I just watched “9” and it was very close. One thing I noted was that I haven’t had a strong emotional (vs intellectual) response in a very long time.
So which movies/stories put you over the edge?
Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed. The final scene was one of the few times I cried tears of joy.
I usually don’t go for sentimentality – usually it doesn’t get past my cynicism and eye-rolling. But two movies have, enough to make me teary. Up is one (especially the opening part), and Edward Scissorhands is the other.
On the other end of the scale, not much short of Hotel Rwanda will get me choked up.
The closing scene in the courtroom of ‘To kill a Mockingbird’ always gets me.
As Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) dejectedly walks out, the Reverend Sykes says to Finch’s daughter “Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passing.”
And all the black population in the segregated balcony silently rise to honour Finch (who doesn’t notice them).
This has so many overtones of honour, heroism, racism, justice and fatherhood.
Movies:
Peter Jackson’s King Kong
Saving Private Ryan
Alone Without Her
Charlotte’s Web
Yep, those’ll do it.
Charlotte’s Web and the Shawshank Redemption
I can wring out a few tears for the Trumpet of the Swan, too.
Good Bye Mr Chips, the original version with Robert Donat.
The end of the “Diary of Adam and Eve” segment of The Adventures of Mark Twain usually chokes me up. And it’s a story told in plasticene!
Movies: Up, which did it twice, once at the beginning that was unexpected, and once again at the end that I saw coming a mile away, but I still couldn’t help it.
and
Marley and Me, which again I KNEW it was coming.
Books: only one, Where the Red Fern Grows. Every copy of that damned book should be shrink-wrapped with a box of Kleenex.
I’ll be the one to mention Grave of the Fireflies in this thread (someone always does!). Usually when I say a movie made me “cry”, I mean I teared up a bit, maybe one escaped the eye or something like that. This movie literally had me sobbing. It made me far more emotional than any other movie I’ve seen.
Mr. Holland’s Opus.
Stop laughing at me.
“Wherever she was, there was Eden” I think that’s close, isn’t it? Twain could combine humor and poignancy like nobody else.
Oh, and I cried at ET(the bathroom scene) and Barry Lyndon(the funeral scene of the little boy)
Fictional books and movies don’t make me cry. Period. It always bugs me when people say stuff like “if you didn’t cry when you saw _________, you have no soul!” Bah. I have a soul and am actually fairly sentimental. Fiction doesn’t engage me to that extent, though, apparently. Even historical fiction doesn’t upset me much - for instance, Schindler’s List didn’t make me cry.
Documentaries and memoirs of really horrible experiences often upset me, so if you want to include those, the memoir First They Killed My Father, which is about surviving the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, made me cry a LOT, as did the documentary Into the Arms of Strangers, which is about the Kindertransport. That had me absolutely bawling.
Reading the newspaper or watching the news often upsets me to the point of tears, too.
The Time Traveller’s Wife (the book) did it for me.
J.
It’s embarrassingly easy for things to get me to cry. I once cried at Finding Nemo.
Recently, The Road made me cry. That’s not embarrassing at all.
I teared up several times during Ladyhawke.
the fountain
I recently read “A Fine Balance,” which didn’t make me cry exactly, but it left me stunned for an entire afternoon.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That bit toward the end.
Racked with heaving sobs, I was. Scared the dog to death.
This is the one I came in to post. I saw this in the theater, as part of a Studio Ghibli film fest. Many, many people in the audience (Seattle hipsters, at that!) were openly sobbing at the end of this film. I will not see it again. I am not sure I’m glad I saw it the first time.