Film/Tear Jerker

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# (all need Work pages created)

• The ending of 8 Seconds, the story of Lane Frost. Lane is butted by the bull, and it immediately changes scenes to his funeral.

A

• Adaptation at the end: So happy together, la la la, so happy together. The best part is that both you and the movie know that this is a cheesy, cliche and overused technique. Yet it works.
• The ending of Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Not only for that awesome tearjerker scene of the Baron's funeral so gleefully up-ended and laughed at by the Baron himself, but the revelation that the invaders HAVE been routed, that huge cheer, and then Sally's sly "So...it WASN'T just a story, then?" Followed by the Baron's mock-glower and flinging of one last rose to her. Just beautiful stuff - a real happy tear-jerker.
• The ending to An Affair to Remember yanks on the heartstrings, even though it all turns out okay.
• Agora has several tear jerkers, which is perhaps not surprising considering its a movie about Hypatia, a Greek philosopher who was murdered at the hands of rabid Christians. There's several sad moments before that happens; just watch the movie.
• A.I., which is one of the ultimate Tear Jerker Downer Endings.
  • Joe as he gets taken away. "I am. I was."
  • Joe recognising that his 'lover' is lying there dead and the subtle change in expression, or lack thereof.
  • The whole second hour of the movie, straight through the end. Post-movie, Allen Hobby's real fate and the great pains taken to cover it up.
  • The sobfest begins and lasts entirely throughout that one happy day he gets with his mother, knowing that after this, she will die and never, ever come back, which is made even worse by him following.
  • Professor Hobby's interactions with David, who was modeled after Hobby's dead son.

David: "I thought I was one of a kind." Hobby: (holding back tears) "My son was one of a kind."

• The scene in A.K.A. where Benjamin (a male prostitute who has fallen in love with the main character, Dean,) says "Could you marry me? A boy like me?" Also, the scene where he and Dean are having sex and Dean keeps telling him to "tell me I'm nothing" and eventually "hit me" (what he is saying stems from sexual abuse he had to endure from his father).
• Hephaestion's inevitable death in Oliver Stone's Alexander is made all the more poignant when Alexander, who has become progressively disillusioned with his dreams throughout the film, starts speaking to him hopefully about all the great things they have yet to accomplish and how they will grow old together. Hephaestion dies in the middle of the speech. * sniffs* If only it actually happened like that...
• Shunji Iwai's All About Lily Chou Chou is an all around somber and harrowing affair. This scene, in the context of the film, is unbelievably moving.
• The "Valse Triste" scene from the film Allegro Non Trippo. It features a cat running through the ruins of its former living quarters and thinking there are people still there. After while, it realizes all the joyous moments were just an illusion and the reality was that everything was lost and gone forever. As a wrecking ball destroys the wreckage, the cat itself vanishes, as it was just a faded out memory itself...
• All Quiet on the Western Front. Especially the ending.
  • I'd like to give a shout-out to the death of Katczinsky in the '79 version. Even when you know it's coming, there's still something about how understated it is.
    • Especially when you consider that the actor playing that role Ernest Borgnine was about 10–15 years too old for the part. It's just that he's such a good actor and plays the role so well, you come to care for him more than almost any of the others.
• Zack's scene in the desert at the end of Alpha Dog when he realizes what's about to happen.
• Amelie.
  • Every single moment, from where she helps the blind man walk and describes what she's seeing to the romantic chase scene with the arrows to the scenes where she gets revenge on Collignon for Lucien to where she makes tapes for the Glass Man to where she has the stewardess take the gnome all around the world to fulfill her father's dream of traveling the world...ah, well you could name scenes from the movie all day. The tears during this movie are of joy, never sadness. When Roger Ebert said that you see this movie, and then when you think about it later, it makes you smile, he wasn't kidding.
  • The scene where Amelie is watching TV and imagines that she's watching her funeral, and it's describing how she never really did anything in her life, and it makes her start crying. Also near the end when she's imagining her love interest coming up the stairs to her apartment and bursting into the room, then hears the rustle of her bead curtain and turns only to see that it's just her cat. So sad. But that makes the scene all the more heartwarming when she goes to follow him and sees that he's really there.
  • The scene in which Amélie gives the former resident of her apartment back his box of trinkets from when he was a little boy, the TV screen just became a blur.
  • The scene when Nino finally discovered the truth behind the mystery photo booth man. He was simply the repairman. Though this might not pass of as a tear-jerking moment at first glance, put yourself in Nino's shoes and think about what it's like trying understand an unusual person to the point where you're devoting your life to it, and then after many years realize the truth and satisfy your own curiosity.
• The final scene in American Beauty.
  • God, Kevin Spacey's monologue...
• The senselessness of Danny's death at the end of American History X, and Derek's reaction.
• Angels in the Outfield is one of those feel good movies, in which angels help a down on their luck baseball team to win the championship. Their star player is completely worn out and beaten until he sees the entire stadium giving the signal for angels on the field. Deciding there must be an angel here to help him, he makes the shot and wins them the match -and then discovers there wasn't an angel there at all.
  • "Even if you can't see us, we're always watching."
    • And the real (or at least original) Angels in the Outfield, with Paul Douglas. "We're signing him up in the spring." ... And when Bridget-White-Eight-Years-Old looks up at the statue of Gabriel and says "Oh, that's St. Gabriel. He's our patron saint".
• The '30s era gangster film Angels with Dirty Faces: The scene at the end, where Jimmy Cagney's character is being dragged kicking and screaming towards the electric chair is gutwrenching. Doubly so since the film implies that he may be doing it on purpose to discourage the teenage toughs that he befriended earlier from following in his footsteps.

