I’ve watched thousands of films and there’s still nothing that gets the blood pumping and the tears flowing like the final scene in Cool Runnings.
It beats the end of Romeo and Juliet, A Beautiful Mind, and all of the other tear jerkers that I’ve seen by a huge margin.
Totally surprising for a lighthearted comedy!
I think it’s a work of genius… Or can anyone recommend something else?
Execution scene of Braveheart–especially when Wallace sees his dead wife in the crowd
The scene in * Edward Scissorhands * where Edward saves the boys life but accidentally cuts him made me cry, which is prettly rare for me (or at least, it was back then). Also, the ending of * Immortal Beloved * had me rubbing my eyes for minutes.
The film version of A Raisin in the Sun with Sidney Portier, when he discovers that Willie scammed him.
WILLIE!
And then there’s the final scene in Imitation of Life when the the wayward daughter goes running up to her mother laying up in the casket, crying “Mama!” when her whole life she had been in complete denial.
And then we can’t forget that last part of Toy Story when the Tom Hanks doll makes Buzz Lightyear fly into the stratosphere. That always makes me mist up. sniff
Always found in Braveheart that I was usually pretty bored by that point in the film, bit too long for my feeble brain to cope with!
Haven’t seen the other films… will have to check them out!
Still, not sure they can beat Cool Runnings for sheer happiness and sadness at the same time!
Oddly enough, for me, it was in one of the final scenes of ‘Iron Giant’. After the boy tells the giant that he doesn’t have to be what he was programmed to be; he can be anything he wants, the ‘last’ word the giant says. I’m a bit of a newb here, so I don’t know how to do the spoiler space thingum. Thus, I’ll simply leave it at that.
But I will say the damn scene tears me up -every- time.
For me, there are a few, though one odd one is the end of Chariots of Fire when he’s running and you here his voiceover to his sister, where he says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”
Then the music hits. It’s quite emotional for some reason, part of it being that in real life, he ended up being murdered because of being a missionary.
In “She’s Having A Baby” with Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern, the scene where she’s in delivery and things aren’t looking too good. The father (Kevin) is told about the perilous situation with mother and baby and there is an EMOTIONAL scene of flashbacks of the couple preparing for the baby’s arrival and it shows him on his knees in the waiting room. While the scene is going on, Kate Bush’s “A Woman’s Work” is playing. I bawl every time.
Most of these are on my guaranteed tear-jerker list, but I’ve got to add “Jesse’s Song” from Toy Story 2. Gets me every time.
the ‘Les Marsailles’ from Casablanca
The ending of Monsters, Inc
for ArrrMatey: The ending of Iron Giant:
“Superman!” as he closes his eyes, and meets his destiny by blowing up the nuclear missile (and himself) before it hits the town.
More or less any scene from Grave of the Fireflies.
Especially the cutscenes in Red where you remember that they are dead, and the last scene. The music was just depressingly painful.
The Color Purple, where the sisters are torn apart. It just gets to me every time.
Thanks Lawoot. Even just reading it made me feel all non-piratey inside.
The moment from Cool Runnings where Yul Brenner teaches Junior to stand up to his father. (I’m probably misquoting, but…) “I feel pride! I feel power! I am a bad-ass mother who don’t take NO shit from no BODY!”
And of course… “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Spoken over and over as he recovers his strength from the brink of death itself.
And the end of Twelve Monkeys. (Not the airplane scene, but the bit right before it.) The music works so gorgeously, and you see the whole movie coming together into this moment, and you are struck by the inevitability of it all.
From The Railway Children:
“My daddy! my daddy!”
The train scene at the end of Jakob the Liar.
Two moments.
- When we find out what Sophie’s Choice was
Sophie and her two children were taken away in The Holocaust. Guards were loading a train, presumably of people to be taken off and killed. The guards said one of her children had to go on the train and she had to choose which one would go.
- The end
Sophie, played by Meryl Streep, and her lover, played by Kevin Kline, commit suicide together.
The liberation of the labor camp in Life is Beautiful.
I would have to go with the scene in ‘Cast away’ when Tom hanks tries to save ‘Wilson’. KNow that is a bizzare choice but that scene always gets to me.
And for the guy who mentions the scene from ‘Colour purple’…excellent choice.
Movies can be such a wonderfully powerful medium…and when it’s good you don’t care you’re being manipulated. Of course many of the Most Emotional Moments BrainFizz is asking for are from guilty pleasure films.
I’ll second “The Iron Giant” and “Chariots of Fire”. Many emotional moments in “On the Waterfront”.
And why not, I’ll add some FOTR moments: when Frodo says he’ll
take the ring, and Boromir’s death. They make me tear up for sure, every time
By the way, if we fans aren’t bawling thru the 2nd half of ROTK something will have gone terribly wrong.