Harry and Tonto, the scene at the vet’s.
Cinderella Man (2005)
a lot of Pixar’s movies kind of get me. Up sure, but also Inside Out and especially Coco.
I don’t like the genres that would likely be “tearjerkers”, so I don’t think I’ve ever cried at a movie. I’m not a crier, in general.
It’s a classic boy and his dog story (and is actually autobiographical…a former editor of Harper’s Magazine I think growing up with his dog during the depression era). It ends as all such stories like this have to end but this one is a gut punch.
Good movie though. I recommend it. Just know you will be crying (typing this and remembering the movie brings a tear to my eye).
Fiddler of the Roof, especially the parting scene at the train (“Far from the Home I Love”).
“Papa, God alone knows when we shall see each other again.”
“Then we will leave it in His hands.”
In the theater I held it together until “He who saves one life saves the world entire.”
IIRC Oskar Schindler is the only Nazi buried in Israel (allowed out of deep respect for the man).
When Jennifer Anniston says Goodbye, discount puppy. at the end of Marley and Me, I need a Kleenex.
A lot of dog movies in this thread.
I’ve mentioned this before - for me it’s Shadowlands, which is a somewhat fictionalized account of the relationship between CS Lewis and Joy Gresham. Spoilering, just in case:
Ridiculously, the thing that always gets me is the way that the death of his wife, Joy, tests C S Lewis’ religious faith. I’m about as non-religious as you can get, but it breaks me up every time.
It doesn’t hurt that Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger are brilliant actors and are absolutely at their best.
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Jessie’s song in Toy Story 2 got to me, but that one I could feel the strings being pulled.
The incinerator scene in Toy Story 3, on the other hand, really snuck up on me, to the point that I didn’t know what was happening before the tears started running.
That reminds me to recommend Arthur the King. There’s a fair amount of time at the beginning where you’re not sure what the movie is going to be about or where it’s going, but it soon becomes completely and unabashedly about a dog. I don’t want to give anything away but if some parts of the movie don’t make you misty-eyed, the ending certainly will. For me, as a dog lover, it’s one of the most magnificently beautiful endings I’ve ever seen.
Another Japanese dog movie: Antartica about Japanese scientists who had to abort a mission to Antartica and leave their sled dogs behind. I’m getting verklempt just typing this. Disney re-made it as Eight Below, but it doesn’t have the same punch.
Another movie that always gets me is Joy Luck Club. Two scenes – where the young girl stands up to her “stepfather” after her mother’s suicide, and the very end where June meets her mei mei’s. When one of the sisters’ faces dissolves back into her own from her mother’s face I always cry. Heck, I’m crying now. “I brought you this swan feather…”
I tend to completely avoid movies about animals. Bambi and Dumbo were pretty hard to watch. My mom and I let our guard down and watched My Dog Skip and I don’t think I’ve seen a movie about an animal since.
The big one for Xennials like myself is My Girl, with Macaulay Culkin and Anna Chlumsky. It’s a film for children, starring children and a child dies. They have a funeral for a child. I was the same age as the kids in the movie. It was hard.
When Anna Chlumsky was in Veep I kept wanting someone to ask her about her childhood trauma of losing a friend. I assume this is why her character was so stoney.
The ending of Lion.
When I was a kid, pretty much any monster movie that ended tragically for the monster moved me to tears, but none more so than Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).
A lot of people cry when Bing Bong sacrifices himself in Inside Out, but the moment that gets me is at the end of the movie when Riley finally breaks down in front of her parents.
Other tearjerker moments, without naming the movies:
“Hey, Dad? You wanna have a catch?”
“To my big brother George, the richest man in town.”
I don’t think I’ve had a tear jerked by it, but I get quite emotional by the end of Chariot’s of Fire.
This gets me every time.
So many resonances + emotion.
It’s not a monster movie per se, but when the Iron Giant says “I choose Superman” I lose it.
Ugh, yes! That whole movie is heart wrenching, but when redacted happens and you learn what happened. Ugh, right in the feels.