"All right, fellas . . . let's go and say a prayer for a boy who couldn't run as fast as I could."

• Hardly a tragic scene like most of these examples, but the end of Annie Hall: He narrates that he ran into Annie several years later, and had a good time catching up as old friends, and closes by recounting that like the punchline to an old joke, we need these irrational things called relationships because "we still need the eggs", and then plays a montage of Alvy and Annie's relationship while she sings "Seems Like Old Times".
  • There's a similar scene at the end of "Prime", in which the two characters run into each other a year after breaking up (they loved each other, but knew that their differences would ultimately prove insurmountable). To the tune of a beautiful version of "I Wish You Love", they wordlessly flashback through their relationship before exchanging smiles and parting ways for good.
• Apollo 13
  • The splashdown: a combination of happy tears and "Oh yes! Oh yes, yes, yes!"
  • As they are first taking off, there's that shot of the rocket blasting away from the Earth . . . and we then cut to two of the astronauts' wives, who are openly weeping with fear and anxiety over their husbands' safe journey.
  • The music in that film is James Horner Awesome. Various points where the ground crew and the astronauts' families are waiting and can't do anything. And, okay, the part where Lovell has an Imagine Spot and pictures himself landing on the moon. He really wanted that.
  • In an early scene, Jim is attempting to explain the tragedy of Apollo 1 to his youngest son Jeffrey, and ends up saying that one of the main problems with the ship was that they couldn't open the door. And then scenes later there's Marilyn, trying to explain to Jeffrey what's happening to his father's mission:

Marilyn: Something broke on your daddy's spaceship. And he's going to have to turn around before he even gets to the moon. Jeffrey: Was it the door?

• • They unmercifully use the kids as Tear Jerker material. When news of Apollo 13's critical malfunction breaks on television, we cut to a classroom scene in a military school where one of the astronaut's teenage sons is sitting upright at his desk, along with the rest of his class, watching the broadcast. It looks very military, and very disciplined, and very cold ... until a teacher whose face we can't see walks past the astronaut's son, and, in silence, puts a hand on the boy's shoulder as the broadcast continues.
• The ending of Armageddon.
• Atonement Especially coming after the almost unbearably tense first act.
  • When Robbie is arrested and taken away, his mom coming and beating on the hood of the police car with her umbrella screaming "LIARS"
  • The Tea Room scene.
  • Every time the letters were read aloud.

Robbie:Dearest Cecilia, the story can resume. The one I had been planning on that evening walk. I can become again the man who once crossed the surrey park at dusk, in my best suit, swaggering on the promise of life. The man who, with the clarity of passion, made love to you in the library. The story can resume. I will return. I will find you, love you, marry you and live without shame.

• • The long, continuous scene at Dunkirk.
  • The last scenes in the belly of the factory. I'm turning into mess only typing this:

Robbie: You won't hear another word from me. I promise. Nettle: Cheerio, pal.

