Dear Zachary, because it is a documentary. I can suspend disbelief for fiction and feel empathy, and whatnot, but this wasn’t even in the ballpark with tearjerkers (Up, being a chest-tightner for comparison).
I was at once so sad and angry, and I had a real world target on which to direct those feelings.
I cried absolute buckets when I watched Hachiko: A Dog’s Tale. I showed it to my boyfriend recently and he had the same reaction; I’ve never seen him get that emotional over a movie.
Put me down for a third that wept almost uncontrollably at the end of Brokeback Mountain and for some time after credits rolled. And off and on for the next day or so after watching. I, too, am a straight woman.
This movie transcends being a “homosexual love story”. It could have been about any two people that loved each other deeply, but time and circumstances made it not possible to be together.
What a brilliant brilliant movie.
I saw Field of Dreams three times the summer that my father was dying in 1989. I saw it last on a Monday before he died on Wednesday. Daddy and I used to listen to baseball games on the radio. He didn’t have a lot of spare time, but he took time for that on Sunday afternoons. Mel Allen and Dizzy Dean were my favorites.
The town that was used as the setting for the movie had the same name as my hometown and I believe it was dedicated “To Our Fathers.”
I carried a baseball around with me for months afterward. Then I heard a sermon on the themes from the movie by a visiting minister. After church, I just walked up to him and handed him my baseball. He later asked me to autograph it and I wrote, “Go the distance.” and signed my name.
All of it was very, very personal to me.
I laughed so hard at Down Periscope I was literally pounding the floor with my hand. (They hadn’t yet figured out my medication. I haven’t seen it since stabilizing.)
Toy Story 2, The Fox and the Hound, and Up get me crying every time.
Saw Les Miserables in theaters; started crying around the time Fantine was going downhill, and cried at the slightest provocation throughout the rest of the film.
Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List & Shawshank Redemption as others have said - and for the same reasons. They’re just powerful movies that pull powerful reactions from you.
Two that I haven’t seen mentioned that affected me: World’s Fastest Indian. I can’t explain it, but it’s such a bitter-sweet lovely movie, and always drags a tear from me (and I don’t cry much!). Also, The Talented Mr Ripley, I don’t know why, but it creeped me out really badly. Forget horror movies, this one shook me up. There’s a moment where I just get shivery and the character lodges in my brain for weeks afterwards… really gets under my skin, the banality of evil, as opposed to the huge evil of say Schindler’s List for example. I’m probably not making sense, but for some reason this movie really gets to me!
I popped in to post this, thinking I was adding something fresh to the conversation. That damn CGI tiger looked so pitiful holding onto the boat with his claws; I will never watch that scene again.
Also…
The final scene of **The Straight Story **when the brothers are reunited.
The scene in Eight Below when the dogs are left alone, chained to stakes.
Any scene, in fact, where an animal looks the slightest bit inconvenienced. 
mmm
Raging Bull, when De Niro hits his wife…
Million Dollar Baby.
My father died of prostate cancer when I was a freshman in college. I didn’t deal with it very well at all - mostly I pretended that it was having no effect on me at all and I was fine. FINE!!! (I’ve grown up a lot and learned better coping skills in the intervening years.)
Just before and sometime after his death I saw two different movies that utterly destroyed me. Just before, my roommate decided to take me to a movie to distract me. Having no clue what it was about, we walked in to see Michael Keaton in My Life. Dying of cancer and leaving a message to his daughter. Both of us sobbed through the entire film. If either one of us had had any sense, we’d have left as soon as he got the diagnosis, which was nearly right away if I recall correctly. Dad died about six weeks later.
Some time after that, same roommate and I went with a couple of other girls from our floor to see Boys On the Side. There is a spot in that movie near the end where you see a character who is wasting away from a disease, and the camera focuses on the character’s emaciated hands. They reminded me so strongly of how my dad’s hands had looked at the end of his life. I basically completely lost it, but I was embarrassed and was trying to be quiet, so I ended up sounding like a dying donkey.
I cry at movies a lot, but any other reaction I’ve ever had pales in comparison to those two.
Schindler’s List. The end, with the modern footage of people placing stones on his gravesite. It had me and several of my 19-to-21-year-old male friends weeping like widows.
Requiem For A Dream left me numb. I felt like I had gone ten rounds with Tyson.
under the premise that all emotions rise out of three primitiive emotions that being Love, Fear and Rage I think these resonated most deeply.
the Exoricist…my core being shaken and disturbed, the fear I felt was primal. To this day I shudder while watching it.
Saving Private Ryan…the landing scene about halfway through my urge was to flee to the lobby for air. The manner in which we send young people to die is appalling.
When the German soldier previously set free slowly and methodically drives the bayonet into the chest of Private Mellish I felt a piece of me die.
When the now older Private Ryan stands in front of Capt. Miller’s grave and says “Tell me I led a good life” I felt completely overwhelmed.
The Princess Bride…Loved every second of it and made me laugh till I cried.
For a long time I thought they were the same guy too, but somewhere else I found that they weren’t. I’ll look for a cite. And check out the German soldier who shoots Miller. He also looks like the same guy. In fact, a whole bunch of the German soldiers, with those identical buzz cuts, look pretty much like the same guy.
I love that movie, but the scene of Inigo Montoya getting his revenge always tears me up. From what I understand, Mandy Patinkin lost his father to cancer, and I read an interview where he said that he drew upon that when playing the scene - that Count Rugen was cancer. My father died of lung cancer when I was 16, and to this day I feel the same pain and fury Mandy put into “I want my father back, you son of a bitch!”
The IMDB FAQ site says the two were not the same guy – they had different military insignia. It also say the prisoner guy, who is universally referred to as ‘Steamboat Willie’ is the guy who shoots Miller.
Interestingly, several other sites agree the stabber was another guy than Steamboat Willie, and one even names the two actors playing the roles, none of the others say that Steamboat Willie is also the guy who shot Miller.
My goodness! After reading the earlier posts, I feel a bit silly admitting that I cried in Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan. I have always strongly identified with the character of Spock. When he died, I was a sobbing baby. Fortunately, several of my fellow trekkers were there and felt the same emotion. That was the first time I ever cried about a movie scene. I cry much more often now at movies but nobody minds it as I live alone. 
The end of La Bamba, when they told Richie Valens’s mother that he had died, her grief drove me to tears. To this day it puzzles me why random trite things like this provoke a bigger response than something like Schindler’s List.
I guess I throw up my defenses when I see heavy shit coming, but little sentimental family tragedies tend to catch me unprepared.
Interesting..he seemed to recognize Upham on the stairs. The shooter of Miller called Upham by name just prior to Upham dispatching him after shooting Miller.
I am surprised no one has mentioned Babe. That movie is one of the few that makes me cry, every time. It is perfect.
The Neverending Story, and Atreu desperately trying to stop his horse from sinking into the quicksand. (That’s the only part of the movie I’ve really seen, though.)