There are certain movies that I adore because they make me laugh again and again (Animal House, Young Frankenstein), there are movies that I watch repeatedly because the leading man in so....manly (Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly and *gasp* Malcom MacFadyen), and there are movies that I watch over and over because all the elements of story, scenery, casting, and direction seem to come together for me (Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet).

But there are a few movies that, no matter how many times I see them or under which circumstances, make me cry every time. Yesterday I watched Little Women for the umpteenth time (the one with Winona Ryder and Claire Danes) and I was a blubbering mess--yet again--when Beth died. It's handled so gently and so beautifully, and it just gets me every time. I mean, it's not like I don't know that Beth is going to die. But, gosh, it just hits me right there.

What movies get you every time?

Diva, that sounds like a normal movie to cry at. You'll be scratching your head when I say The March of the Wooden Soldiers with Laurel and Hardy.

Stannie Dum: "You know what?"
Ollie Dee: "What?"
Stannie Dum: "The wooden soldiers!"

Then they start pushig the buttons and the soldiers start marching and no matter how many times I have seen that movie (legions!) I cannot help but jump up and down and clap and cry at the same time (usually shouting Yay!)! Why, tears are coming to my eyes as I write this!

An old chick flick... An Affair to Remember, the one with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. That song, the scenes where they go to his mother's home and the last scene where Cary goes to see Deborah at her home and finally realizes that Deborah can't walk and the reason why she didn't show up at the top of the Empire State Building. This movie never fails to get me all teary eyed.

"Okay, stop balling like a girl, Mando!! It's only a film!!" LOL!

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S: Holly Golightly, her dreams dashed, tosses her cat bitterly out of a taxicab into the rain, saying, "Go. Scram. Get lost, you." Then, realizing, gut-wrenchingly, what she has done, searches through an alleyway in the pouring rain for the animal. Just when it seems he is lost forever, there he sits in a trashcan... his fur matted, whiskers and "eyebrows" dumbly twitching with raindrops.... waiting for her.

THE LONG WALK HOME: It's the late-1950's South. Sissy Spacek is an upper-middle-class Dixie socialite, Whoopi Goldberg is their maid. It's Christmas. Whoopi has a gift in the pocket of her maid's uniform for the young children. But when the kids start unwrapping much grander gifts from all-and-sundry..... she privately tucks her little gift deeper into her pocket, opting not to give it after all.

FINDING NEVERLAND: The poor orphans of London are given a matinee of PETER PAN. The camera pans through the audience, lingering on each mesmerized little munchkin's face.

IMITATION OF LIFE: It's the funeral of Lora Meredith's housekeeper. Mahalia Jackson is singing a soulful hymn over a bier covered with hundreds of white roses. All the people who have played a major role in this story are in the congregation... the camera pans across each face as each is forced to search his soul for the morality of his actions.

POCAHONTAS: The Disney cartoon... Pocahontas sings her song, as the camera pans through her magical, virginally pristine America... and modern American viewers are forced to reflect on just what Europeans did to these peoples and their lands. (I was in the theater in SF watcing this... a tiny girl sitting next to me turned to her mother: "Why is that man crying?")


THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY recently did a BIG number on me... but it wasn't just one moment.

In the Name of the Father - the Daniel Day Lewis film. The scene where the whole prison mourns Paddy's death.

THE WAY WE WERE....sobbing into kleenex now...the part at the end where Katie & Hubble meet again after many years...you just know that there's still electricty & love between them...they just can't work it out...sob, sob...and now they are both married to other people...SOB, SOB...Katie's let her hair go kinky again, sob, sob...Hubble hasn't seen their daughter since the day she was born...sob, sob... and THEN, that beautiful, haunting song at the end...WAAAAAHHHHHHH !!!

O.k., o.k., I'm better now...getting back in control...

Like Rasputin, I cry during the nanny's death and funeral scenes of IMITATION OF LIFE. I remember the first time I saw that movie. I was 11 years old. It was showing one afternoon on TV and I was floored.

Also, VERA DRAKE, perhaps Mike Leigh's best movie, in two scenes: when Reg (Vera's son) asks Ethel to marry him, and when the police come to arrest Vera.

In the Vienna State Opera production of LOHENGRIN with Placido Domingo and Cheryl Studer, which I have on DVD and have watched maybe at least six times, I always start crying at that moment in Act I when Elsa and the chorus notice a man and a swan coming to her rescue. Lohengrin is the most potent represenation of the "knight in shining armor" archetype that I know of in Western civilization.

