Which Movies Make Grown Men Cry?

FIVETHIRTYEIGHT ^ | 01/14/2015 | Walt Hickey

[SeekAndFind]

Argument — much like karaoke and online shopping — is at its best when done with friends and a drink. And so, here’s “Bar Fights With Walt,” a column devoted to solving the only questions that truly matter: the dumb arguments about life and pop culture developed and hashed out in barroom rants. We’ll use data and research to take these arguments to their logical statistical conclusion. If you’d like to submit a question or conundrum, corner the author at one of his typical haunts and pick a fight.

After an evening at Grassroots Tavern, some friends and I got into a heated argument about “Love Actually,” which I contend is a good movie (see this Ben Dreyfuss essay for more on that). This eventually became a slightly less heated argument about which movies make people cry. The consensus was that everyone has at least one movie that gets them. The lone dissenter was my friend Alex Kaufman, who claimed he had never cried during a movie. After we listed approximately half the films on IMDb, he eventually recanted, saying that “Saving Private Ryan” had, at points, briefly broken his steely resolve. This leads us to this week’s question:

What movies make people cry the most?

[DickBrannigan]

Some old ones can have this effect:

“The Roaring Twenties” - when Cagney exacts his revenge on Bogart and is subsequently gunned town on the church steps in a final act of self-sacrifice.

“The Little Match Girl” (1937) - A powerful piece of forgotten animation. The end is particularly disturbing.

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1939) - The final scene....

Many others do. Sometimes PTSD gets the better of me....

[laplata]

Yeah, but I’ll admit the scene with the chaplain pulling up in front of the farmhouse still gets to me.

---

Me, too.

[laplata]

For sure.

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

Hah! You beat me to it!

I was going to post “Independence Day,” the scene where Washington is swept away by a wall of fire....LOL!

True story.....when the movie was released in 1996, Bob Dole was campaigning in Los Angeles. He and one of his aides went to see the movie in a theater in Hollywood.

When Dole came out of the theater, a reporter asked him how he liked the movie. As we know, Los Angeles, New York and Washington were reduced to ruins by the attacking aliens shortly after the movie began.

Dole answered, “It was a good movie,” then quietly added as an afterthought, “a lot of people died.”

Dole’s aid leaned over to the reporter and quipped, “A lot of liberals!”

[Gefn]

I cried too at the ending of “Black Adder Goes Forth” but I don’t count in this discussion......

[cld51860]

Empire of the Sun, the “Cadillac of the Skies” scene as the P-51s strafe and bomb the airfield. Love it!

[miss marmelstein]

I only recognize the big one.

[mkleesma]

Field of Dreams:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_wnD6jxREU

Watership Down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMvGUCTpCIY

[Boogieman]

Haha, no, it’s not like that. Just, for some reason, ALW makes him get “emotional”.

[Old Sarge]

It's a Wonderful Life right at the end, always makes a happy lump rise in my throat...

[bigdaddy45]

My hat is off to you sir (or madam). My coworkers just asked why I burst out laughing.

[TheMom]

Rat Race.

I love that movie!

Many years ago, the company I worked for would have Pizza & A Movie Day the last Friday on each month. Rat Race was one of the movies rented ~ we were all saying 'This is the stupidest movie ever', and laughing like crazy.

[ßuddaßudd]

I don't have enough emotional depth to cry, but these moved me is a special way...
Green Berets
We Were Soldiers

[Dubh_Ghlase]

No, but I did grow up in a very rural (and very cold) climate. My father was also a fly fisherman and was a master at it. As in the movie, he also had sons that went in various directions, and never lived long enough to see us all level out and clean up our lives (we all did). Get misty just thinking about it...

[CrazyIvan]

“I bawled on Empire of the Sun when the kid finds his mom and feels her hair. I cry about a lot of movies.”

An incredible movie. The scene where Jim sings the Welsh lullaby while the the Kamikaze are singing their anthem brings me to tears. Compare the lyrics of the two some time.

[Cyman]

Planes, Trains and Automobiles. John Candy at his finest.

[CrazyIvan]

Also Audrey Hepburn's last movie.

[onedoug]

Then you’re missing something.

[miss marmelstein]

I doubt it.

[Labyrinthos]

Blazing Saddles — Laughed so hard that the tears soaked my shirt.