• • When it switches to the present, and 79 year old Briony is being interviewed, and you find out what really happened.
    • It's a close-up of Vanessa Redgrave's face with all these emotions whirling over it, wondering if she has done enough to atone herself, kind of knowing that it isn't.
• Avatar: The Na'vi desperately fleeing Hometree as it gets bombarded by missiles and crashes down amidst smoke and flame. By itself, we've seen the likes of this before...but then you see the faces of all the personnel back at the base who seem to be having a collective My God, What Have I Done? moment...
  • The massive Does This Remind You of Anything? moment.
  • There are so more moments that just those... like where Jake is accepted into the Omaticaya, or after the battle when Neytiri is holding Jake's human body.
  • Jake running. You know the scene.
  • Grace's death, and her final words.
  • The attack on the home tree. The entire scene is so devastating, watching the incredibly gorgeous and enormous tree being blown up, all the Na'vi running in terror, the humans in their airships laughing at the mass destruction they were causing, Trudy refusing to do so and turning her ship around, proclaiming, "I didn't sign up for this shit", the faces of all the humans at the base who watch in horror, Neytiri's father, the fire and smoke and ashes and screams, everything slowing down, Grace and Jake being ejected from their Avatars and Grace struggling as she was taken away, punching a man in the face and screaming, "you murderer" at Parker, and the slow fade to black as you realize the full extent of what just happened, of what humans have done and are capable of doing...
  • The final battle before Eywah steps in, as T'sutey's Crowning Moment of Awesome is also his Dying Moment of Awesome/Heroic Sacrifice, Trudy is blown to pieces, but not before apologizing to Jake for failing, Norm is shot and is possibly seriously injured, and Neytiri watches as her people are all dying around her, with that striking image of the horse galloping for its life while its entire backside is on fire...
    • ...followed by tears of joy as Eywah saves them all, and the creatures of the forest help them.
  • An unconventional one, but a quick line by Jake at the end: "The aliens went back to their dying world." Suddenly, you remember that, while Jake and Neytiri are happy, tens of billions of humans, the vast majority of whom have done nothing wrong, have nothing to look forward to except misery, starvation, disease and finally death, and the same for their children, and their children's children, until however many generations down the road humanity finally goes extinct.
• Awakenings:
  • The scene where Dr. Sayer (Robin) watches the home movies that he and Leonard Lowe (Robert DeNiro) filmed, which show Leonard's gradual deterioration back into his catatonic state.
  • "You told him I was a kind man. How kind is it to give life, only to take it away?"
  • Dancing in the cafeteria: if you've seen it, you're crying now. The barely contained anguish on Paula's face almost obscures the fact that, as Leonard dances with her, his symptoms completely subside.
• The A Word. It's a short documentary done by Lindsay Ellis, otherwise known as The Nostalgia Chick, about what she went through when she had an abortion in December 2009. It's a pretty huge shock to see this Badass, in control, dark-humored woman suddenly lay herself bare and look actually quite lost and uncertain throughout the movie. (It also makes you smile even harder when you see her around and know that she's A) alright and B) can joke about it.)
• The President's speech in Babylon 5: In the Beginning.
  • Especially this part: "To buy time for more evacuation transports to leave Earth, we ask for the support of every ship capable of fighting to take part in a last defense of our home world. We will not lie to you: survival is not a possibility. Those who enter the battle will never come back. But for every ten minutes we can delay the enemy advance, several hundred more civilians may be able to escape to neutral territory. Though Earth may fall, the human race must have a chance to continue elsewhere. No greater sacrifice has ever been asked of a people. But I ask you now to step forward one last time, one last battle to hold the line against the night."
    • Made especially poignant when you realise that she's asking for the ultimate sacrifice of tens of thousands of people on the minute, off chance that a few hundred people may be saved. That even with the best possible outlook, mankind will be decimated anyway.
  • Londo's description of humans. "The humans, I think, knew they were doomed. Where another race would surrender to despair, the humans fought back with greater strength. They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In my life, I have never seen anything like it; They would weep, they would pray, they would say goodbye to their loved ones, and then throw themselves without fear or hesitation at the very face of death itself, never surrendering. No one who saw them fighting against the inevitable could help but be moved to tears by their courage. Their stubborn nobility. When they ran out of ships, they used guns, when they ran out guns they used knives and sticks and bare hands. They were magnificent. I only hope that when it is my time, I may die with half as much dignity as I saw in their eyes in the end. They did this for two years. They never ran out of courage, but in the end, they ran out of time."
• Adam, the 1983 made for TV movie about the kidnapping and death of Adam Walsh. The scene where Jon Walsh learns of his son's death and starts tearing up a room while cursing the world is arguably the most gutwrenching scene in television history.

B

• Bartleby was advertised as a zany comedy. Well, it started out funny, but it slowly became clear that Bartleby wasn't just eccentric, he was desperately mentally ill and helpless. His co-workers torture him, his boss's inability to deal with him wrecks everyone's life, and when the boss finally does manage to get rid of him it feels rather like taking the family dog out for a car ride and leaving him by the side of the road. When the boss experiences a guilt trip and tries to help him, he's just slightly too late, and Bartleby dies of neglect and exposure.
• Several of the scenes with Mr. Freeze and his cryogenically preserved wife Nora in Batman and Robin, especially the one where Mr. Freeze is told by Poison Ivy that she's dead, and he sheds a single tear which freezes on his cheek. The fact that those are the only good scenes in that movie only makes it worse.
  • And it becomes even worse for the Batman: The Animated Series fans who know that that scene was the planned ending of the episode "Heart of Ice".
  • In Batman Returns, the Penguin's funeral. His own penguins bury him at sea, and it somehow works.
  • In Batman Begins, when Bruce's parents are murdered in front of him.
    • Turned up to eleven in the two or three scenes after that. That little kid—Gus Lewis—inspires Tear Jerker after Tear Jerker. And Gary Oldman and Michael Caine contribute unmercifully (well, to the audience, not to Bruce). If your bottom lip isn't trembling by the time Jim Gordon has tried—helplessly—to comfort young Bruce, then it won't matter; the "a little dinner" scene between Michael Caine and him will rip the waterworks from you anyway. He breaks down gutwrenchingly, and the arc of Caine's performance against that is just perfect:

Bruce: If I hadn't wanted to go ... if I hadn't ... gotten scared-- Alfred: Oh, no, no, no, no. It was him. And him alone. Do you understand? Bruce: ... I miss them so much, Alfred! Alfred: ... (choking up) So do I, Master Bruce. So do I.

• • • Alfred has a lot of really moving dialogue in Begins that shows just how loyal and attached he really is to the Waynes.