Oh and "Showgirls" with Elizabeth Berkeley

It's so bad!!! It makes me want to cry for wasting my time having watched it!

The final scene of The Joy Luck Club just does me in.

Old Yeller - the end.

Brian's Song - the end.

The Full Monty - the one scene where they're standing in line at the unemployment office and the Donna Summer song comes on the radio and they all start little bits of the dance moves. I just think that moment is so sweet.

The same scene in Little Women when Beth (Claire Dane) dies. It was the first thing I thought when I saw the topic.
Jo (Wynona Ryder) leaves the bedside to close a window shutter that has suddenly swung open as a brisk wind rushes through the room. (symbolizing Beth's spirit leaving, I believe) When she turns back to the bed, Beth is gone.
When Hannah the housekeeper comes in, she tears up a bouquet of roses and sprinkles the petals over Beth's beloved dolls and holds the cloth hand of one of them.
This is when I start crying louder and harder.

Oh dear... Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias, Out of Africa... too many to count!

I am the BIGGEST. CRYBABY. EVAH. when it comes to the movies. Oh, there are so many movies that reduce me to a blubbering bowl of jell-o! I could never begin to name them all!! Here's a teensy-weensy sampling:

West Side Story
Truly, Madly, Deeply
Life is Beautiful
Mask
Schindler's List
Simon Birch
Edward Scissorhands
Gladiator
Field of Dreams
Shawshank Redemption
Finding Neverland (great one, Dave)

Oh, my god, and at STOOPID movies, too! I cried like a baby for:

Stepmom
Ghost
Turner and Hooch (yes, I couldn't believe the damned dog died!!)
Untamed Heart

There are hundreds more. I'll stop. I'm embarrassing myself.

Me, too. I saw it at its premiere matinee in San Francisco. The last scene just perforated me and I started weeping....hard. Ouch. Without a considerate moment to allow some composure, the houselights just flew up, and I had to walk out in front of the theater... WHERE AT LEAST 80 PEOPLE STOOD, WAITING TO ENTER FOR THE NEXT PERFORMANCE. 80 people saw me at my weakest... several people gasped when they saw my red, stained face, which I vainly splayed my fingers in front of, hurrying to my car. One lady audibly turned back to the crowd and singsonged: "Oh God, it's gonna be one of THOSE kind of pictures, isn't it?"

It was.

I'm sorry. I started laughing at the part where your fingers are splayed across your tear-stained face. I still am. I feel so cruel.

You may laugh, bex. It WAS embarraskin'. I remember longing for a newspaper, magazine, show program, ANYTHING to cover my face. I had nothing. Only my hopelessly ineffective fingers, just like a small child will do. Talk about being unmasked! Fortunately, San Francisco-proper is a very artsy, sensitive city, (the epicenter of AIDS, for one thing) where people understand the power and value of art... I'm sure plenty in that pre-show throng inwardly cut me some slack.

Christine Baranski talks about growing up in a Polish-American ghetto. Her father adored and supported the local Polish-language live theater, and would drag his young daughter to many of the shows. Many of these stage productions had sad/tragic themes, and Baranski has said she--- as a young girl-- just wilted with pubescent embarrassment, wanted the floor to swallow her up when her father would start weeping openly in the audience for all to see.

In recent years, though, she says she now deeply regrets having ever begrudged him those tears: She is a fervent believer in the arts in general and the theater in particular, and very much feels that a theater should be a place where one can feel-- deeply-- a whole range of things... including crying at sad stuff...

"Frances" starring Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard. I've watched this movie over half a dozen times - and yet I find myself sobbing with wild anguish through out the entire film. Apparently the character Harry York was entirely fictional but that doesn't stop me from wanting Frances to run off into the sunset with him. It's just a tear-jerking movie from start to finish. Naturally, I have my own copy!

Oh, god.....Frances. That movie is just too damned hard to watch. Gulp.

Oh, GOD. Yes! The line where she says "you don't know your own worth?" And "how I try to teach my daughter different, but she turn out same way?" OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, yeah. That gets me too.

That and when the June goes back to China to meet her twin half-sisters that the mother had to abandon and as she comes off the ship, she sees them and sees her mother's face in them. I just start blubbering. Shoot, I'm starting to tear up now.

I was living with a Chinese-American family at the moment I first saw JOY LUCK CLUB. I very much think G-d wanted me to learn and absorb a certain something at that moment in life...

Tears: your heart cleansing itself of pride and shame.

Deeve, I too thought of Little Women right off the bat, both for the scene you mention as well as afterward, when Jo discovers all her writings among Beth's things, carefully and lovingly saved.

