Movie Mettle is a weekly column for moviegoers with weak constitutions. Wish you had the balls to sit through the goriest of horror movies? Want to build up your resistance to weepy rom-coms? Each week we’ll give you a range of five movies that will test your limits, you cinematic thrillseeker, you.
The column formerly (and briefly) known as Pushing the Envelope is now Movie Mettle—has a nicer ring to it, don’t you think? It’s a happy occasion, to be sure, but today we’re going to be tackling the tearjerkers. Full disclaimer: I cry at everything. Animated movies, sci-fi, honest-to-God comedies… If there’s even one moment with emotion and a carefully timed score, I’ve been known to lose it at the movie theater.
I know that my crybaby brethren are out there, who want to watch emotional films but are afraid of embarrassing themselves. Or alternatively, maybe you’re tired of presenting a stiff upper lip to the world and want permission to run the waterworks for a little. It’s healthy! And I have just the five films to help you through this journey to becoming an actual person.
Tissues in hand? Excellent.
Warm-Up: The Notebook
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3G3fILPQAU&version=3&hl=en_US]Yes, this Nicholas Sparks film was the tearjerker to rule them all… eight years ago. At this point, you’ve been told that you have to cry at it so often that your eyes will produce tears out of some weird Pavlovian response. That’s what makes this a great warm-up. You have fair warning that you’re going to be tearing up when Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams make it past their different social stations and her meddling mother to finally be together, only for… You know what? I’m not going to ruin it for you. Because the part that made me gasp was a surprise.
Even if you stay dry-eyed, you’re likely sniffling and clenching your jaw, which is good practice for the next four films.
Novice: Requiem for a Dream
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgo3Hb5vWLE&version=3&hl=en_US]Now, this is something of a wild card, which is why I’m including it early in the list. Reactions to this beautifully-shot cautionary tale about drugs will probably range: Some people will be merely shocked by the depths to which these characters are plunged in their quest for the next high, while others will be moved to tears. Maybe it’s personal experience that moves you, or maybe it’s simply the utter shock of Ellen Burstyn’s slow, insidious transformation from bubbly widowed mother to addict. I can’t say, but get ready to get hit right in the feels when you’re not expecting to.
Intermediate: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T43InzvBm-k&hl=en_US&version=3]An apocalyptic film, you say? Steve Carell playing a sadsack? Keira Knightley being too quirky to handle? Any of these elements should have handicapped this film, but instead they serve to ground what could be an absurd, fantastic, unbelievable tale. Sure, it may seem contrived to have two strangers thrown together a fortnight before the world ends, but it’s how they react to their new surroundings and what they learn from one another that makes this film so effing sad. It doesn’t help that there are multiple points that seem to be the end that was foretold at the beginning, so you find yourself worked up to quiet and then more wracking sobs.
Expert: Click
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=448jZuA5Y1I&hl=en_US&version=3]Pull up a Reddit thread about movies that make you cry, and this Adam Sandler comedy will consistently make the list. I have to this is the one movie on the list I haven’t actually seen, but you can trust Reddit (most of the time). As with other entries on this list, the potential for unabashed sobs comes from a major surprise partway through. I won’t ruin that, but I’ll just say that you’ll be thrown for a loop. Never before has an Adam Sandler movie taught adults so much about their own lives.
BAMF: Up
So few initials to describe such a momentous, emotional film. Ask most people what the saddest movie they’ve seen is, and they respond, “The first 10 minutes of Up.” In a sequence almost entirely devoid of dialogue, they tell a better love story than Twilight. And then there’s the other 86 minutes to contend with!
Photo: Focus Features
Now here’s your challenge: Make me cry with your own recommendations for super-sad movies. It won’t be that difficult.
Even more importantly—have a genre of movie that you wish you could sit through? Leave your request in the comments and I might take it on in a future column!
