In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Cry, Cry Baby

Jill

What movie scene makes you cry? The latest meme via Bitch PhD (who has a great one), Shakespeare’s Sister (Ah! I love that movie!), Lawyers, Guns and Money (Ah! Babe! My sister didn’t eat pork for years after that movie!) and Pandagon (sorry, missed that entire show. But is sounds sad!).

Mine (nearly identical to the comment I left at Bitch):

The hardest I ever cried at a movie was when my dad rented Old Yeller for my sister and I when I was five years old. We had a goldren retriever at the time, and I was under the impression that this was a happy movie about a dog and those who loved him. When Old Yeller had to be shot and then didn’t come back alive, and the credits started rolling, I turned to my dad, thoroughly betrayed, and screamed, “HOW COULD YOU LET ME WATCH THAT?!?!” and then burst into uncontrollable tears.

After that, any time we went to the video store I wanted to rent it.

47 thoughts on Cry, Cry Baby

  1. Pingback: Schrödinger’s Cat is Dead » Blog Archive » Cry me a river

  2. Tough choice…there’s more than one for me, I’m a total sap. I’ll go with two, since that’s all I can narrow it down to:

    1) The climatic scene in The Spitfire Grill, which I first saw when I was a senior in high school (4 years ago). It’s a movie I have a hard time watching anymore because of that scene, but it is a wonderful movie that all should watch at one point or another.

    2) The climatic scene in In America, which I saw last year. That movie I have a less hard time watching again, and I again recommend it to all.

    Those two movies have gotten me everytime I’ve watched them (twice each).

  4. October Sky, but that’s largely because that movie had a team of scientists engineer a theme song that is guaranteed to cause sadness in at least 70% of those who listen to it.

  5. The climatic scene in 12 Angry Men, surprisingly, almost always moves me down a notch or two on the emotional level, but not to crying, when you finally find out what was driving the last juror.

  6. I got to second base for the first time ever in my life during a screening of Babe. I know you don’t care. But I can’t help it.

    It happened yesterday.

  8. Mine aren’t nearly as intellectual as most of the others…

    I always cry in Return of the King when Pippin is having to leave with Gandalf and Merry gives him the last of the pipeweed and says, “You smoke too much, Pip.”

    And I always cry in The Empire Strikes Back, in what I think is the most romantic scene in a movie ever, when Han is about to be frozen in carbonite:

    Leia: I love you.
    Han: I know.

    See, I’ve got tears in my eyes right now, just thinking about those two scenes. Sniffle.

  9. In The Pianist, where the Nazi officer finds Szpilman and asks him to play, and he starts on Chopin’s Ballade #1.

    Also any movie where a dog narrowly escapes death. Like Dante’s Peak. Sure, Grandma got boiled alive in an acid llake just now, but YAY the dog’s gonna be OK! Snif.

  10. It’s okay, Robert. I went with a boyfriend once to see the movie–I forget it’s called but it was the clay chickens escaping Great Escape-style–and the scene where they kill the chicken made my date cry. And I really regret poking fun at him.

    I was amazed on my thread how many people thought it was embarrassing to cry at It’s a Wonderful Life. I love that movie and sob through the ending every time. You’re a bad liberal if you don’t, so I don’t see the issue.

  12. I didn’t actually cry during the movie Gallipoli but there is a moving part of the movie during which Barber’s Adagio for Strings is played and now whenever I hear that piece of music, I want to cry.

  13. I’ve seen my fair share of films that have made me cry.

    What comes to mind that’s in my library is The Story of Us, a white suburbanite drama, I know, but it has some good acting.

    Most recently I got verklemlpt over Ma Vie En Rose. I can’t believe it took me this long to see it.

    How about crying to books?

  14. I always cry in Return of the King when Pippin is having to leave with Gandalf and Merry gives him the last of the pipeweed and says, “You smoke too much, Pip.”

    Ditto. I literally bawl my eyes out at the end of that movie. We own the DVD, and I still cry at that movie.

  15. Books – Anne, my list is so long as to be impractical! But I’ll start with The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis – I guess it’s silly, but Jill is me.

  16. Pingback: The Republic of T.

  19. Anne, I once cried reading the last page of a romance trilogy. I don’t know why.

    Serious book that made me cry, and I mean BAWL: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven by Sherman Alexie. Also, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (which got to the boyfriend as well). It also happens to be the Oprah book club pick right now.

    Speaking of which, I really have to pick up the sequel to the Frey book, My Friend Leonard(?).

  20. (This is another Anne.)

    I cried hysterically at the end of Like Water For Chocolate.

    As for movies, there are many, but the one on my mind right now is when “Mad World” starts up in Donnie Darko. Oh, speaking of Sherman Alexie, Smoke Signals is a tearjerker too.

  24. I sat on the couch and watched “Everybody’s Fine” (Italian film about a Sicilian widower who goes to the mainland to surprise-visit all his kids….where he finds out that indeed, everyone is not fine, but none of them have the nerve to tell him the truth about their lives and break his heart. Excellent film); by the end of it, neither one of us could speak ‘cuz we had huge lumps in our throat….neither one of us wanted to cry over a film in front of the other! Go figure.

    The Joy Luck Club….two weeks after giving birth to a premature baby, she is in the NICU hanging on for dear life, and I am on the couch waiting for a delivery of stuffed shells from the neighborhood pizza joint. I was flipping through channels, trying to hang on to some vestige of sanity/normalcy in the midst of my life turning upside down, too physically and emotionally exhausted to be able to deal with cooking (and cooking is one of the things I most love to do)….so, I stopped at Joy Luck Club, not knowing one damn thing about it except that it was supposed to be a really good story.