Bruce: "Why do you give a damn, Alfred? It's not your family. Alfred: "I give a damn, because a good man once made me responsible for what was most important to him in the whole world."

• • • And for that matter, in the 1989 film.

"I have no wish to spend my few remaining years grieving for the loss of old friends. Or their sons."

• • Let's be fair. A lot of The Dark Knight- what wasn't Nightmare Fuel or Foe Yay - was designed to set off the waterworks. Some of it's due to the Funny Aneurysm Moment factor, but... fans didn't even like Rachel Dawes, but they still cried
  • Two words: Harvey freaking Dent. Anyone with even vague knowledge of the character from any of the adaptations knows what's coming, but that won't save you from every scene of his transformation into Two-Face punching you in the gut and then spitting on you for good measure. The horrifically realistic facial burns do not help.
    • When Harvey Dent, a fundamentally decent human being, points the gun at his own head for being one of the people responsible for Rachel's death and says with resignation "My turn."
      • When Batman shows up, insisting that Harvey doesn't want to hurt Gordon's son and asking him to put the gun down. Harvey spends a moment genuinely showing regret, and then yells that it doesn't matter what what he wants, it's about what's fair; he truly doesn't want to kill the kid, but feels he must anyway. And that's when you know just how hard Harvey's fallen into madness.
      • Gordon pleading with Dent not to hurt his son.
    • The exchange between Batman and Harvey at the end. Harvey screams at Batman: "You thought we could be decent men, in an indecent time! You were wrong." Then, Harvey: "The Joker chose me!" Batman: "Because you were the best of us!"
    • Harvey in the hospital bed, reaching over and grabbing the coin he'd given Rachel, and then turning it over to see the burnt side. The look of sheer, horrifying anguish on his face, followed by the silent screaming and shaking breakdown right afterward hits hard.
  • The part with the bombs on the ferries, where the huge convict and the random, seemingly stoic and pragmatic man are holding the detonators for the bombs on each other's boats. The convict takes the detonator from the police officer, and casually hurls it out the window, completely ready to accept his fate, while the man on the other ferry tries to trigger the bomb, looks down at it, and with his hands trembling, he puts it back down. The scene right there is so powerful, human, and heroic for the ordinary citizens of Gotham.
    • The huge convict's line before it: "Give that remote to me, and I'll do what you should have done ten minutes ago."
    • A very subtle one that a lot of people miss, right when the convict throws the detonator out the window he goes to sit down in... not shame, but resolution. A group of convicts circles him as if to say "it's all right, you did the right thing" and all look as if they are comforting him. That says so much right there...
  • And how are we not including Gordon's final monologue, set to the scene of Batman running from the cops, "because we have to chase him"?
    • [[spoiler:And Batman taking the blame for all of Harvey's murders, even though Batman had nothing to do with them; it was all to preserve the image of pre-Two Face Harvey Dent.
      • Am I the only one who thinks that the Joker's demise in Batman was tearjerkery? I mean when he had his leg tied to the gargoyle as it was about to fall, you could even hear him groaning. Just listen to it Best Death Scenes: The Joker.

It was either spend the rest of his superhero life as a wanted man, or let the credibility of a district attorney turned murderer come crashing down.]]

• • I think you and I are destined to do this forever. Knowing that no, they won't.
• * batteries not included aka "Miracle on 8th Street"
  • The whole concept of a bunch of unlucky everymen (consisting of an overworked old man and his delusional wife, a mute and aloof mechanic, a pregnant woman whose boyfriend fled and a starving artist with a drinking problem who are visited by a bunch of tiny UFOs and become absorbed in helping them while their house is demolished from above their heads is sad, but the relationship between the Mook Carlos who's been hired to evict the protagonists and the crazy landlady who mistakes him for his long dead son is the best example.
• The Battle Royale movie adaptation. In the extended ending of the film, after all the teens have finished killing each other, there's a slow-mo flashback of a high school basketball game set to sad music. You see hints of how Ax Crazy psycho bitch was really just lonely (though in the book her back story is a lot more horrific than mere ostracization) and you see how all the students used to be happy and normal and...all that...
  • Ax Crazy Mitsuko's death was also surprisingly sad. No last words or close-ups. Her dead body falls over and the voiceover says "I just didn't want to be a loser anymore..."
  • The movie does flashback to a bit of modified backstory - before her death? - which is a lot more implicit than what she reveals in the book.
    • And Shogo's; the fact that its tearjerkiness makes sense doesn't really detract.
  • Also, the Reunion scene with Shuya and Noriko, supported by one of the most haunting themes in the film. Soaked, wounded and exhausted, Shuya can't even stay on his feet - but still he is devoted to his promise to protect his best friend's crush.
• If you don't cry at the end of Beaches then you are dead inside with a piece of cold flint for a heart.
• Regardless of what you think of Elmo basically ruling Sesame Street over the last 20 years, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey will make you shed Tears of Joy, don't even try to question that.
• Ben-Hur.
  • Sure, it's 3-1/2 hours of pure awesomeness, but at the end when, during the storm following Christ's death, Judah Ben-Hur's mother and sister are miraculously cured of their leprosy by the blood of Christ washing down from the Cross...I don't care what your religion is, you should still be bawling like a kid after seeing that.
  • The last half-hour of the film counts as this, from Judah carrying his dying sister and mother into Jerusalem in hopes of bringing them to Christ, to Judah returning the life-saving act of kindness Christ had done him three years before by attempting to give Him water during the Way of the Cross, and finally, coming back to his old home, reconciling with Esther after hearing Christ's words of forgiveness, and suddenly seeing his mother and sister come in, completely cured. When Charlie cries, YOU cry.
• Bent is a film about a gay man falling in love inside a concentration camp. This is inevitable.
• The ending of Bicentennial Man.
  • The concept of Bicentennial Man.
• The "Sweet Child of Mine" montage in Big Daddy, after Sonny loses custody of Julian. Though, this is immediately followed by the court scene, which turns out to be a Heartwarming Moment.
  • Julian's heartbroken "I want Sonny to be my daddy!" gets me every time.
• Big Fish had everyone in the theater in tears. Everyone. But they weren't all sad.
• Billy Elliot - when his father breaks down in Billy's brother's arms, sobbing, "Let's give him a chance! Give the boy a fucking chance!"
• The climax to A Bittersweet Life is pretty devastating as a whole, but the tearjerking part comes when the main character awaits the silent gunslinger's judgment. He suddenly understands why he had to be punished, why he had to get his vengeance, why he was so determined despite his own confusion. He fell in love, and it cost him everything.

