugh out loud funny, without a mean or cynical bone in their bodies. The optimistic faith they express in humanity is a delight to experience; "Lars and The Real Girl" especially, as it had so much opportunity to veer off into creepy, awkward weirdness and yet never did.
[/quote]


OOhh great,,,, Lars is next on my netflix list ... 'cause I love Gosling in anything (!!) 'Katy' from POL who's now in China for a month
told us Gosling's her townie and I think she was teaching (she retired recently) in the same school he attended as student.

[quote name='Morticia Addams' date='Aug 1 2008, 06:35 PM' post='392378']
I seldom can stand to watch THE GOOD EARTH starring Paul Muni and Luise Rainier. The most heartbreaking scene is when Paul Muni's character cannot kill his friend, the ox. Many year ago, Dr. Laura, a radio personality some deplore, remarked that much of what we human beings need to know about life is in the movie "The Good Earth." Like Dr. Laura or not, she scores 100% on that observation. Could "The Good Earth" have been better enacted by an Asian cast? NO, because the original book and screenplay was of unreproachable truth about human beings, family and marriage. There simply isn't a better movie about what it is like to ba a husband, a wife, or in a family.


Mort, I've never seen the movie in its entirety, but read the book in my late teens? maybe jr high -- don't recall now and it's stayed with
me all these years. . . . and I'v read alot over the years. It was a momentous read.

Rasputin - thank you for mentioning Mike Leigh's film, Secret and Lies. It's a dark film but quite brilliant, I think. Actually it's the very last scene in the film that makes me teary - in a good way - when Brenda Blethyn and company are in her backyard - love that ending but it chokes me up every time.

I'd have to disagree on the Good Earth film...I loved the book; it made me an avid Pearl Buck fan, amazing book, no doubt about it. The movie, however, was just horrid.

The last scene in It's a Wonderful Life where they are standing by the Christmas tree, a bell tinkles and the little girl says " Teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings" and Jimmy Steward looks upwards and says" Attaboy Clarence!" I just howl every time!

That movie is a tearjerker from beginning to end! It's a Wonderful Life is a wonderful movie!

My nomination in this thread is Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. It is not a tearjerker or a film where a skillful scriptwriter has written the "And Here Everyone Is Supposed To Cry" scene. I cry when I see the mother whose son died in the Iraq war. And what did he die for? She had been so proud of him! The woman's PAIN is so powerful that I can feel it myself, my whole body hurts to see her cry for the loss of her son.

Reality beats fiction.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

For me it's:

The scene in Awakenings where Robert DeNiro turns away from the window and sees his Mom and recognizes her (for the first time in years) & shuffles towards her and says "Mom!" OMG that makes me cry.

The scene in Forrest Gump where Forrest says "I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is." *sniff* Also when Forrest first meets his son (and understands that the boy is his) and when he is visiting Jenny's grave and says "You'd be so proud of him."

The end of E.T. ("Beeee goood") - still makes me cry.

And in The Color Purple when Mister is separating Celie from her sister and the girls are both crying and screaming. Dang, that's hard to watch.

In other news, I can't stand It's a Wonderful Life. I'd rather have a tooth pulled w/o anesthetic than watch it.

Just watched this last night. Great soundtrack. I love that stripped down version of The Jam's "That's Enterntainment".

Surprisingly, The Color Purple does not make me cry, but I agree that it can be hard to watch. I want to slap Celie's father and husband from here to kingdom come. I liked the characters of Celie, and of course her sister, Oprah's character, and Sug Avery. I enjoyed seeing Celie empowered enough to do the things that later took place. In a way this is how I felt about what I saw of The Joy Luck Club.

PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED: Middle-aged Peggy Sue gets beamed back to her adolescence in the 50's. She runs into all her family members... parents, sister, grandparents... who greet her casually of course. She realizes how precious-- and now vanished--- were all those seemingly quotidian relationships.

(tearing now at just the memory)

I have to third "It's a Wondeful Life" and second AI while I am in agreable mode


I cannot believe I forgot this one , for just the mention of the character's name left me unglued for ages after, it is Smike for the 2002 version of Nicholas Nickleby , not just his end in the film but everything from the get go left me an inconsolable blubbering mess. I reckon its all down to Jamie Bell's acting , I am usually made of sterner stuff ya know.

Like the graveyard scene in Our Town. Poignant and transformative. That was Kathleen Turner, wasn't it? She's terrific.

What movies get you every time?

The last five minutes of "Sophie's Choice."

Oh yeah - when she goes into her grandmother's room and sees her alive again - that just about kills me.

Some of the scenes described I find rather cheesy, some are indeed powerful tear-jerkers (Sophie's Choice when she parts with her little girl and she recounts the tale....).

I nominate Shadowlands and Remains of the Day, both with Anthony Hopkins.
Billy Elliot is also moving and very "real": nothing corny, although it's a Cinderella story deep down (aka done to death)

I admit I was moved by the mother losing her son in Iraq as well....





You're being naughty!

So many scenes in the Color Purple, but the one scene that makes my hairs stand on end and my throat ache and i get strangely nauseous as well is the one where Shug Avery is rushing toward the church and singing, by the time she hugs her father, the preacher, I am a sniveling mess.

Tjen, I had forgotten about that scene. That was good, too.

Dem, what wouldn't you give just to spend just ONE MORE hour with your grandparents...?

That part of the movie reminded me of a recurring dream that I have where my grandparents come back for a short time, and in my dream I know that they are back for that short time and I visit them.

Somebody already mentioned Paradiso

Bridges of Madison County...Meryl Streep sitting in the pick-up truck in the rain. Her hand on the door handle. Should she stay or should she go. Heart wrenching!!!!!!

Gladiators.... the scene when Jacquim Pheonix kills his father.

Things We Lost in the Fire...all the scenes of grief and loss by Halle Berry were so real.

the end; "lassie", "love story"...why almost anything impossibly romantic or impossibly probable.

The part in the film '21 grams' at the hospital after the car crash was for me one of the most realistic portrayals of grief i've ever seen in a film ,it was harrowing to watch and if anyone watching it had been through a similar situation in real life it would surely have been unwatchable.

American Beauty makes me ponder...and if I'm in the right mood, the scene with the dancing bag will make me sniff. It's more to do with the state of the human condition, rather then death or loss....the tragedy and futility of life itself.

Spoiler:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYrgHju3d-E&NR=1

MB