11 thoughts on “Movie Mettle: 5 Weepy Films To Test Your Limits”
Here’s the thing about Click. It’s an awful movie. Really bad. But it makes me cry every time. Now, normally eliciting that kind of emotion from me would tell me a movie is good, but no, Click is not good. It’s kind of insane how such an overall bad movie manages in occasional moments to touch those deep nerves. Makes me angry. DAMN YOU, SANDLER!
As for a movie that makes me cry? Bridge to Terabithia. I sob all the way through the final 20-ish minutes of that movie.
Wow, even more endorsement for Click! I really should watch it finally… But if I already know the ending from reading the synopsis on Wikipedia, will I still cry?
I sobbed like a baby after reading Bridge to Terabithia in grade school, but I resisted watching the movie because of all the CGI fantasy shit. Still worth it? (Also, funny that Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb are both big stars now.)
Please don’t mistake me for endorsing Click. Still an awful movie.
I highly recommend Bridge to Terabithia. The trailers made it look like a lot of cgi fantasy crap, but really the fantasy elements are small and limited to sequences where the characters are imagining the fantasy world, so they have a tangible context. Really good movie.
Very nice list! But if there is one film that exists that is an automatic cry machine, it has to be the documentary Dear Zachary. It may be manipulative, but I have never sobbed more than when I watched that film. I dare any being that claims to be human to sit through Dear Zachary and not cry, let alone full on sob.
Forrest Gump is another one that always seems to get me crying. It is always at different moments too, never the same thing twice.
Thanks man! Yeah, I think I subconsciously shied away from documentaries; maybe I’ll do a list of just docs. Because Dear Zachary was definitely included in the Reddit lists I used for research.
Oh god, the moment in Forrest Gump when he asks, “Is he… is he smart?” Because he KNOWS he’s kinda slow. I lose it every time.
I will endorse Up and Requiem for a Dream. The Notebook, too easy. I despise Nicholas Sparks. Click, awful film with lots of unnecessary product placement and bullshit sentimentality. I didn’t cry watching that film. I was pretty much offended by what Sandler wanted to do. It felt unnatural.
Here’s a few weepies I will recommend: Talk to Her, The Elephant Man, and Never Let Me Go.
‘Never Let Me Go’ kills me.
Surprised to see Seeking a Friend on here. I wouldn’t call it a “tearjerker”, but I liked that movie quite a lot, and thought the ending was very poignant.
Click, meanwhile, has the weirdest tonal shifts I’ve ever seen in a film. Most of the film is your typical Sandler potty humor (Complete with Sandler farting in David Hasselhoff’s face), only to completely subvert that in the final act. More jarring is that the sentimental moments are VERY effective. One scene with Sandler saying his final words to his father is really heartbreaking. It’s an…odd experience.
Requiem for a Dream and Up are certainly a given for this kind of list, but if you want *real* tear-jerkers, I have two suggestions: La Strada (Italian neo-realist film from Fellini) and Grave of the Fireflies (Japanese anime/anti-war film from Studio Ghibli). Both of those movies never cease to utterly DESTROY me with their final moments.
La Strada features what is, in my opinion, the greatest character arc of all time. I won’t spoil who it is, but this individual undergoes one of the most realistic and heartbreaking transformations I’ve ever seen in a film.
Grave of the Firelies, meanwhile, is just unbearably depressing. The film’s opening alone is sheer perfection, and the way it uses animation to bring beauty to this grim WWII tale is utterly haunting and devastating.
Seek them out. Great list.
Hate to point out the obvious, but what about Marley et Moi? Mark Kermode described it as “sentimentality porn.”
Seriously though, if you want a truly masterful tearjerker, Sansho the Bailiff is essential. Cried like a baby at the end.
Pingback: Movie Mezzanine | Film Coverage | Movie Mettle: 5 Food and Sex Scenes To Test Your Limits
Pingback: Movie Mettle: 5 Cringeworthy Movies To Test Your Limits | Movie Mezzanine | Film Reviews, Essays, and Interviews