Kim Sun-Woo: This is too cruel...

• • Also, the flashback scene at the end of A Tale of Two Sisters by the same director. The music plays, the sun shines, the girl smiles as she walks away - and we all know how much she'll have to suffer for that day.
• The gorgeous 1994 film Black Beauty is absolutely heartwrenching from start to finish. Most notable are the scenes where Beauty, Ginger, and Merrylegs spend their last day together (especially the dance), Beauty reunites with a broken and beaten Ginger and is almost glad when she dies because her suffering is ended, Joe finally finding Beauty at the horse fair and openly weeping over the little white "star" mark, and Beauty daydreaming that he is with his two friends again.
  • The credits, with that beautiful, haunting music playing and it shows Beauty, Ginger, and Merrylegs cantering and rearing and bucking, looking for all the world like children playing tag... Anyone who's ever loved and lost a horse can't not cry when they watch that.
• Josh Hartnett's goodbye speech to his dead comrade at the end of Black Hawk Down, all the way through to the pre-credits list of all the men who died in the real operation. The accompanying music only serves to drive the feeling home.
  • As the above list runs, you can actually hear one of the soldier's farewell letters to his wife. It ends with the heartbreaking words "So, in closing my love, tuck my children in bed warmly, tell them I love them, and then hug them for me, and give them a kiss goodnight for daddy."
  • Also, at the end when Captain Steele is talking to the dying Ruiz, who says "Do not go back out there without me," and Steele cannot even say anything so simply clasps hands with him.
  • Shughart and Gordon securing the crash site of Super 64. Likewise the agonizing scene where a Delta medic performs first aid on Corporal Smith's leg wound.
  • The exact moment when the Delta Commander asks them to verbally acknowledge their request, for the record, knowing that they're voluntarily going to their deaths to (maybe) save a fallen comrade.
  • And Corporal Smith's subsequent death scene.
  • And then just when you think you're safe, they play "The Minstrel Boy" over the closing credits.
• Blade Runner. You know the scene.

Roy Batty: "I've... Seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams... Glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those... Moments - will be lost... In time... Like - tears... In rain. Time... To die."

• • Oh yes. The studio-forced narration made me want to strangle the filmmakers when Deckard's voice-over says, "I don't know why he saved me." Thank all that is powerful that they took off that stupid narration for the director's cut.
  • When Gaff confronts Deckard on the roof. It really drove home the point (in the Director's Cut, anyway)that Deckard may be a replicant and what that means for him and Rachael.

Gaff:"It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?"

• • The poor replicants had just discovered love when they (somehow) found out that they'd been constructed with a four year life expectancy.

Leon:"Painful to live in fear, isn't it?"

• The ending of The Blind Beast, despite squickiness and the voluntary nature of it. It's psycho, a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, Nightmare Fuel, tearjerker, all in one.
• The ending of Emilio Estevez' Bobby.
• The Boondock Saints: Rocco's death is terribly sad, getting shot while tied to a chair, with the brothers tied up as well and powerless to save him. But the scene is also very touching, what with Murphy throwing himself, chair and all, to the ground, crawling to Rocco, resting his head on his cheek and crying while Connor screams at Rocco, God, Yakevetta, and anyone else who will listen. And Rocco's last words are pretty badass.

Rocco: (to Connor and Murphy) You can't stop. You get out of here. Don't ever stop.

