I sobbed so hard during My Life in 1994 that I can’t believe they didn’t throw me out.
My father was dying of cancer at the time. It was a spectacularly bad movie choice, but we hadn’t even looked at the poster. It was the next movie to start after we showed up at the theater, so we went. (My roommate was trying to cheer me up.)
“A Matter of Life or Death” makes me tear up – I’m pretty jaded now, but that one still does it to me. I love David Niven, and Kim Hunter is a beautiful and prodigiously able foil.
I think I might have shed a tear at “Benjamin Button,” even though I hated that flick. If you tell anyone, I will shed you like nobody’s business.
The only movie that I properly cried over was Edward Scissorhands. As a smart but awkward and frequently bullied 12-year-old, I strongly identified with the titular character. I took from the ending the message that people who see the world on a different level can’t ever be a part of normal society or experience human connection, because misunderstandings will invariably drive them out. I guess I figured I too was doomed to live alone on a mountain, slicing up bits of paper.
So one of my favorite movies ever is “Wit” starring Emma Thompson, which is about as funny as a movie can get about a woman enduring cancer, and I was rather pleased when one of my professors offered up a(n optional) viewing of the film that included pizza. Favorite movie, pizza, fuck yeah. The film offered up, she said, one of the best readings of “Death Be Not Proud” she had ever seen, and this woman has literally written the book --several, actually-- on Donne. I actually agree with her. Whoever wrote the play (which was later translated into a film) was clearly a hardcore nerd, and made all of that endless harping over comma placement seem like it meant something.
Anyway, so at one of the most touching scenes in the film, a room full of sappy English majors were crying into their vegetarian pizzas when I got a hilarious text message. Took all of the self control I had to not be the person laughing at the most inappropriate time. I felt like an asshole stifling my laughter while everyone else was sobbing and drying their eyes.
Poorly timed text messages aside, I’m just not the crying type, during movies or otherwise.
I cried a little at the end of Brazil. I get misty-eyed when I’m watching something great. It doesn’t even have to be sad. Overwhelmed by the experience, I guess.
I watch It’s a Wonderful Live every Christmas season, and I cry every time. I also cry at footage of Nazi rallies and anything to do with Nazis. Simulated stuff doesn’t do it for me–I didn’t cry at Schindler’s List. It has to be genuine, or my eyes are dry.
This always makes me cry, I watch it when I’m in the particular mood for a happy/sad mix.
I cry at films on a fairly regular basis, not all the time, but at least once a month. Then again, I average watching at least one film a day. The last film I cried at was The Fighter, yesterday.
A Walk to Remember. This tubby bitch starts bawling like a little girl with a skinned knee and shit. And the movie that I lifted that line from, a little. The final scene where they meet again at Comicon always gets me.
Without making a list or even trying to identify types of movies that affect me that way, I’ll just say that I cry often at effective movies. They don’t have to be tear jerkers, but as long as the story moves me, I will react by some measure of crying.
I just thought of an example. Not the whole movie, for sure. But every time I see Blade Runner - TEARS IN RAIN I get misty. Not every time brings a full set of tears, but I must have seen that at least 10 times and after a while, since you know what’s coming, the effect isn’t quite the same.
The last ten minutes of Casshern always makes me sob. The ending takes us back to happens times in the characters’ lives.
I cried like a baby during my initial theater viewing of the Joy Luck Club, but in subsequent viewings at home I’ve been able to contain myself a little better.
Plenty of times. God, I cried last night at the end of Super 8.
The movie that has made me cry the most was Dancer In The Dark with Bjork. I was sobbing uncontrollably at the end. I didn’t stop for a long time. I was a wreck.
The movie that has made me cry the most often is The Color Purple. I’ve probably seen it too many times now for it still to get me in the same way, but I’ve sobbed dozens of times watching that film. Even my dad cried at the end when we watched it together, and I have never seen him cry at any other movie. Or anything much at all.
I can top that. I choked up at the scene in Latter Days when the waiter discovers that his Mormon lover is still alive. At least Brokeback was a serious movie, as opposed to a ridiculously clichéd campfest.
Oh hell yes I cry in movies. I am a weepy bitch. Pretty much any sad animal scene gets me- when Beucephelous died in ‘Alexander the Great’, I was a sobbing mess. ‘Homeward Bound’? I don’t even wanna talk about it.
