Beautiful, beautiful movie, but IMHO, the book is a tiny bit better. It comes as close as any movie to being almost as good as the book, though. The narration is, as you say, powerful.
I saw Up a few months after my husband died. I thought, “hey, everything I run into seems to be about losing your true love, but this is about an old man and a kid. What can go wrong?” Still it didn’t affect me as much as…
Platoon. I saw it the first night it came out in Chapel Hill. A bunch of vets where sitting near me. At first, they annoyed me by whispering about the weapons, uniforms, etc. Then they got quiet, very quiet. Then I heard them crying. Tore. me. up. Made an emotional movie that much more emotional.
I can’t remember what movie it was, but some assclown in the audience thought it would be fun to wave a laser pointer at the screen and I had a near-overwhelming urge to find him and beat him to death.
Big Fish. It’s a great movie, but I’ve watched it twice now and it’s made me bawl like a baby both times. I apparently have unresolved father issues that that movie apparently pokes hard at.
Today, when I tried to watch Butterfly Effect, with Ashton Kutcher. It honestly made me want to open a vein whilst drinking Drano and simultaneously putting a bullet in my brain.
Same here. Albert Finney reminded me so much of my dad, who died when I was 16. I’ve mentioned him before, and he did so many things that would be unbelievable if I hadn’t witnessed, and even been part of them. Magician, puppeteer, Ronald McDonald, policeman, radio personality - all at the same time, with a much longer list of things that he had done before I was aware or alive.
It makes up for every mediocre film Tim Burton has made before or since.
I was going to warn you about this film–but for reasons I won’t go into (blackouts, my journal, etc.), it was just better to “let it happen,” so to speak. Really, this was the best outcome you could hope for..
The actual ending of AI totally devastated me. Sitting there in the theater weeping with my best girlfriend on one side and my hubby on the other, both of their cheeks wet too, all of us sniffling…
Weepers: Born of the Fourth of July; Up; Passion of the Christ; Powder (Sean Patrick Flanery); Brave (hit the “Mom died at 45 and I was too young & stupid to appreciate her” button); Return of the King (everyone bowing to the hobbits near the end); Gladiator (as they’re carrying Russell Crowe from the arena at the end); Fried Green Tomatoes; Color Purple…
If there is even a hint an animal will suffer and/or die, I won’t see the flick, even at home.
I remember seeing What’s Up Doc? as a kid and laughing my butt off.
Come and See, a Soviet movie about the Eastern Front atrocities. Upon typing that, it sounds a little antiseptic. A “holy crap” movie if there ever was one.
It shook me up so bad that I wanted to pop in a John Wayne movie or Patton, to remind me about glorious World War II. It’s like Spielberg watched that movie, said “This gives me ideas for Saving Private Ryan and Schindlers List… but let’s tone it down a bit”
*Saving Private Ryan * has to be the most powerful for me. I had to leave the theatre during the D-Day opening scene. I was in my late teens and it was just a complete sensory overload. The noise and gruesome images invoked pure panic and anxiety in me, which I guess was the intent. I bolted and it was 10 years before I saw the full movie.
I can’t remember the title, but there was one movie with a home invasion and a brutal brutal rape. Bothered the fuck out of me.
Children of Men left me in a funk for days.
Since I’ve become a parent any movie with a kid in peril bothers me at a primal level.
I came in to mention my gut reaction to Se7en. I literally stood up and kept saying, “Waht gave him the right?” until my boyfriend tugged my shirt and said its was time to go. I could not listen to NIN’s Closer for a few years.
This thread helped me remember some of my other visceral responses, weeping through Precious, Brokeback Mountain and Hotel Rwanda, such a range of emotions from Saving Private Ryan.
Two of my favorite movies haven’t been mentioned yet, and both just touched the emotions I needed to feel at that moment. It’s no surprise they are Pixar movies, but both Iron Giant and Meet the Robinsons both left me so happy I cried like a baby. Yes, my kids both look to me at emotional moments of films and tv shows, just checking. I think they have a standard bet as to whether I’ll actually be in tears or not.
I saw The Hindenburg when it came out, so I would have been 17. I was a quaking, sobbing mess. When I caught it on TV many years later, I was astonished at how cheesy it was, given my reaction when I saw it in the theater.
I didn’t see it at the theater, but A Trip to Bountiful just killed me.
I don’t think either of those are Pixar movies. Iron Giant is one of my favorites, though.
It wasn’t in theaters, but I am fully incapable of watching the movie Wit without breaking down into inconsolable sobs. The scene where her old professor comes to visit her, I lose it.
Dear Zachary was a kick in the gut. I had heard that it was sad and the premise is sort of laid out in the beginning and seems sad enough, but then… it gets a whole lot sadder. It didn’t exactly induce uncontrollable hysteria or anything, but I did feel distinctly like someone should have warned me about it and like if a friend were to text me and tell me that they’d just watched it, the appropriate response would be to pick them up and and take them out for ice cream or something to cheer them up.
It is quite a good movie, though, and I think I would have been cool if I had known how it ends before watching it. In case anyone hasn’t seen it and wants to,
The baby dies. She kills the baby. Dead, murdered-ass baby alert, everyone. And it’s a documentary, so the baby is not fictional. Neither are the grieving grandparents. No happy endings here, folks.
This. Cried like a baby. The landing sequence was like a punch to the solar plexus - and the mind. My dad was in Patton’s Third Army so I heard more than my share of war stories about the Ardennes as a little girl. That was, more or less, a known quantity within the ability of a non-combatant to even begin to comprehend the sheer horror of war.
I was NOT prepared for the utter, unrelenting brutality of that opening sequence (Battle Pope is exactly right on that). I will never forget it.
A Time to Kill: blind rage. I nearly had to leave the movie theater. Just the set up for the rape of the girl had me breathing hard and shaking when it became apparent what was going to happen next.
Se7en: The whole movie was disturbing as hell. Probably the worst scene for me was Lust. You know which scene I’m talking about. I’ve watched that movie only once more since first seeing it in the theater. It wasn’t as bad, because I was older, but still not a pleasant movie. Very, very well done, but holy fucking shit would I not want to be around someone who LIKED to watch it. Horror, disgust, anger, sadness.
Saving Private Ryan: We all walked out of the theater and didn’t say anything for at least 15 minutes, which for a group of guys in their early 20s is next to an eternity. We were all thinking too much. A complex blend of sadness, gratitude, evoked love for family. This movie and Schindler’s List were Spielberg’s best. He was prevented from schmaltz by the setting and material, and he did everything else right.
Brokeback Mountain: Made me remember significant losses I’d had in my life, like my mother dying when I was a teen, a couple of heart-wrenching breakups. The short story it was based on, while also quite good, was not as emotionally affecting as the movie. One of the few book-to-movie translations better than the source material.
Up: Pixar bastards made me tear up in the first 15 minutes. Honestly, the actual movie wasn’t anywhere near as good as the “intro”.
As someone else mentioned: Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About his Father is the most gut-wrenching thing I’ve ever seen. It’s on Netflix, which is where I saw it. Had I been in a theater they would have escorted me out. I had to pause the movie for several minutes while I cried buckets upon buckets of uncontrollable tears. It’s not just the subject matter, but also the way it’s narrated and edited. I’ve lost grandparents and beloved pets, and I don’t think I’ve ever cried that much in one sitting in my life.
