In Miracle Mile, when Julie asks if people, finally having learned their lesson, will come together and regroup after the missles stop falling, and Harry looks back at her for a moment then shakes his head and says “I think it’s the roaches’ turn now”.
The absolute saddest scene in a movie that I can ever remember seeing, is in the Fisher King, with Robin Williams. Where he’s dancing in the club with his wife and the guy comes in with a shotgun and shoots the wife in the back of the head. Williams sees his wife’s head explode and a piece of her actually flies into his open mouth.
I’d also like to second the nominations for Schindler’s List (the entire movie, not any one scene) and Boromir’s death scene.
My Life, with Michael Keaton, at the end where the son is watching video of his dead father who he never met.
Patch Adams, where the girlfriend goes to that guy’s house to help him, and he kills her.
And worst of all was Steve’s last day on Blue’s Clues when he left to go to college. I cried like a 5 year old little girl. Except that my 5 year old little girl didn’t cry at all! She tried to comfort me and told me that he’s just going to school. 
Then again, I have always been a bit of a cry baby!
Man, I must’ve blocked out that fisher king one, but it reminds me of another:
Memento: the main character’s wife, as seen through the bloody shower curtain.
And this one choked me up too, even though it was clearly manipulative, and I sawe it coming: In Signs, when Mel Gibson talks to his wife for the last time.
I think I’m just a sucker for any scene where someone loses their spouse. Must be a side-effect of getting engaged…
Yeesh. How could I leave out Old Yeller?
Three scenes:
When Yeller gets gored protecting Travis.
When Yeller attacks the rabid wolf to protect the family.
When Travis finally has to shoot Yeller.
Yea, Schindler’s List, start to finish but since we have to pick one line, when the Nazi’s are shooting the one legged worker and the mother keeps telling the little boy “Don’t look. Just don’t look.”
From the OP, B.O.B. (sob)
Wow… a lot of good ones here. The scene in Miracle Mile was one I had thought of. The endings of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and Schindler’s List, oh yes. Also Sophie’s Choice, definitely.
The Professional has several, two of which have already been mentioned. The scene in which Gary Oldman’s thugs are shooting up the apartment is another, as you see the little boy running down the hall in slow motion with bullets punching holes in the walls around him and shrapnel flying. Later, after the firestorm is over, one of the thugs says something like “Geez, you got the kid!” The fact that you never see it happen makes it even worse, somehow. It’s not weepy-sad… more like really-disturbing-sad.
I may get laughed at for this one, but the whole “Nearer My God To Thee” sequence in Titanic gets me choked up. The string quartet playing, the boat sinking, and we see a mother reading her children to sleep in their cabin, an old couple holding each other in their bed, the designer of the ship adjusting a clock… the rest of the movie is pretty flat, but that bit gets me.
The scene in Unbreakable when David Dunn’s wife knocks on his door to ask him if he’s been with anyone else. The emotional distance between the two is just heartbreaking (which makes the end so much better).
And the end of La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful) also gets me all misty every time. It’s a strange mixture of happy-sad, but so effective.
I’m pretty much a sucker for anyone losing their true love, or their children. Especially children.
Dude, congrats!
Am I the only one who got all teary during certain parts of Lilo & Stitch? Especially the “I’m lost” scene?
Yes? Oh. Okay.
:: slinks away ::
I agree with Philadelphia- not a dry eye in the theater. It’s the Neil Young song that gets you- so meloncholy:
"City of brotherly love
Place I call home
Don’t turn your back on me
I don’t want to be alone
Love lasts forever.
Someone is talking to me,
Calling my name
Tell me I’m not to blame
I won’t be ashamed of love.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/philadelphia.html
Also, I agree with the Toy Story “When She Loved Me” song. My GOD. I bawled my eyes out and STILL choke up. Sara M has such a beautiful voice and sings it with such emotion. And you think the girl has found her long lost toy and is going to love her and play with her again, and instead she throws her away to goodwill. Ack.
I’m also going to put in a vote for Slingblade, when Billy Bob is talking about his dead baby brother and how the parents buried him in the yard. I about choked on my tears in that one.
