What's the most powerful emotional reaction you've had at the movies?

Cafe Society
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Sad movies about animals always get to me. One particular culprit was Black Beauty, especially the part where Black Beauty sees Ginger’s body being carted down the streets.

Against my better judgment, I rented Two Brothers, which is about two tiger cubs being separated and raised in different circumstances. They might as well have named it People Do Terrible Things to Those Cute Little Tigers.

The Ring. Was in college at the time and very glad I didn’t have a TV for Samara to crawl through.

The first segment of The Stand. The opening sequence, which shows the military facility littered with dead bodies got my skin crawling. Then when the doctor at the lab that’s holding Stu Redmond opens the door to Stu’s cell without taking any of the usual quarantine precautions; by that time he and the rest of the staff had all succumbed to the super flu.

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[QUOTE=The Green Mile]
We each owe a death - there are no exceptions - but, oh God, sometimes the Green Mile seems so long.
[/QUOTE]

And, the end of Agora.

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Here are some that haven’t been mentioned yet…

I was in HS when for some reason they showed* Bryan’s Song* in class one day. I remember we were all boo-hooing out loud. Kleenex boxes being passed around. Snorts and sniffles everywhere. You could tell which kids had seen it yet by how red and puffy they looked.

8 Seconds is another good one I can’t get through without sobbing.

Selena. True story tearjerkers always get me.

Beaches. Ug! Even the theme song makes me tear up. Truly one of the saddest movies I’ve seen.

The funeral scene in Steel Magnolias. I’m crying so hard and then burst out laughing in the next moment. Brilliant!

Most creeped I’ve been was actually *The Omen *(the original, I think they remade it). Seen tons of scary movies but I can’t watch that one again.

The Changeling with George C. Scott. When that ball comes bouncing down the stairs… OMG. Gives me chills just typing it.

*Signs *was the first time I ever imagined what it would be like to be invaded. Scene of things running around on the roof was so realistic. (I’m not wearing tin foil hats though.) :smiley:

Most suspenseful was by far High Tension. Gave me gray hair and high blood pressure! Feels just like its title for 90 percent of the movie! Also very gory.

Most shocked I’ve been is the car accident in Erin Brockovich. Never saw that coming! Saw it in a packed theater opening night and everyone was cheering and clapping in some scenes. Loved that! Wish there were more real life hero types of movies like that.

I saw Pet Semetary in the theater. During the scene where the boy is hit by the truck and the little sneaker is bouncing down the highway, the lady sitting a couple rows in front of us burst out crying and her husband had to carry her out. I felt bad for them. Blindsided by a random movie scene that obviously hit too close to home.

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There are so many…the most disturbing film I have ever seen is most definitely I Spit On Your Grave(2010). This is a film set around a woman getting raped and her torturous revenge on those who raped her. It is a very twisted and deranged film but the acting is well done and the scenes have you respect the men and woman acting out the scenes. It is a horror film with a sort of bland plot, but if you think you can watch any film and are in to disturbing gut wrenching films…watch I spit on your grave.

The most powerful movie I have seen I actually just watched a few days ago called Requiem for a Dream. This film is very moving and shows you that even the most unlikely people can turn into junkies, and that sometimes people will go way to far in order to pursue their dreams. It also shows that small addictions can lead to bigger ones. Ellen Burnstyn gives an absolute outstanding performance as a lonely widow who soon becomes a Speed addict and goes mentally insane from her whacky appearance- orange and gray messed up hair and sloppy make up combined with teeth grinding and clammy look…along with her getting force fed with tubes at a mental hospital and going through brutal electroshock therapy. this is a film that will have even the most heroin addicted junkies drop their needles and beg god for forgiveness. Such a powerful moving and emotional film…EVERYONE needs to witness Requiem For a Dream.

For those who saw Requiem and would like to see another similar film I suggest watching Spun with Mickey Rourke and Brittany Murphy…another very similar film about the troubles of heroin addiction very similar.

American History X is another super moving film…from the beginning with the curb stomp scene to the end where the older brother finally gets his stuff together only to see his little brother fall to his demise.

As for tear jerkers… my number 1 is Pursuit of Happyness starring Will Smith. The scene at the end where Will Smith gets the long awaited job as a stockbroker and you see his character try to hold back tears of joy and utter relief while still infront of his bosses gets me everytime, than he walks out into the large crows of people and just lets out tears and smiles and claps his hands it just makes you think of the people who may have made sacrifices in your life. There were a lot of other super powerful scenes in this movie as well…one of Will Smiths finest movies.

