In Superman: The Movie, when Superman pulls Lois’s lifeless body from her buried car, holds her close for a moment, then lets loose with an earth-shaking scream. 
Good call. This has me in tears in the theater.
There’s another thread going around with the same sort of thing, but I’ll throw in a bit from Apollo 13 here:
After the explosion on space, when the crew of the ship are having to “slingshot” around the moon. There’s a scene with Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan) sitting on the floor of her bedroom, leaning against her bed, listening to a NASA radio so that she can hear what’s going on on the ship. The crew loses radio contact when they are slingshotting, and all she can do it sit there, crying, powerless, when she hears the radio go to static, and has to face the possibility that she’s just heard her husband for the last time.
Powerful scene.
Mysterious Skin, especially the final scene with the two main characters converging. Wow. That was upsetting. Great movie, but don’t see it alone.
I’ve mentioned this before, but they are worth repeating:
The two movies that will get me completely going are Big Fish and Forrest Gump. Big Fish gets me because I obviously have some unresolved father issues. Forrest Gump - the scene where he is standing by Jenny’s grave talking to her just rips the guts out of me.
I agree 100%. Scenes where people gather togther to help out a buddy get to me. I agree with several here about the end scene of Big Fish, too.
Dominick and Eugene was for years the only movie that had ever made me blow tears. The final scene in Paths of Glory does it to me, too.
Who didn’t? I was in a biker bar in East Lansing, filled with extremely tough guys, all howling at the big screen for the Wings. Throughout the game they were screaming for blood and mayhem. Then at the end, when Yzerman brought Konstantinov onto the ice in his wheelchair and gently put the cup in his lap, every guy in that place was unashamedly sobbing like a baby. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced.
I’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life so many times that it no longer hits me as emotionally as it did the first few times I saw it. Here are two on my list:
- Terms of Endearment
- Bicentennial Man (yeah, and it has three death scenes!)
NO!!! THOSE BASTARDS!!!
That’s why I avoid sad movies like that.
So was the rest of the country, except those who held out until radio contact was restored. I’m not sure if it counts when much of the drama come from people’s real memories.
Franco Zeffirelli’s The Champ.
Every two or three scenes.
Sergeant York
Damn, and ** The Grapes of Wrath**
Good point. But the focus on her, and how, frankly, she was utterly unable to do anything just kills me.
Good point. Except I was born in 1973, three years AFTER the events happened. So I can’t rely on memory for that.
Dude, save yourself some more misery and skip Vanishing Point. They murdered four Challengers making it.
“That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”
Gets me every time.
The Crying Game.
Although I guess not for the reasons the OP had in mind…
Mr. the-curious went dry-eyed to funerals for both his parents but lost it totaly at 1) a TV version of the Velvetine Rabbit, 2) when our aged Labrador died in her sleep and 3) the last scene of ET the Extraterrestrial. sniff.
…laughed out loud.
That’s the one I was going to say. The scene where they’re evacuating and frantically trying to get Dith Prahn a passport did it, too.
Most of the other movies named in this thread I found too corny and manipulative to be moved by. One not mentioned that had me tearing up was Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru. Also, the recent Norwegian film Kitchen Stories. And, for a corny Hollywood movie that actually got to me a bit (although I know many people hated the film): American Beauty, when they’re watching the film of the floating plastic bag. Also, though I guess it’s not technically a movie, the PBS Frontline documentary Ghosts of Rwanda had me bawling for two hours straight.
One that always chokes me up is the scene in* Elephant man* when they are at the good doctors house and John shows the picture of his mother to the Dr.'s wife,
“I must have been a great disappointment to her”
The Dr’s wife offers some words of encouragement and he says in such a hopeful tone. " Do you think if she saw me now, as I am, she might really love me?" or something like that.
Break out the hankies.
When Simba’s father dies in the Lion King.
Years ago there was a TV movie that had the most tear jerker of a climax I’ve ever seen
Buddy Ebsen played the grandfather and his grandson entered a dog sled race with his one little dog and a very light sled, to raise the money for grandpa’s medicine or something. He takes a shortcut accross the river that the other sleds can’t take because they’re too heavy, breaks through the ice but his little dog saves him. Just when the finish line is in sight and they are going to win the race his little dog falls down and DIES FROM EXHAUSTION only a few yards from the finish line. I kid you not. The noble Indian or Eskimo who was the favorite to win and right behind him stops and tells him to not let his dogs life be in vain. So the boy picks up his dead dog and carries him across the finish line tears streaming down his face. It was too corny for words and I was blubbering like a fool.
In the movie sleepless in Seattle there’s a scene where Tom Hanks and this other guy are sitting with Tom’s real life wife. They start talking about some real guy flick and crying to mock her. It’s hilarious.
What movie were they talking about?