Never watch Irreversible or at least when Monica walks into a metro station, LEAVE THE ROOM, and bring any body else who is sensitive to these things with you. Man that scene is strong.
Several of the scenes from Away From Her. I’ve known someone who suffered from Alzheimer’s and can indeed be brutal, but most of the movie can also parallel a person’s bout with mental illness. Hence extreme difficulty for me to see myself in. 
Also, the parts from The Bridge documentary that shows actual suicide jumps. Talk about something making your heart stop and the defeat palpable.
I grew up in Nebraska and vividly remember sitting at my breakfast table and reading the morning paper with increasing horror about Brandon Teena (nee Tina Brandon), a transgender man who had been brutally raped and murdered. Before he was killed, Brandon had complained several times to local law enforcement that he was being harassed by the men who ended up killing him. The part that really got to me was that after he was killed the police didn’t even bother hiding their disgust, essentially saying he deserved what he got. The cruelty and waste of it all really stuck with me. I think it was at that breakfast table that I realized I couldn’t spend the rest of my life in Nebraska.
Years later (in Seattle) I saw the movie Boys Don’t Cry and I was just devastated. I thought the film was done perfectly, but I could never bring myself to watch it again.
I have to say, South Park’s episode “Britney’s New Look” made me feel a bit ill.
I can’t really explain why, but it was just so disturbing, and, despite it’s over-the-top qualities, brought some serious questions to mind.
After watching “Brokeback Mountain,” I couldn’t get it out of my head for months afterward. The first time I watched it, I didn’t believe Jack was dead at first. It just - couldn’t be like that. How could it be like that? Full props to Ang Lee for not giving us a Hollywood happy ending.
My father had schizophrenia. He was a pretty intelligent guy who was made virtually non-functional by his condition.
A Beautiful Mind has a lot of resonance for me. While it might have some deficiencies as a biopic, I thought it did a good job of conveying the apparent reality of delusions to someone who has them.
I cried so hard during Dances With Wolves that an usher had to ask me to be quiet. It was the scene where they shot the wolf. I don’t think I could ever watch that movie again. It upset me for years afterward.
I had a similar reaction to Sophie’s Choice… oh god… shudder
There was this episode of a TV cop show. Recently, too.
My dear beautiful little cousins, I just wasn’t aware back then…you were scared of him, but I wasn’t. I didn’t think he was much of anything. Barely noticed him.
I was going to bring up this film, but can’t agree that it is brilliant. Gratuitously violent rape-porn played backwards to give it a shred of ‘art-house’ credibility.
The little girl…
There is a scene that I think is from this movie that has stuck with me over the years. I could be remembering this incorrectly, since the movie is 25 years old. One of the kids is dying of radiation sickness, and the mother is bathing him in the sink. As she sponges his body, the water in the sink gradually turns pink, presumably from the kid’s rectal bleeding. The little kid is so weak he can barely move, and the mother performing this task like an absolute zombie – emotionless, devoid of expression. I still shudder every time I think of that scene. I don’t think I could watch it today.
That’s The Day After (I think…either that or Testament, but I’m pretty sure the former).
Taps, a movie that came out in the early eighties, so I won’t bother with the spoiler box. It’s a movie about a bunch of kids who take over and run their own military school to keep it from closing when the principal (or leader or whatever) is taken ill. The kids are doing fine for a while, and then there’s a problem with the furnace and they’re standing around tinkering with it, when suddenly one of them catches fire. That kid burning, and his high-pitched screams…it was probably a few seconds long but it seemed to go on forever. It was probably a good movie, but I don’t know if I could watch it again.
I won’t watch *Terms of Endearment * . . . I was 7 when my mother died of cancer. I don’t need to see a movie about a mom dying of cancer and leaving little kids.
Oh god. My parents went to go see that movie in the theater. If you remember it was advertised like a straight comedy. My parents didn’t get to go out much and this was a treat for them. This was right after my mother’s sister died suddenly at age 40 and left four young children. The evening did not go well.
I still can’t watch The Day After without freaking out all over the place. Also can’t watch the final episode of* Babylon 5* as it was aired the day my dad died. I still haven’t seen it and probably never will.
It was Testament. Very sad film, no scenes of destruction that you see in other nuclear war films, just regular people trying to live their lives as normal as possible while the radiation slowly kills everyone around them.
In The Killing Fields, when the pre-adolscent girl who is gaurding the laborers gestures for one of them to get out o fht editch or paddy. She removes a plastic bag and zip tie from her belt and places them over the guys head and lets him die there. The utter coldness and callousness she showed, and the way they were training these children to be totally ruthless and automotons was horrifying, and the fact that the laborer didn’t really even struggle - he knew he was dead.
Likewise, in The Pianist, when the German officer is shooting hte kneeling line of Jewish prisoners. At the last guy, he runs out of bullets. He deliberately removes another clip from his belt-pouch, removes the spent clip, reloads the gun, puts the spent clip in his pouch. The whole time you’re thinking maybe this last guy will live, just because of the delay, but no - he’s just more and more aware of what’s going to happen and waiting for the eventual bullet in the brain. And finally he finishes reloading and shoots the guy.
StG
I’ll echo you on the ALZ. I watched my dad die from it and there is no freaking way I’m going to watch a film with someone in it who’s dying from that illness.
I’m keeping myself away from The Savages because I suspect it may have similar themes.
Schindler’s List really got to me. It got to my wife worse, since her parents were in the death camps. She cried almost all the way through it. I have no desire to see that movie again.