• The ending of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas.
• The end of Boys Don't Cry.
• The ending of Terry Gilliam's Brazil will do a number on your tear ducts. Be sure to see the Director's Cut - apparently the American version was butchered by the studio and the ending was wallpapered over with sunshine and lollipops.
• The Breakfast Club. The whole movie. When Andy and Allison are talking and he says "What do they do to you?" and she says "They ignore me." and the climax where they all open up to each other and Brian breaks down and cries when he's talking about the elephant lamp. AND when Bender and Claire fight at the end at Bender talks about getting a carton of cigarettes for Christmas.
  • "Oh god, are we going to be like our parents?" "Not me, never." "It's unavoidable. When you grow up, your heart dies."
  • "Look at him. He's a bum. You wanna see something funny? You go visit John Bender in five years and you'll see how goddamn funny he is. What's the matter. John? Gonna cry?" Also, any scene where Bender's homelife is brought up. When Andy tells him he's lying about his father's abusive behaviour he freaks out and goes off to sit by himself. When Vernon threatens him he looks like he's about to cry. To anyone who's suffered from abuse at the hands of a parent these moments are definite tearjerkers.
• Bride of Frankenstein: the meeting of the Monster and the blind hermit.
• Bridge to Terabithia
  • Leslie's death.
  • Jesse squeezing the watercolours into the river.
  • The moment when Jess's teacher took him outside and told him she understood. Something about the fact that Jess had only thought of her as mean and her barely having any screen-time and then, suddenly, she has all this depth about her husband being dead and . . .
  • When Jess was with his father right after, blaming himself and crying in his father's arms.
• Brians Song. Oh, yes, you will cry. It's okay, guys. Really.
  • It was even parodied by Pinky and The Brain: the episode titled "Brain's Song" has the titular mice taking control of worldwide TV and broadcasting a Tear Jerker about a football player (so Brain could get all power possible from the saddened world leaders).
• Brokeback Mountain. The final scene with the shirts in the closet may not have me crying, but I'm certainly feeling sad about it.
  • "Jack, I swear..."
    • Reality Subtext is a bitch.
  • The saddest part in Brokeback to me, by far, is Jack's flashback to Ennis holding him.
  • The line "Tell you what... truth is, sometimes I miss you so bad I can hardly stand it." That actually pre-empted later tear-jerking.
• A '30s film called Broken Lullaby was about this young Frenchman who killed a German soldier of about his age during WWI. Consumed with guilt, he went to visit the dead soldier's elderly parents, only to end up pretending to have been a close friend because he didn't have the heart to tell them the truth. Near the end, he tearfully confessed his deception to the deceased's fiancee while playing one of the saddest violin pieces ever. She talked him into keeping up the pretense.
• The Brothers Lionheart has it in spades.
  • "We jumped... I made it... Jonatan didn't."
  • The death of Mattias.
  • "Jonatan... Nangilima... I see the light!"
  • The scene in the town square of Briar Rose Valley, when Tengil's soldiers start rounding up men. Jonatan telling Skorpan what will happen to them ("They'll drag rock to his fortress until they can't work any more. Then he gives them to Katla.") and the man who stands up to Tengil.
  • The teacher's eulogy at Jonatan's funeral.
• The scene where Jennifer Aniston prays to God in Bruce Almighty.
  • I see your Jennifer Aniston prayer and raise you Jim Carrey's prayer.
• A combo Tear Jerker and Crowning Moment of Heartwarming in Bubble Boy, where he finally reaches his crush's wedding, having travelled for days to reach it - and he removes the bubble-suit. She's protesting his actions, knowing that he'd die due to his lack of immunity, to which he replies, while hugging her: "I'd rather spend one moment holding you, than the rest of my life knowing I never could." And he collapses. Don't worry, he gets better.
• The Butterfly Effect: The hero is trying to commit suicide but realizes he can't even do that.
  • In the director's cut there was a completely different ending in the original cut Evan tells his childhood friend, Kayleigh as a child never to see him again to undo all the terrible events that happen when he attempts to change time. Thus apart from that first meeting they never meet again This can be a tearjerker but the director's cut has the following ending: Earlier in the film Evan's mother mentions how she tried to have a baby but each died and Evan was the lucky one. At the ending Evan decides he must go back in time when he was just a baby in the womb. He strangles himself willingly with the umbilical cord and kills himself. As a result he never existed. One might say this is a bit Narm but a tearjerker nonetheless.
• Bulgaria's Abandoned Children (2007) is not only heart breaking, but is a heartbreaking documentary. A young girl named DiDi, who can only cling to the belief that her mother is coming to pick her up from the Mogilno children's home (even though DiDi's mother abandoned her, and never wants to talk to her again). She makes the following speech to her friend, Todor:

DiDi: Todor, you are my friend, because you're very nice and you love me. If I had stayed in Pazardjik and not come here, I would have got married. I would be a good mother. I would look after my children very well. If I had children, even if they weren't my own, I would never send them to such a place. What have I done so wrong...that made Mummy send me to an institute. I didn't want to be sent here. I wanted to live in Pazardjik forever. (pause) I don't think I will become crazy like the others. I don't want to stay here any longer. I am missing my Mummy. I love you very much, Todor. You kiss me and hold my hand...