Another Will Smith tear jerker is in Iam Legend where his dog Samantha dies…the dog saves his life by fending off zombie dogs and then turns into one herself, Smith has to kill the only other living companion and family on the earth that he knows, so sad…also packed with many other sad parts.

The end of Toy Story 3 should hit just about any person really, it gives everyone a sort of midlife crisis where you think to yourself man where did my childhood go? Everyone has that moment in life right around age 18 (Andys age) where you have to give all the childhood stiff up and it really hits pretty hard.

Irongiant was an excellent cartoon with an ending that should make everyone tear up alot. "You are who you choose to be…“SUPERMAN!!!” than the rocket blows up…gets me everytime including now.

And of course all of the Rocky films the first one is my favorite film of all time…but the real emotional scene comes from Rocky 5 which was ironically the worst of the 6 films. When Rocky loses all of his wealth and he goes back to Mickeys gym…the flashback monologue that Burgess Merideth gave was so moving and sad. If you have ever had someone close pass away in yourlife when Mickey says “If you ever get hurt and feel like your going down, this little angel is going to whisper… GET UP YOU SON OF A BITCH…cause Mickey loves you!” probably one of the most I have ever cried at a film. Although it seems a bit corny i felt this scene was very well done and really sends a life message to those who lost a loved one.

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I only saw the last half–at most–of Bang the Drum Slowly when it was on tv with obnoxious commercial breaks and I still wept at the ending.

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(Yeah, yeah, it’s a bit of a zombie thread)

I usually get tight-chested with some tears, but I’ve never broken down while watching a movie but the most powerfully moving ones for me are my favorites as well:

The Joy Luck Club
Schindler’s List
Saving Private Ryan
The Stoning of Soraya M. (in Farsi)
Dear Zachary

& the growing old scene from Up

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I started crying at the Outsiders when I was 16 because I knew who died… but I can cry at the coffee commercials on tv.
The one that took me by surprise was “Bridge to Teribithia” I didnt know the story or anything about it, thought it would be a nice family outing, my husband and I were bawling our eyes out by the end. Our kids thought we were crazy.

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War Horse. A friend thought he was giving me a gift by taking me to see it on my birthday. I started crying about a quarter of the way into it (when the army took the horse away from the young man), cried nonstop throughout (the horse running through the barbed wire in No Man’s Land almost killed me), cried all the way home and cried myself to sleep. When I think of all the magnificent horses that have been slaughtered in war, I tear up all over again. :(:(:frowning:

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jayrey’s post reminds me that I cried all the way through Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. From beginning to end.

Signs gave me nightmares for months, that was a strong reaction to a movie.

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I’m surprised I didn’t post about this the first time this thread came out - or maybe I did and then “tore it up” without posting, because it probably won’t interest very many other people. But oh well, here goes.

There is an obscure British film from 1969 called Run Wild Run Free. It stars Mark Lester and John Mills, and it is about a young boy growing up in the country with stiff and distant parents, who finds other things (a hawk, a horse, and a mentor) to fill his emotional needs. The killer scene for me is at the end, when at a moment of emotional crisis his parents seem to finally begin to understand what these things mean to their son and it seems possible that they will be a family after all.

This gets to me even just remembering that scene nearly 40 years after the last time I saw it, because I was a young man who had grown up with stiff and distant parents, and I never did find those other things (especially the mentor) to help me come out of myself and embrace the world. My parents remained stiff and distant until their deaths, and I had to do the best I could on my own - with decidedly mixed results. So a lot of regret for what could have been, under other circumstances.
Roddy

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I’ve posted once before in this thread, about a documentary series and how someone else reacted to it.

But even though I’ve been powerfully moved by many of the films mentioned here I’ve cried at only two films ever, and one was Barry Lyndon, at the exact point PSXer mentions above. The poor kid is dying, and asks his parents to stop arguing with each other. The scene switches to his funeral procession, as his small coffin is borne along on the little goat cart he used to love to drive. The music swells up and…I surprised myself by turning my head to my husband’s shoulder and suddenly bawling my eyes out.

I also cried at E.T. Not when he dies, but in the scene where the kids show him to their mother. He’s cold, sick, dying, and a LONG way from home, and the mom forces all the kids out of the bathroom, so he’s being abandoned too. I sobbed like a baby.

