Ah. So many to choose from.
But since no one has mentioned it:
Glory
I’m thinking of the beach scene in late afternoon where Robert Gould Shaw lets his horse go because he won’t be needing it in the approaching assault on Battery Wagner. The lovely, unstated implication is that he won’t be needing it ever.
Those screenwriters, I’m telling you, play our emotional strings like violins, and I thank 'em for it.
I’m with you, Mauvaise, on Wonderful Life.
Field of Dreams…“hey Dad, wanna have a catch?”
Casablanca: the Marseillaise. As soon as they show Yvonne crying and singing her li’l slut heart out, I start to choke up.
Gosh, with all these top tier movies mentioned so far, I’m afraid to say mine. But Hoosiers and Rudy reduce me to a sobbing baby every time.
Oh, yes. I’m also with ya on some of them. Field of Dreams. The very beginning and end of Saving Private Ryan. At the end of Babe. Yeah, I know.
I’m with Joe_Cool, too. Red Fern had me sobbing like an idiod every time I read it.
Oh, and at the end of Bicentenial Man.
A Canadian movie called “Last Night”. It’s a low key film about the end of the world, and Don McKellar and Sandra Oh are stuck together and are going to kill each other right before it ends, and then…sniff. See?
Another vote for It’s a Wonderful Life
My suggestion: The Man In the Moon (NOT the one about Andy Kaufman, but the coming-of-age movie with Reese Witherspoon). The ending chokes me up every time This movie has been showing on cable over here a lot recently, and I almost always watch until the end.
The two that always get me are:
“Meet Joe Black” (I hate this movie but…) when Claire Forlani says “I wish you could have known my dad” out come the sobs.
and in “8 seconds” when the dad is crying at the end and says that he had told Lane that he had been proud of him but had that he didn’t know if he had ever told him “that he loved him”.
Sad dads make me cry
Another vote for The Iron Giant (Suuuuupppppeeeeerrrrmmmmaaaannn)
And a defiant vote for the Nearer My God to Thee scene from Titanic (you can all bite me!)
Life is Beautiful.
Saw it once, cried. Got it on DVD just a while ago, got up the guts to watch it again. I figured it wouldn’t be as bad, I knew what was coming…
I cried so hard my chest hurt the next day.
Incredible movie.
And Iron Giant for me too.
Parenthood.
Though I’m sort of abashed to admit it…
There are a whole LOT of movies that make me cry, but that one was just off the top of my head.
Actually, I think I cry every time I see a depiction of giving birth.
IF it’s well done.
Case in point: my eyes watered copiously during Rachel’s scene in the recent “Friends” finale.
And yes, I am–or was–able to have kids of my own.
Four, in fact.
I didn’t cry then, so I don’t know why seeing it affects me that way now.
Another vote for Life is Beautiful. Even after hours of that awful accented dubbing, it doesn’t spoil it. I just sob with emotion at the end.
AND another vote for Schindler’s List, of course.
What gets me is not just the final scenes, but I cry EVERY time Schindler does something good for the Jews. I mean, he WAS a NAZI, and yet he had the courage to do what was good and right. He stood alone; no support or encouragement from his peers, that’s for sure.
And he had to keep pretending to be one of them–(Nazi)–in order to continue to be able to help at all. Had to rationalize all his actions in their terms.
The scene where he apears to so casually—but insistently-- request that the water hoses be turned on all those doomed people sweltering in the cattle-cars—that really gets to me.
Oh crap. I’m crying even as I sit here typing about it.
Ok, ok, I admit it. I got a little teary during Titanic, on the scene where the ship is listing, and the camera shows an old couple. The man lays down next to his wife, puts his arm around her and holds her hand, and they just wait for death together.
Steel Magnolias. Not where Julia Roberts dies, but when Sally Field breaks down after the funeral, and says that the little boy will never know how wonderful his mother was and everything that she went through for him.
It ties into my fear of dying and leaving my little ones without a mother.
Sheri
You knew that they made a “New Twilight Zone” of that story, right? Starring Cotter Smith. I cry every time I see it. GREAT epsiode. Great story.
I also cry at the end of “Enemy Mine”. I just do, OK?
And I was crying all throught the last part of “The Stand”, which they showed on Sci-Fi last night. When Ray Walston’s character says “It’s OK, you don’t know any better” (after Miguel Ferrer shoots him) I totally lost it.
There are others, many others. I’m a big crybaby when it comes to movies.
It’s been a while since I saw Hoosiers (great movie) but ditto Rudy. Oh my gosh, what a great movie (and I hate football!). Another element that may contribute to the waterworks are the great scores by Jerry Goldsmith (he scored both Rudy and Hoosiers). Just listening to the soundtrack CD for “Rudy” will get me sniffling if I’m in a certain mood.
Another one I can’t pass up: Sally Field in “Places of the Heart” (is that the title?). You know, the “Save the Farm” film with Danny Glover and John Malkovich - she is a young widow who is trying to keep the farm after her husband is killed in a stupid accident. Anyway, the end scene where they all are passing the communion at church, and you see her dead husband and other dead characters in the church (they’re not “really” there, it’s symbolic) well, I TOTALLY turn into a blubbering idiot. Every time.
Easy
Every damn time I watch Good Will Hunting, I get teary at the “It’s not your fault, Will” scene. Don’t want to give it away but anyone who has seen it knows the scene. One of my favorite movies.
I haven’t seen anyone else mention it, Pay it Forward. The very final seen when the candle lit vigil is being held on Helen Hunt’s front lawn.
How could I forget Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List?
*** possible spoilers ***
Ryan- that opening scene in the cemetary (built on the battlefield, BTW) when Grandpa falls to his knees in front of the headstone. In fact, I start crying during the “coming attractions” in anticipation.
Schindler- I cry my eyes out with the women in the shower at Auschwitz, and don’t even get me started on the girl in the red coat, especially the second time we see her. The “I could have done more” scene is hard, but I may have cried more seeing the surviving Schindler Jews leaving stones on his grave. Yow.
Schindler’s List, just like ivylass said.
Rain Man, cause it hits so close to home.
E.T., like so many of you.
Legends of the Fall, the line, “He was the rock they broke themselves against.”
LOTR: FOTR, when Frodo sees Bilbo at Rivendell, and he looks so old and small
–and Boromir’s last words, “My brother, my captain, my king.”
Edward Scissorhands.