• • One of the final scenes, where a young boy, almost too crippled to walk, gives the journalist covering the story a hug, and he has to be held up as he slowly walks over to her.

C

• Calendar Girls generally keeps an upbeat tone, despite one of the main characters having to deal with the death of her husband. Then, near the ending, comes this line.

Annie: I'd rob every penny from this calendar if it would buy me just one more hour with him.

• Almost all the scenes with the titular character in Carrie: especially the scene where broken down for having killed her mother who had tried to kill her, she uses her powers to make the house crash into the ground, killing herself, and tries to hide in the same closet her mother used to throw her in.
  • Sue Snell's dream. One can't help but feel choked up seeing Sue walk to where Carrie's house once stood and leave a bouquet of flowers for her. It gets me every time. This is disregarding the fact that Carrie's arm pops up from the rubble to grab Sue's arm, waking Sue up with screams of terror.
• Overlapping with Crowning Moment of Heartwarming and Crowning Moment of Awesome (for Lazlo), the famous scene in Casablanca where Victor rallies the patrons and the band to play the French National Anthem, "La Marseillaise", drowning out the Nazis' "Wacht am Rhein". During the filming, there were several actors who cried in that scene, being European refugees themselves.
• Casino Royale: Bond's desperate, futile attempts to to rescue and revive Vesper after she's drowned and the way he cradles her in his arms when it's obvious that she's gone. Daniel Craig displays so many emotions on his face within a few minutes that your heart feels as broken as his when it's all over.
• Quite a lot of moments in Casper can definitely qualify here, but particularly when Kat falls asleep:

Casper: Kat? Kat: Mm-hm? Casper: Can I keep you? Kat: Mm-hm. Casper: -kisses Kat's cheek- Kat: Casper? Close the window. It's cold.

• • Casper then curls up at the bottom of Kat's bed and falls asleep too.
  • When Kat finds out about Casper's backstory and how his Mad Scientist dad went nut trying to revive him , and again when Casper becomes a real boy for some hours because he chose to revive Kat's dad rather than himself. Bonus points for the appearace of Kat's Missing Mom's soul.
• The "death" of Wilson in Cast Away, for no reason that makes sense.
  • It does when you realise that for the main character to function normally in society, Wilson had to go.
  • Even sadder was the main character's return to society, when he realizes that the love of his life married someone else. Sure, there's a happy note at the end, but that doesn't soften the blow.
    • This all qualifies as a Crowning Moment of Awesome for Tom Hanks, who not only managed to carry a movie by himself for two hours - no music, no other actors, just him - and to top it all off, he made you cry for a volleyball.
• Chariots of Fire is a slow build, beginning with the opening credit scene on the beach and Vangelis' score, but culminates in the scene where Ian Holm' Sam Mussabini, barred from the Olympic stadium, only learns that Abrahams has won the 100m when he sees the British flag rise over the stadium from his dingy hotel room. *Hat punch!*
• The death of Charlotte in Charlotte's Web. As the Nostalgia Critic put it in his Top 11 Saddest Nostalgic Moments, "I'll never use a can of Raid again."
  • That song is haunting.

Charlotte: How very special are we...for just a moment to be...part of life's eternal rhyme...

• Cheaper By the Dozen (the remake)
  • When Mark runs away because he feels out of place in his family - something his siblings have only made worse throughout the movie up till this point.
  • The line at the end about "There are times when l want to kill Sarah...but l'd kill for her all the time." brings on the tears.
• The documentary Children Full of Life, about a Tokyo school teacher whose two priorities are "everyone should be happy" and that his students learn empathy because he fears "people respect life less and less every day".
  • Part one A boy's grandmother recently passed away, and his "notebook letter" encourages another girl to talk about her deceased father.
  • Part two A bullying incident (which the teacher cannot abide) prompts another girl to talk about being the target of bullies.
  • Part three The kids are building rafts, and when one of them gets in trouble for being too noisy his friend sticks up for him even though he is terrified of standing up to authority.
  • Part four A boy's father passes away suddenly, and the students, remembering their classmate's experience in losing her father, write letters of condolence and encouragement.
  • Part five In the last days of the school year (and anticipating going to separate classes when they return for the next grade), the kids use their schoolyard to write a giant letter to their classmates' fathers in heaven, telling them that their children are going to be okay because their friends are with them.
• Children of Men had also quite a number of tear jerkers. Particularly the scene where the hippie played by Michael Cain says goodbye to his catatonic wife. Or the scene where the soldiers and resistance both stop fighting when they hear the cries of a baby.
  • Jasper (Michael Cain's character) being shot by the Fishes. And Theo's reaction. "You tell me the fucking reason in that."
  • In the first scene mentioned above there is a woman with a clearly fatal stomach wound and what is she doing? Singing to calm the baby down..
  • Making the scene particularly memorable and heart-wrenching was the incredibly human reactions of the refugees and the soldiers. The refugees - of all races, colors, and creeds - were letting it all out, crying and rejoicing at the same time. The soldiers, meanwhile, mostly stare at the baby with silent amazement. A few get down on their knees to pray. A couple try to hide tears with sniffles. Another guy looks on completely oblivious to his commander squawking on the radio. And yet it seemed as though every one of them was saying "Oh God. Our lives were not wasted." A great performance by the movie's "extras".
  • That scene with the soldiers is all the more awful because of what happens a few seconds later. Someone from the building starts shooting, the spell is broken, and as Theo and Kee run for their lives the soldiers obliterate the building in a hail of bullets.
    • A sign of the significance of the birth. That rocket flew close enough to them that had there been any shrapnel, it might have killed them. The rebels didn't get any more shots off after someone fired that rocket.
• Chinatown.

