I love films that evoke emotion, especially the ones that make me cry. I'm up late this evening watching Dancer in the Dark, a film that I love that is heart wrenching.

I'm curious to know what your favourite tear jerkers are.

Here's the short list for me:

1. Dancer in the Dark
2. Any film with Lillian Gish, particularly La Boheme, The Wind, Orphans of the Storm, and Broken Blossoms
3. Earth by Deepa Metha
4. Quills
5. Nearly every Gong Li film that I've ever seen
6. Bloody Sunday

The English Patient - a real weepy -

Terms of Endearment, head and shoulders above the rest of the pack in my book.

I would tend overall to go with the "classic" weepies like Stella Dallas, A Star Is Born (the Janey Gaynor/Frederic March one), Mildred Pierce, Casablanca, An Affair to Remember, To Each His Own, and Letter from an Unknown Woman. It's probably just my perception, but more modern tear-jerkers just strike me as being too consciously manipulative (even, as with Terms of Endearment, for example, or the shameless Philadelphia, when they work). Oddly, perhaps, my most memorable weepy experience of late has been Armageddon.

My recent tear jerker is the movie Rudy......don't know what it is about me and those football movies.

There are three movies that come to mind, they all have a scene or two that get me all weepy.

Awakenings
Braveheart
Immortal Beloved

-Kisov

I would have to say "easy rider", the end is so messed up,it almost makes me cry everytime(if you haven't seen it, you must. I won't give away what is so messed up, cause the movie ends right there)

and "where the red fern grows" I cried when they kids dogs died, it was sooooo sad (I was about 10 at the time too)

I tend not to watch tear jerkers. I steer clear of love stories, so that eliminates most the tear-triggers.

War stories tend to sadden me. I'll admit Blackhawk Down is the most recent movie that had me weepy

(Braveheart, Kisov? Did I miss the sad part? )

Ole' Yeller- Ya'll know which part!

Homeward Bound-The Incredible Journey-The last part where the old dog comes lumbering over the hill

Where the Red Fern Grows-When Little Ann is found next to Ole' Dan's grave

Sorry gals, I yawned during "Bridges of Madison County" and the like.....

I cried at Braveheart several times.
I also loved Immortal Beloved and it's tear jerk factor.

I forgot to add the Theory of Flight to my list and a couple of Kenneth Brannaugh's Shakespearean endeavors...Othello and Hamlet.

There are lots of films listed that I haven't yet seen, and I'm going to have to go and buy some chocolate ice-cream and kleenex and spend a long weekend at home with my VCR.

Oh, come on Jaime! Tell me that you didn't get a little misty eyed at the end when Wallace is being tortured and he looks in the crowd and sees his wife . . . .I have to stop typing, I'm getting a little vahklempt (sp), talk amongst yourselves, I'll pick a topic. . . .Jaime's issues with sad movies. . . discuss.

-Kisov

or the scene where they murder Wallace's wife...or the one where the soldiers take the man's wife on their wedding night... Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but those scenes got to me. I will say, though, that Mel Gibson flicks are starting to lose their weepy effect for me, because he seems to play the same role in every film.

Nope, no tears for Wallace. I cringed when I realized that they were quartering him but I didn't cry. I tend to think that women ruin good war movies. <ducks>

Jaime, your getting off topic. . .if you want to discuss whether women ruin good war movies. . .start your own thread.

I think Wallace's wife, totally makes that movie. And cyan agrees with me, so that is all the proof I need!

-Kisov

Forgot one, the first and last scenes in Saving Private Ryan (in the cemetary), hits me kind of hard, I guess I can see myself in his shoes.

I'm with you on that one, DTOM. (Good war movie with no love story to ruin it, too!).

That movie also got me weepy at a weird time. The scene is the one where all the troops are sitting around in a the rubble of some bombed out French town and they are having the young guy translate the words of the French singer crooning over the loudspeaker. For some reason the lonliness of that scene makes me so sad.

I also forgot to add that Schindler's List had me blubbering like a baby afterwards (we were all a mess after that one, weren't we Kisov?)

Jaime, I cryed at the French singer scene, too in Saving Private Ryan!
The little girl in the pink dress always gets me in Schindler's List. . .

-Kisov

As I am both an atheist and a Buddhist, it may seem strange, but I get misty-eyed at the end of Jesus Christ, Superstar... both when Judas hangs himself and then when Jesus gets crucified.

A prayer for Owen Meany

And what about T2, when Ahnold sinks into the molten metal? OMG... ok, just kidding on that last one.

Ok, OK 'fess up time.

There is one love movie that gets me teary-eyed. Disney's Beauty and the Beast. When Belle confesses her love for the beast after he's been killed.....

For this less manipulative, higher quality of film, I would pick Life is Beautiful. Only Begnini (sp?) so effective at chasing away the tears it is almost difficult to appreciate the tragedy in the film.
For the overt sports tear jerker, Biran's Song for the guys and Ice Castles for the gals. (Feel free to cross my gender lines as you see fit)

Ah, Life is Beautiful! That was a fantastic film, and yes, it definitely was a tear jerker.

As far as war flicks go that don't involve love stories, I really liked Full Metal Jacket. It made me cry, but it was more in a disturbed, sick kind of a way, which is definitely the desired effect.

Yeek - if we're going to be that confessional, I always get misty when Esmerelda sings "God Bless the Outcasts" in Disney's travesty of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

I dunno, something about Demi Moore singing that song that just don't seem right......

Speaking of Disney movies. Who can keep a dry eye when they chain up Dumbo's mother? (GAWD! I'm getting depressed, I need Stooges!)

I agree with the first point of movies that evoke emotion but nothing makes me cry. But since when would you consider Quills a seemingly dark movie a tear jerker...sorry that this isn't a very constructive post...

For me, Quills was a tear-jerker, because I could identifiy with the characters and their own sense of tragedy. I don't doubt that there were a lot of people who found the film to be dark and immoral, but I didn't. I thought that it was a rather liberal take on the life of the marquis de sade, and it certainly shouldn't be used as a historical reference, but it was a beautiful love story, and I'm such a geek for unconventional love stories.

Don't get me wrong Cyan, Quills is a brilliant movie, I love it have seen it several times I was just using my messed up view of film, since I saw a thread about them...

The ending of John Wayne's Green Berets has made me cry.

The end where this Green Beret befriends a little vietnamese boy & adopts him & sends him to an aircraft carrier & will meet him on that carrier after his unit goes on this mission to take out i think it is a North Vietnamese General & on their way back from the mission, the guy gets scewered by a Charlie trap

'The Mighty'