Others that do me in, already mentioned here:

West Side Story
Life is Beautiful
Breakfast at Tiffanys
Imitation of Life
Schindler's List
Terms of Endearment
Steel Magnolias

Few more:

Sophie's Choice
Cinema Paradiso
Midnight Cowboy
Brokeback Mountain
The Killing Fields
Philadelphia
The Color Purple
It's a Wonderful Life: "Good idea, Ernie, a toast --To my brother George, the richest man in town..."

Life is Beautiful- The final scene when the US tanks come to liberate the camp and that dear little boy's reaction gets me every single time.

-Noelle

I usually only cry during really strange movies (think "13 Going on 30"), not your typical tearjerker. I also tend not to watch movies more than once, unless it's really funny, so I can't think of something that has made me cry over and over. I'm sure there is one, I'm just coming up blank at the moment.

I have only seen bits and pieces of Joy Luck Club so I am not sure of the last scene that is the tearjerker. I remember different stories where oppressed Chinese women triumphed over their circumstances and oppressors, including the modern day one where she told her husband she would not give up her house or child.
In one story, a woman gets revenge on her unfaithful, cruel husband by taking away the one thing he values. I had a hard time with that, and for that reason I probably won't see the movie.

The end of the Killing fields when he finally gets out and is reunited with his guilt wracked American friend put a lump like a baseball in my throat. Then as i child i remember the yearling being traumatic and perhaps the first film that opened my eyes to the harsh side of life.
Then there are films like The Mission and The Pianist which move me in the way that people can be so cruel and inhumane towards their fellow man on grounds of race ,ideology or political agendas.
Yet to counter that there is my favourite romantic film , Kenneth Branagh's beautifully shot Much Ado About Nothing with a father's faith in his daughters fidelity and character so richly portrayed by Richard Briers is shown to be just ,it leaves me with a warm fuzzy glow and a glassy eye every time.

The last 15 minutes or so of "Meet Me in St. Louis."

I can totally understand this, Fiveoaksbouquet! One of my favorites, and I understand completely.

(can we mention television quick? "Northern Exposure". I think I cried at some point, usually the last five minutes, during half the episodes. I could still cry today, mainly because it isn't on any more and they don't make shows like this any more...)

OK. Movies? Anything with animals. Weeped buckets over

Babe ('That'll do, Pig. That'll do.')
Milo and Otis ('You have a baby? I have a baby, too!')
Born Free
Lassie ! Free Willy! The Lion King!

and .... The Incredible Journey, when the animals all come home, bounding out of the woods to join their human family. Gosh, I'm crying now, just thinking of it.

During the home movie that runs through the credits of Philadelphia.

When Helen Keller says wa-wa as the water runs over her hands in The Miracle Worker.

When the little brother drowns escaping into the sea with the beloved horse in Into the West.

When the father dies in the ship fire in Black Stallion.

South Pacific - from the overture on.

Wings of Desire - whenever angels are comforting people.

Big Fish - the final scene at the river.

So many of the movies mentioned have moments which reduce me to a quivering pile of runny jello.

A few biggies, for me, which I practically cry through the entire films, are:

"The Color Purple"
"Places in the Heart" (the final scene makes me a blubbering wreck)
"Out of Africa"
"The Piano"
"The Painted Veil"

Bambi reduced me to heaving sobs as a child and I'm sure would do the same now if I watched it.

The Elephant Man ...I couldn't rise from my seat at the end and sat weeping for 30 minutes.

Simon Birch (from A Prayer for Owen Meany)

Charlie (from Flowers for Algernon)

The Power of One

The end of Strictly Ballroom, when the dad asks the mom who's been berating him for years to dance, as her reasons for maintaining anger at him crumble into lies. Then everyone starts dancing. I lose it every time.

I recently went to see the SATC movie expecting some light-hearted entertainment peppered with high fashion and I was shocked at how many times I started crying during that movie! Granted I am facing a family crisis at the moment and went to the movie for a little temporary escape so I was probably shedding cathartic tears, but when Steve confesses to Miranda, I started welling up. When Carrie realizes that Big isn't showing up, I really started to lose it. When Samantha feeds Carrie her breakfast like a little girl, I found that simple act deeply moving, and when Charlotte announces she's expecting, I lost it again. The character of Steve was surprisingly well acted and projected a lot of pathos - the interaction between Steve, Miranda and their son really got to me.

Tally up another hanky for The Joy Luck Club. Sheesh.

