I’m with SolGrundy… sad movies can make me cry, but happy movies (or sad movies with happy endings) are far more likely to do so.
I tear up every time I see Hobbiton in the opening scenes of Fellowship of the Ring, and also when Bilbo and Frodo are reunited in Rivendell. Tears of joy, I’m telling you… I have to explain it to my daughters every time. laugh
Despite having seen it at least a dozen times now, I still get misty at the very end of Monsters Inc. Sully’s big grin at Boo’s tiny-voiced “Kitty!” does it every time.
Mulan gets me too, but for me it’s the scene when everyone at the palace bows to her, after the Emperor says that she has saved them all. Damn. Good scene.
The last scene in the last episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” gets me, as Jean-Luc deals the cards to his friends and shipmates… “Nothing wild… and the sky’s the limit.”
The scene near the end of Unbreakable where David Dunn shows his son the newspaper article about his first act. The upspoken communication and understanding they share, just in their expressions, is a thing of beauty. Probably Bruce Willis’ finest moment on screen so far.
At the end of The Sixth Sense when Cole tells his mother about her mother. “She says the answer is… ‘Every day.’” Yeah, and I lose it every time I hear that.
I guess M. Night does some great emotional moments like this, because here’s another. In Signs, when Mel Gibson loses control and yells at the dinner table, and his children start crying. Then he hugs them both and drags Joaquin Phoenix into the group hug too. I was laughing with tears rolling down my cheeks at the same time.
A big one for me is the end of Fearless, pretty much the last 10 minutes or so, as Max finally accepts what has happened and it all comes crashing down on him… and then is saved. One of the most wrenching, emotional sequences ever committed to film.
Funny thing, this just happened to me again tonight, as I watch a “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” rerun, one I had never seen before. Odo tries to nurse an ill changeling back to health, and teach it how to shapeshift. Just as he is making progress and connecting with the changeling, it has a setback and is about to die. But instead, as Odo is holding it, it bonds with him and restores his own changeling abilities. The first thing Odo does is change himself into a hawk and flies through the station, something he had promised the other changeling he would teach it to do. A surprisingly touching episode.
A sad movie (a well-made sad movie) will often disturb me or put me into a funk. I’m a sucker for happy endings, though, and they’ll always make me a little weepy. Happy movies will make me cry more easily than sad ones do. The examples above are just a few of the better ones.