How can these two not have been mentioned yet?
Brian’s Song
Terms of Endearment
It’s easy. You get the star into a hospital bed and let ‘em die. Opens the taps like Noah was buildin’ a boat.
Actually, the movie that makes me cry the most is the Bell Canada commercial where the college student is calling his grandfather long distance from France, and the grandfather says “So are the girls in Paris as pretty as I remember?” and the grandson says “I’m not in Paris, Grandpa. I’m in Dieppe. I called to say thank you.” (Dieppe was the site of Canada’s worst defeat during World War II.) Everyone I know cries at that one.
Okay, this is a little strange, but I always get choked up during disaster movies. Even the bad ones, like Volcano, or Independence Day. I don’t know why that is. Maybe I’m just such a callous bastard that you’ve got to kill a couple thousand people before I start to really care.
When my husband and I first met (nearly 20 years ago) and were going through that initial “getting-to-know-you” phase, there were a few very important unspoken “tests” we had to pass for each other to prove our compatibility. Three of these tests concerned movies. The first happened on a day a couple of weeks after we’d met. We were hanging around his apartment, listening to music and watching TV (he had MTV! I didn’t know anyone who had MTV!). The movie The Elephant Man was starting on a cable channel and we decided to watch it. We had both seen it before, but I think the decision to watch it was because we subconsciously needed this particular test to happen sooner rather than later. When, by the end, we were hugging on the floor in front of the TV and sharing a box of Kleenex, we knew that it was yet another sign that we were soul mates.
The other movie tests showed that we were both front row people (I don’t know that we’d be together if either of us had turned out to be a middle-of-the-theater or back row lover), and that we both could also enjoy mindless, turn-your-brain-off-and-enjoy fare. The first movie we saw together in a theater was 48 Hrs! We both loved it!
Eq
“ROOOOOOXXXANNE!!!”
Last movie that made me cry (from genuine emotion and not that I paid good money to see it), Shawshank Redemption.
Spoiler Stuff
While in prison, and after Andy (Tim Robins) gets out of that month in solitary, Red (Morgan Freeman) warns Andy about the danger of hope. But after getting out himself, and refusing to follow Brooks example, Red is riding a trailways bus to Mexico to meet Andy. In his voice over Red says "I hope I can make it across the boarder, I hope I can see me friend and shake his hand. I hope the pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams,…I hope.
I always well up at that point.
The movies I’ve seen which have made me cry are movies I never, ever want to watch again:
*Schindler’s List
*The Accused
*Silence of the Lambs
*the movie with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas (the name of it is on the tip of my tongue!)
*The Elephant Man
*Titanic
*The Perfect Storm
*Julia
I’d add A Christmas Carol, except that it’s only when the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows up that I run out of the room…otherwise, I’ll watch the rest of it.
Needless to say, this is only a partial list, and I haven’t even touched Movies Which Evoke Anger In Me…
Oops, I forgot Sophie’s Choice!
High time I go to bed…evidently the brain’s shutting down for the evening…zzzzzz…
Mr. Ruby and I have puddled at several of the films listed. Another of our common tear-jerkers is A Star is Born with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. Mr. Ruby refuses to watch it again.
Oh, I almost forgot the final episode of The Beauty and the Beast with Ron Pearlman and Linda Hamilton. He won’t watch any episodes anymore…<sigh>
Has no one mentioned E.T.? ( Or was it just me?)
The end of She’s Having a Baby gets me, even after
20 times, as does the end of The Great Santini.
Steel Magnolias, Prince of Tides and always always… Forrest Gump…
~grins and waves~ Hi! Newbie here! 
- Finding Forrester - great movie overall, but so sad at the end . . .
- Pay it Forward - another great. Haley Joan Osment is a wonderful actor. I was SOBBING at the ending.
- Where the Red Fern Grows - We had to read it for lit one year, and my teacher brought in the movie after we finished the book. The book I was sobbing through; the movie I wasn’t, but only because I was surrounded by thirty of my peers, all of whom would have teased me endlessly for openly crying.
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Welcome to the Boards, Bookworm!
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I’ve cried at a lot of movies, but I’ve gotten a little better at controlling my emotion recently. However, the two most recent movies that got me crying were:
WARNING: Spoilers Ahead
My Dog Skip - Just a fun little movie, but if you’ve owned a dog as a kid (or any pet), it’ll get you.
Saving Private Ryan - I saw it for the first time on DVD at my parent’s place. When I started it, my dad told me to get a rag for my tears at the end. I thought “yeah, Ok, I’ll be fine.” When Hanks’ character dies, it made me sad. When Private Ryan turns to his wife and says "Tell me I’ve lived a good life. Tell me I’m a good man.” I lost it. I was sobbing like a little baby. It took me a while to compose myself. And I’m supposed to be this big, tough Army guy.
Jman
This one was only mentioned once that I saw… so It deserves another line: Life is Beautiful… If you haven’t seen it, the last couple minutes might be the saddest thing on film. (i.e. about the line, “that’s what my dad did for me”).
The other I didn’t notice in this list at all. Good Will Hunting… The scene where he tells Mini Driver that he doesn’t love her. Guess that might only be really effective if you have been really thoroughly shit on yourself.
I’m the wrong person to post here, because I cry at almost every film I see at some point (except straight ahead comedies) - mostly because of something unrelated to plot, like beautiful music or scenery.
However, yesterday I saw You Can Count On Me, and it had me crying almost from start to finish, because it had what I think is the perfect melding of two great cinema cliches: the loving but messed up brother and sister relationship, and the returning to the small town after time away. As well as that, it had a fantastic country music soundtrack, with Steve Earle and Friends, along with Loretta Lynn, which was just perfect.
Tell you what. The Natural gets me every time. The scene at the end. The combination of the triumph, the joy, the music, the celebration. It just lays me out flat.
That, and The Right Stuff, during the Yeager days, shortly after they hear the boom.
It’s been a long, long time, since I really sobbed at a movie. The last one where I did that was Billy Budd, the old Melville adaptation with Terence Stamp, Robert Ryan, and Peter Ustinov. The neding is, well, just crushing.
But as for movies that just bring tears to my eyes, there are plenty. A.I. was the last one. Braveheart, of course. Four Weddings and a Funeral (I’d never heard the Auden poem before). There’ve been lots more that I’ve forgotten.
My first post!!!
I think “My Dog Skip” has been the only movie that has made me cry in the last few years. It made me race home to hug my own dog. Movies nowadays don’t make me cry. Gretzky retiring and Bourque hoisting the cup on the other hand…
Hell, I’ve been known to cry over Little House on the Prarie reruns…
…but, the movies that make me bawl have already been mentioned:
Brian’s Song
Rudy
Field of Dreams
It’s a wonderful life
Just remembered another one that made me tear up really badly: Rob Roy. Oddly enough, it only affected me the second time I saw it; the first time I was hardly affected by it. When Jessica Lange walks out of her hut in front of the soldiers, that fragile dignity pulled so bravely over all that pain, my eyes blurred up something fierce. And just before the end, when Neeson finally makes it back to her, I got a big lump in my throat and some tears.
Rob Roy is the rarest kind of romantic movie: a romance where the lovers are married to each other. it’s wonderful.