    Do not, I repeat NOT, watch the Joy Luck Club if you have or are expecting a baby.

    It was already over halfway through before I got to it (thank God), but after seeing the mother leave her twins with everything she has of value, hoping someone would rescue them and take them to their father, because she knew no one would take them in if her dead body was found next to them….I was like, “BWWWAAAHHH!! NO!! DON”T LEAVE THE BAY-BEEESS!!! WAAAHH!!” Poor kid that delivered my stuffed shells was wondering if he should call the police, after seeing my splotchy, tear-streaked face and basket-case look in my eyes. He thought I was even crazier when I told him I was ok, I was just crying over a movie.

  25. Joy Luck Club gets to me too even if it is unforgivably cheesy in spots. Especially when she leaves the babies.

    Reuniting with the twins in the end is a tearjerker as well, probably because it’s one of the only resolutions we get at the end of so much misery.

  27. How are they doing on women’s rights?

    How about this: millions of women just voted in a free and fair election for a constitution designed by their first elected, representative government in decades, when three years ago the alternative would have been “sign your name on this ballot supporting Saddam, or see you daughters raped and the rest of your family with bullet holes through the back of their heads.” I’d call that a step forward.

    Iraq isn’t pretty, it’s not perfect, and it could still turn out badly. But as its people-men and women- move toward stable democracy, they deserve our support. Especially on days like today.

  28. Mrs. JJ says the bayonet charge in Gettysburg, the death of Bambi’s mother, and the song “Baby Mine” in Dumbo do it for her.

  29. The Pegasus Bridge battle in the PC game Call of Duty would have made me feel all sad with its ironically somber string arrangement stirring up in the midst of the most brutal battle in the game, but since I’m actually PLAYING the battle rather than watching people get killed, it just makes the “OH NO OH NO OHCRAPNOHELL AUUGHS” come out twice as fast.

  30. The one I’m most ashamed of crying over is Titanic, because the whole movie’s so transparently manipulative.

    The scene I’ve probably cried over the most number of times: When Lois bites the dust, ha ha, in the first Superman movie.

    The one that has me crying throughout the entire film is also Christopher Reeve’s fault: Somewhere in Time.

    The one I cried at but didn’t care because if it doesn’t make you cry, I don’t think you’re quite human: When Roberto Benigni goosesteps around the corner for the last time in Life is Beautiful.

    And the one that made me cry that I can’t figure out why for the life of me is when Napoleon Dynamite runs off the stage after unleashing his sweet dance moves at the election assembly. That one makes no sense to me.

  31. Movies mostly don’t make me cry. But I’ve been reading “Candorville” (a comic strip). Lemont is intreviewing Katrina survivors –I managed to hold it together when he asked a man “so can I interview your daughter? — oh” but I lost it when the old guy was explaining why his wife didn’t get out alive. He says “I still got Mozelle with me whenever I close my eyes.” Okay, that did it, I’m crying. Again.

  32. Oh gosh. I am watching the Greer Garson Pride and Prejudice — and I am always terribly upset by Charlotte marrying Mr. Collins. Argh! Lady Catherine de Burgh just showed up . . .

  33. Hmmm, any movie that has a kid(s) in a precarious situation, i.e. Pay it Forward, Crash, etc.

    The last scene in The Last Samurai did it for me, too, because here were all these greater men running toward a cowardly defense by the Americans/Japanese. Sure it was manipulated and sure it may not have happened like that, but defeat was imminent and they went in blazing anyway. I had the same reaction to the Band of Brothers series, too.

    I’ve also noticed that, since having a kid of my own, I’ve turned into a much bigger sap so movies effect me much differently now. Hell, I tear up at the end of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition when the people see their new houses/stuff.

  34. Oh, I remember bawling my eyes out after seeing the opening seen of a movie with Clint Eastwoon in it (Pale Rider?) where the cows and horses got trampled or shot. I had thought they were really dying so I was severely distraught that people would do that to those animals.

    Also, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is a great absolutely marvelous movie if you haven’t already seen it. This movie will jerk you around because of the long history of abuse it’s portraying and for what they continuously try to do to the horse.

  37. As sappy as it will sound, The Green Mile had me fighting back tears during various scenes.

    Even sappier: so did Seabiscuit.

  42. Pingback: c u l t u r e k i t c h e n

  43. Oh man, the scene in Billy Elliot where Billy’s dad scabs to get money. I’m not a crier in movies, but for some reason, this got me, and it gets me every time.

  44. I cry to it’s a wonderful life, the King and I, the whole Elephant Man movie, Sense and Sensibility, and lots of others I can’t remember right now, and most Egyptian dramas. Also, music makes me cry all the time. Adagio for Strings every single time, a million songs I liked when a teen that I had not heard for a long time (yesterday I cried when hearing Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb), Brahms’ Symphony #1, oh good heavens, everything makes me cry.

    I usually don’t cry at books except if they are re-reads that impressed me a lot when a kid (black Beauty, the Trumpet of the Swan, etc.)

    I wish I did not cry so easily, actually. It is kind of embarrassing to always be tearing up, particularly in front of my teenage boys.

  46. Joy Luck Club makes me cry – especially at the unforgivably cheesy parts. I’m still waiting for my wise Chinese mother to come rescue me.

    Also, Muriel’s wedding when the mom kills herself. Ugh. such a sap.

  47. My eyes got moist at the end of “Serenity”. When the killing-machine-teen-chick choses to go out alone and face a horde of undead space zombies in order to save her crew-mates. Moments of altruistic self-sacrifice in action movies always do that to me. (seriously!)

Comments are currently closed.