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There are three that stand out for me. In reverse order of impact:

First, seeing Night and Fog in high school. I think that was the first time I’d seen the films of the liberation of the concentration camps and the horrors that were found. I was physically ill and cried–and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one.

Second was Fahrenheit 9/11, the very opening. The screen is black and we hear the sounds of airplanes hitting the buildings, then the alarms. The picture comes on and we see the reactions of people, live, to the devastation. And then the unbelievably beautiful Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten by Arvo Pärt starts playing. Here it is. The music starts at about 1:20 or so. It took me right back to that day, and the smell of burning that didn’t stop for days even more than two miles away where I live. Just horrific.

And finally Empire of the Sun. This is the one that is most personal for me. I saw it not long after it premiered, December 1987, which would be about a year after my mom died. We’ve watched a very young Christian Bale (remarkable actor even then) separated from his parents, suffer in an internment camp, struggle on his own, and grow up way too early. At the end of the film,

When he’s finally released and is at the train station where his parents are waiting and looking for him, Jim (Bale) is so numb and devastated that at first he doesn’t recognize his parents. And then they see each other and they’re reunited, and it takes a while for Jim to warm up to them, to open up again. And of course John Williams’s score was gorgeous. Well, coming so soon after my mom’s death (I was 21 at this point, almost 20 when she died), the idea of reuniting with one’s parents whom you’ve assumed you were never going to see again… I was devastated.

I just broke down in the movie theater and in almost uncontrollable tears. Long after the lights came up, I was still bent over and mourning my mom all over again. Luckily my friend with me was understanding and knew why I was so upset. But that’s definitely an experience I’ll never forget.

I’d say something very similar happened with The Joy Luck Club, and for similar reasons.

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Sorry to double-post, but I just spotted this:

Oh Christ yes. It was masterfully done. I was just–flabbergasted with what I’d just seen. And it was helped along by Spacey’s acting, because he was brilliant in that film. You could see the shock and then acceptance and the defiance of that one line he gets out. (I won’t spoil it, although I suppose just knowing this happens is a pretty big spoiler.) And finally you can see the moment Spacey dies. I don’t know how he did it, but his eyes just go… dead. Brilliant portrayal. You might almost say, one minute he’s there, then poof! he’s gone.

I should add that the only movie that ever shocked me into screaming aloud was… um… Foul Play. Yes, a goofy Goldie Hawn/Chevy Chase movie. At one point Hawn’s character, who has a MacGuffin she doesn’t realize that some baddies (including an Albino hitman) want, is working late in the library (yes, Goldie Hawn is playing a librarian, deal with it). She’s putting books away, and then she shoves a bunch of books on a shelf over to make more room, and then as she does, BLAM! The Albino’s face is revealed.

I screamed like the little girl I was. (Well, I wasn’t that little, probably 13 or so?) That shot scared the crap out of me! Totally wasn’t expecting to be that scared in such a light-hearted movie.

OMG, I forgot another film that affected me, probably because I have no idea what the film was. I once posted about it here asking if anyone else remembered this. I think it was either a TV Movie of the Week, or it might have been a TV mystery drama. I was very very young, probably 8, and for some reason I was watching this stupid film about a man with a pacemaker, which for some ungodly reason is able to be controlled by a machine remotely in his house. We hear his heartrate steadily as he’s puttering around his room getting ready to go to sleep. And then someone–I think it’s either his wife or someone else unknown–suddenly turns up the dial on this remote pacemaker machine. Now his heartbeat goes faster and faster, louder and louder. He clutches at his chest because he’s obviously in agony, and all the while that FUCKING HEARTBEAT is audible and loud and fast until finally he has a coronary and dies.

I. Was. In. Hysterics. Literal hysterics. I was so terrified that I screamed and cried and my older sister, who was babysitting me, had to call up my parents from whatever party they were at to get them to come home, because I was utterly unconsoleable.

To this day I have a fear of hearing heartbeats. Whenever I hug someone I cannot bear to hear their heart. Or if I’m lying down and my ear presses against the pillow and I can hear my pulse? I freak out and have to turn around. Which, in one of life’s sad ironies, means that I’m up shit’s creek without a paddle, because I have tinnitus and it’s the kind where I can constantly hear my heart pulsing. It’s like a Twilight Zone ending, a wry twist, that my worst fear is now something I have to live with for the rest of my life.

Anyway I’ve been trying to figure out what this movie was ever since this happened, which is now about 38 years ago. Because it created a phobia that has been with me for my entire life.