Born on the Fourth of July- the whole damned movie, but mainly when the riot ensues and he’s dumped out of his wheelchair and is just helpless on the ground. Double ack.
Oh yes… this one too. It’s the finest moment in movie that’s pretty darn good in general. Not a dry eye in our family when we see it. I think it’s the song that does it. Love that Sarah…
From The World According to Garp, when Garp tries to tell his mother as she is leaving on the helicopter, “I never needed a father.”
When Watanabe dies on the swingset in “Ikiru.”
The “lets go for a drive in the woods” scene in “A. I.”
Those ones sure goes after your tear ducts with plyers.
And, for me, the scene in “The Horse Soldiers” when they march the little kids into battle while playing “The Bonney Palmetto Flag,”
or the episode of Cheers where Coach’s daughter can’t convince him that she’s ugly.
In Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly, when Jeff Goldblum tells Geena Davis “I’m saying … I’ll hurt you if you stay.”
In Miller’s Crossing:
Leo: “And … dammit, Tom, I forgive you.”
Tom: “I didn’t ask for that and I don’t want it. Goodbye Leo.”
Thelma and Louise[With a cliff in front of them and cops behind them.]
Thelma: OK, then listen, let’s not get caught.
Louise: What’re you talking about?
Thelma: Let’s keep going.
Louise: What do you mean?
Thelma: Go.
Louise: You sure?
Thelma: Yeah, yeah. Let’s.
Blade Runner
Roy Batty: All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Magnolia
Quiz Kid Donnie Smith: I really do have love to give; I just don’t know where to put it.
Boogie Nights
Rollergirl: Amber, are you my mom? I’m gonna ask you, okay? And you say yes, okay? Amber, are you my mom?
Amber Waves: Yes, sweetie.
I forgot The Verdict, when Concannon is slowly putting a check in an envelope and talking to somebody and when the person is revealed you see that it’s Laura, crying because she’s betrayed Frank Galvin. Just awfully sad.
When the little girl gives the child William Wallace the flower at his father’s funeral at the beginning of **Braveheart[/b. Gets me every time.
Aaaah, dammit. Braveheart, I mean.
Scupper, I was about to say when the Rutger Hauer replicant dies in Blade Runner and has the “I’ve seen things that no one else in history has seen and now it will all be gone” soliloquy. Wish I knew the exact words.
I think I cried as well at that scene in My Girl. And that scene in Crouching Tiger. And almost at that scene in AI (movie got worse from there on, though).
Boy, now I’m thinking of Watership Down. . .
Or most of Creator (the Pete O’Toole thing) which was supposed to be mostly funny
Or as an impressionable child when Han Solo gets frozen. I was crushed.
For me: the moment in LOTR when you see Merry and Pippin starting to get surrounded by the Uruk Hai and you see Boromir appear in slow motion. I tear up literally any time and any place I see that scene. Walking past Suncoast in the mall…at a party. You name it. My heart starts racing when Lurtz levels his arrow at the kneeling Boromir and Aragorn then body checks him. I almost cheer every time.
As a kid the last scene in Son of Godzilla (I kid you not) used to make me cry. The island Godzilla and his son are on is being covered in snow and frozen. Godzilla is walking away (apparently to get off the island before he freezes) His son is following behind but can’t keep up. He calls after Big G, but Godzilla doesn’t turn around. Finally Minya (Godzilla Jr.) collapses in the snow. Godzilla returns and puts his arms around his son and the camera trucks out as you see them covered in snow and ice.
Please
All these scenes are nothing compared to:
[Mother] Quick to the thicket! Run! Faster, faster! Don’t look back!
(BLAM!)
[Bambi](after reaching their den) We made it mother! Mother?
(Bambi wanders through the snow in the dark forrest) Mother! Mother!
Mother!
[Great Stag of the Forrest] Your mother can’t be with you any more.
Then try the end of Ol’ Yeller.
The end of The Iron Giant: “SUUUUUUUPPEERRR MMAAANNN!!”
Well, it SHOULD have been the end. Then they attached the bogus ending that the movie actually has.