I also cried more than once during the Sex and the City Movie, Dem. I surely did not see that one coming! Also, Steve and Miranda on the bridge...because they really are the best love story on the show, IMHO. Carrie screaming at Big through choked tears as she beats him with her wedding bouquet in the street...so broken. Carrie finding forgiveness for Miranda...many great moments.

Yes - those two scenes got me as well!

Lord of the Ring SPOILERS ....










Millions of places in Lord of the Rings ...

The end, where they sail away.

Also the part just outside the mines after Gandalf has died.

And the part in the second movie when the elves arrive to fight, knowing they'll probably die. And then they do.

Lots of places where nothing but courage carries people forward into the face of certain doom.

Etc.

And then in Jesus of Nazareth, when they take Jesus down from the cross and Mary holds him in her arms and wails ...

CHARLOTTE'S WEB... yep... the cartoon. The spider (Debbie Reynolds) explaining to Wilbur that she won't be around much longer... she's getting very tired... once she finishes her web, she will die. Oh dear, dear, dear.

In MASK... when, after the gang gives Rocky Dennis his new suit, the enormous heavy biker dude who stutters badly and is perhaps slightly MR... tells Rocky haltingly but with piercing sincerity, "I'm...so...proud...of...you..."

OMG.... it's all over for me at that moment.

Funny -- I saw Strictly Ballroom in a theater in Raleigh, North Carolina shortly after it was released, and when the end credits started to roll, the entire theater audience gave it a standing ovation for, like, five minutes. It was bizarre, yet really touching.

I'm not much of a sniffler at movies, but two recent films have really burrowed their way into my heart: "Stranger Than Fiction" and "Lars and The Real Girl" . . . both 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.

Oh, yeah. Me too on this one. Every stinking time.

I dont wanna talk about it , I am hard as a rock .....


well , sorta



Simon Birch did a number , shhh, dont tell

I don't cry easily in movies...Lord of the Rings, however, has one scene that never fails to mist my eyes over.

When Pippin is in the service of the Steward of Gondor, he witnessed the Steward sending his last surviving son out to a battle from which he knows he will not return. While the king dines loudly and greedily on his meal, he asks Pippin for a song.

Pippin sings:

"Home is behind, the world ahead
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows, through the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight
Mist and shadow, cloud and shade
All shall fade, all shall fade."

While we see the young price riding off into a battle he knows will kill him, knowing his father willingly sent him to his death, but determined to do so anyway.

It's such a haunting song, and a heartbreaking moment.

AI...Niagra Falls.

The last few minutes of A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim always put a lump in my throat and a song in my heart... at the same time.

It starts with the scene where he wakes up the morning after the ghostly visits and is overjoyed, grateful, and hilariously childlike. He then proceeds to make things right with the people he's wronged for so long. When he humbly joins the festivities at his nephew's Christmas dinner, walks up to his nephew's wife, and asks for her forgiveness, the look on both of their faces is priceless as he says "Can you forgive a pig-headed old fool with no eyes to see with and no ears to hear with all these years?". In an instant her face changes from fear to astonishment to joy, and she quietly embraces him. Beautiful.

The next scene is even better, as he beats Bob Cratchit in to work, and then nearly scares him to death as he thumps the table, says he isn't going to stand for his tardiness any longer, and has no alternative but to raise his salary! Again, the look on the other actor's face is fabulous as he tries to process this amazing change of heart.

It's a great movie, one of my favorites. I always feel ridiculously happy after I've seen it.

Sim was a wonderful actor, and very enjoyable in several other movies as well. But Ebenezer Scrooge is his masterpiece... no one caught the nuances of this character's transformation the way he did.

Mom. . .is that you?

Funny you mention that - "Stranger Than Fiction" is the only time I've hever seen Will Ferrell and not been moved to nausea. I loved that movie and in particular the scene where he's in Maggie's apartment, playing the guitar - That was happiness to watch.

Here is Pippin's song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CwnFb1L8IU...feature=related

Right! It's a shame the movie didn't do better, but I think that Will Ferrell's traditional audience hated it, and the audience that would ordinarily have flocked to go see a witty romantic comedy ignored it because they don't like Will Ferrell. Dustin Hoffman is great in it, and Emma Thompson's neurotic author character is a hoot.

There were a lot of moments of happiness in that film, but the guitar scene you mentioned is a stand-out, and the scene where he brings Maggie a box of baking flours is just perfect: "What are those?" "I brought you flours." The resulting look on her face is priceless.

Plan Nine from Outer Space

I don't know how I forgot - Midnight Cowboy - that last scene - Jon Voight holding Dustin Hoffman while they are riding in the bus. Oh boy. Tears were streaming down my face when I watched that scene.