As a general category, any movie that involves cruelty to animals (I don’t mind hunting, etc.–just deliberate cruelty), particularly to cats. Specifically, I can’t stand to watch any movie that involves cruelty to a character’s beloved pet (bullies injuring it to hurt the character, etc.) I can’t specifically remember any movie that involves this, but that’s probably because I avoid any with even a whiff of the possibility.
As far as specific movies go: “Beyond the Mat,” the wrestling documentary. The spouse used to be a wrestling fan so he wanted to see it, but I ended up so depressed watching the details of these guys’ pathetic lives that I ended up leaving the theater and missing the last few minutes. The whole thing was a major downer, but the scene where Mankind was getting the bloody crap kicked out of him while his wife watched with his utterly horrified 4-year-old daughter just bothered me too much. I’m not the world’s most sympathetic-to-kids sort of person, but making that poor little girl watch while daddy got bloodily beaten up…that borders on abuse. Maybe not even borders. Sure, it’s fake–but *she *didn’t know that.
When I was twelve my grandparents and my aunt took me to the movies. We ended up seeing Tightrope, which they thought was going to be like Dirty Harry. It ended up being about a guy who investigates serial killings involving BDSM and prostitution. It was an uncomfortable but educational 114 minutes. Right after we left the theatre, my aunt turns to me and whispers, “Don’t tell your mother we took you to see that.”
Jeez, Charley, about Titanic: It was a sad story, sure, and traumatizing to say the least for survivor Rose. Jack was her first love, too, making it doubly sad. But she was a real survivor, she was very young, and she had the fortitude to leave her fiancee and that rich entitled world to live her own life, and live it well into extreme old age. What would you have her do, continue to mourn mourn mourn Jack the rest of her life and never move on to marry, or do things? I lost the love of MY life in my early 20’s, and though I’ve never forgotten him, I moved on, married, had a daughter. If I didn’t - if ROSE didn’t - there would be ample grounds for cringing! Surviving, moving on, going on to have a life - those are admirable things.
To be fair, after Mick Foley (aka Mankind) saw that footage of his wife and daughter he retired from wrestling because he had no idea that he was putting his family through such terror. Beyond the Mat was the end of Mick’s hardcore wrestling carreer.
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and The Sixth Sense, for the psychological trauma and peril in which Haley Joel Osment’s characters were placed in both movies. Even though I think they’re both very good movies, I’m not eager to see either again.
Blade Runner, for Deckard’s near-rape of Rachael. And of course then she loves him! :rolleyes:
I was going to name this one and Bastard Out of Carolina. Physical and sexual abuse of a young girl with her mother forgiving the abuser, who happens to be her husband…no, thank you.
Because Dirty Harry was just so lighthearted and fun?
I second Borat. Relentlessly fucking with people who are trying to be nice and help you Is. Not. Funny. I would have loved to see an outtake featuring Sascha getting the everluvin’ shit beaten out of him by everybody in that NY subway car.
I actually second a lot of movies listed here (though I loved Meet the Parents). My picks are when the movies think that wise-ass kids are automatically funny. Say like, ohhhh, Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace. Yeah, *that *really fleshed out Vader’s character.
Pretty much any movie where someone’s getting raped just does NOT sit well with me and I refuse to watch them if I know about it ahead of time. And ditto on the cruelty to animals. One thing that’s new though since I had my daughter. I used to hate seeing movies where kids were hurt (specifically horrors) but it wasn’t so much a cringe as a “wow, didn’t need to see that”. But now it’s like, the upmost HORROR and heartache at seeing something like that. AVP2 comes to mine, specifically the scenes with the pregnant woman and the maternity ward.
Forrest Gump, for the message it sends: That virtue is more important than intelligence, not in any abstract scale of values but for purposes of wordly financial success. Real-life Forrest Gumps, however honest or hard-working or patriotic or pious, never get rich save through inheritance or connections.
Friend of mine took a girl to see Wild Things on the first date. Neither had any idea what it was about. Heh.
Meet the Parents deeply irritated me. I would have gotten in Pacino’s face after the first half-hour. I hate seeing the “nice guy” getting steeped on for comedy. And Wedding Crashers-ugh. Course, my friends all loved that one about 5 times so it’s understandable I’d hate it.
I agree, embarrassment humor is just no fun. It just makes me angry.
Like Jon Favreau’s character, I had been completely out of the dating world for ages. I’d been married nearly 7 years, and had been going steady with my ex-eife for nearly three years before that.
So, it had been roughly ten years since I’d tried to ask a woman for a date. And I was NEVER that good at it to begin with!
So, I’ve never cringed more at a movie than during the scene where Favreau leaves about 20 painfully awkward messages on the answering machine of a girl he’d recently met.
I cringed because I knew I’d be back in the dating scene before long, and I could so, so easily picture myself making an utter fool of myself in the same way.
I thought The Forty Year Old Virgin would be like that - making fun of the main character, and I avoided the movie for that reason. Then, my brother - whose taste I implicitly trust - talked me into seeing it, and I loved it.
So, I figured Judd Apatow could be trusted. And I saw Knocked Up. And I held myself in a semi-permanent cringe the entire time. It was a nightmare, and I identified with the main female character for no other reason than her situation horrified me. Even the romantic resolution made me nauseous. I wanted to flee screaming into the night.
None of these are examples of a moving being unintentionally uncomfortable. These situations are pretty much universally uncomfortable. Unless the writer/director are aliens, they are presenting this material specifically to make you uncomfortable.