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Eraserhead. I was so nauseated by the first scene of the mutant baby that I had to leave the theater. I’ve never watched it again. An uncontrollable response.

Cinema Paradiso. By the time this film came out, I’d been handling film for quite a while. I knew what a film can looked like and knew that very short trims that were a product of editing wound up in said cans sometimes. I started crying a full minute before anyone else in the audience did at the end of the film. I knew what that can must be holding and the tears came. It was quite weird to beat a full house on the Upper East Side in a movie theater to the emotional punch.

American Beauty. Really? At the end. REALLY ??!! :eek:

Gigot. Jackie Gleason as a mute indigent man. Made me cry at the end- I was about 8 when I saw it on television. Heartbreaking. At least for an 8 year old. :smiley:

Sophie’s Choice. I mean, right?

The Notebook. Usually regarded as real pap, the performance that Gena Rowlands gave reduces me to tears whenever I see the film. James Garner was pretty damned remarkable as well.

Jaws. As mentioned above. I’m a pretty big fan of this film. I’ve owned the soundtrack since it came out- and used to play it, both sides, straight through. I don’t think John Williams is the living end of composers and in fact, I learned in my second year of films school how completely he lifted the main theme of Jaws from the infamous frozen lake battle scene in Alexander Nevsky ( Composed by Prokofiev, the 11th movement- Battle On The Ice- was stolen by Williams. Bigtime ). But man do I love this film. I’ve two books and quite a few articles on the making of it. It doesn’t matter how much I learn about its production. The opening sequence is in SO many ways the savage attack equivalent of a seduction. Cut Ravel’s Bolero to fit the timing of the opening sequence and it works. The meeting, the flirt, the tease, the seduction, the all-encompassing passion, the violence, the climax, the denouement. Brilliant. Viscerally frightening. I have watched that film at least a dozen times. I always find myself holding my breath.

An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge. It’s on YouTube. A short film. I saw it when I was a kid at a revival house in Germantown, Philly, PA called The Bandbox. ( long gone and much mourned ). I’ve never forgotten so much of it, especially the last 20 seconds.

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I could not believe how “The Prisoners” ended.

It was an excellent movie. The music at the end was just masterful.

But there was one detail about the way it ended was just plain “bizarre”. For anyone who has seen it, you will probably know the detail to which I am referring. I had a strong emotional response to the ending although I just don’t know how to name the emotion. I was shocked and surprised and I just couldn’t believe it ended that way. I almost giggled but this is not a movie that deserved a giggle at the end. I didn’t know what to say to my friend who attended the movie with me.

I wouldn’t say this was the most powerful reaction I have ever had to a movie. But it sure was one of the strongest.

It is very difficult to single out one film when asked a question that begins, “What is the one film that …”. I wish when people asked this kind of question, they would ask people to name a few films and not just pick one. But, to each their own.

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Seeing invisible children

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Just my opinion, he is your son and you would know best. But I would say that age 14 would just about be the perfect age for anyone to see it for the first time.

Of course, it will depend on just how grown up you feel he is.

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Imagine: John Lennon. It had me so engrossed in Lennon’s life and art that I wasn’t thinking ahead to the events of December 8, 1980. When the film got to that point, it hit me like a sledgehammer. As it had in real life, Lennon’s death just seemed to come out of nowhere.

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Apparently it is a bog standard acting exercise that involves relaxing the muscles around the eye, letting them go slack. That said I can’t remember ever seeing it done better. Maybe it was partly the camera work/framing ( to give credit where credit may be due ), but nonetheless that is undoubtedly the strongest few seconds in a pretty strong film across the board.

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I would have to agree that it was the hormones because it sure wasn’t owing to his talent or to the quality of anything else involved in the making of that movie.

I sincerely hope that I’m not raining on your parade when I say that film was just a terrible piece of crap and his performance did not help in any way. The original film by Jerry Lewis was not great. But it wasn’t all that bad. Unfortunately, the remake with all those fat suits just had me scratching my head in wonderment. Who would have put up all that money just to see it wasted like that? It was one of the worst endeavors ever. Absolute keerap! I’m so sorry but I just can’t find anything good to say about it.

I think maybe people were so mean to him because he was so untalented and picked such an easy target for a remake.

My emotional reaction to that movie involved spitting in the aisle and then a mental reaction to never again waste any money seeing anything made by Eddie Murphy.