Walsh: Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

• The Chipettes singing "My Mother" to the baby penguin in The Chipmunk Adventure.
• Citizen Kane. The ending of the film. It's certainly sad because it features the death of the protagonist, but it is also strangely happy because it shows that he really wasn't the heartless monster that people spoke about for most of the film; he had a sentimental side to him, after all.
  • It's even more depressing once you understand that Kane died alone and miserable. All he ever wanted in life was to be loved. That's why Rosebud was the most important thing to him; it was the last time he was truly happy.
• The expression on the Tramp's face, at the end of Chaplin's City Lights.
• The first few lines in City of Angels, between Seth and the little girl, especially the "Someday she'll understand" part.

Susie:' Are you God? Seth: No. My name is Seth. Susie: Where are we going? Seth: Home. Susie: Can Mommy come? Seth: No. Susie: She won't understand. Seth: She will...someday.

• • Maggie storms out on Seth, leaving him looking as shattered as a seemingly emotionless angel can. This is sad enough as is...and then they start playing "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan, with Maggie getting into her bed, asking the invisible Seth, "Let me see you...just stay...just stay until I fall asleep."
• The Chinese film CJ7: Near the end, when Dicky and his father Chow's lives finally begin to take a turn for the better, Chow is killed in a construction accident, prompting Dicky's alien pet, CJ7, to try and revive him over and over again. Finally, Chow appears at his house, unaware of what has happened and he and Dicky find out CJ7 sacrificed all of its energy to revive Chow. As they attempt to save its life, CJ7 gives Dicky one final message: Continue with your school work.
• Click: When the main character died in the rain, trying in vain to tell his ex-wife he loves her after living only 3 days of his life made me blubber like a baby at a 'stay up all night' sleepover.

Sandler: [[spoiler: Family ... comes ... first. Promise me! His son: I promise, Dad.]]

• • The moment right before when he pretends to give his ex-wife's new husband the finger, then mimes that he's only joking, and instead changes it to a "You're OK" symbol.
    • The part of that scene that really hits me is when his son, newly married, puts his head down on the main character's chest, crying some truly gut-wrenching sobs.
  • For me, the waterworks started probably around the point where the main character realizes his father is dead and finds out what happened the last time he saw him.
  • Also, when he tries to go back to the moment of his father's death, and Walken's character tells him "you can't go back. You weren't there."
  • The main character yells at his father that he knows how you do the magic trick that the father has been so proud of throughout the film, right after the father was trying to cheer the main character up with the same magic trick.
• Cloverfield: the Mood Whiplash at the end of the "found footage" has caused its fair shore of sniffles.
• Cocoon: When the old geezer who was against that fountain of youth the whole time takes his just deceased wife into the pool, but the power of the pool is gone.
• The Color Purple's last act in general is both heartrending and heartwarming.
• The Constant Gardener. Dear God, where to begin? Perhaps the Lost Love Montage where Justin remembers falling in love with Tessa while sitting alone in her garden, crying.
  • Poor old Tim Donohue trying to dissuade Justin from unearthing the conspiracy behind Tessa's death and the other related death; when Justin naturally refuses, Tim sadly remarks "We'll both be dead by Christmas. Mine's Cancer... my pain is controllable..."
  • The aftermath of the bandit attack on the village.
  • Ham's bitter speech at Justin's funeral, which also crosses over with his Crowning Moment of Awesome.

So who has got away with murder? Not, of course, the British government. They merely covered up, as one does, the offensive corpses- though not literally; that was done by person or persons unknown. So who has committed murder? Not, of course, the highly respectable firm of KDH Pharmaceutical, which has enjoyed record profits this quarter, and has now licensed Zimba Med of Harare to continue testing Dypraxa in Africa. No, there are no murders in Africa. Only regrettable deaths. And from those deaths we derive the benefits of civilization, benefits we can afford so easily... because those lives were bought so cheaply.

• Say what you like about The Core, Brazzleton's death scene is wrenching. Something about a guy withstanding 400+ degrees and still pushing it for a cause he volunteered for...
  • Serge's death, as well as the picture his daughter drew for him...
• The excellent Crash, has a few of these moments but none jerk tears more than the scene in which the locksmith's 5-year-old daughter, believing herself to be wearing an invincible armour cloak, runs in front of her daddy as he's being held up by an angry, disillusioned gunman. The handgun accidentally discharges just as the girl leaps up to hug the father. Cue horrific closeup of the father's face after he realises that he made his daughter think she was impervious to bullets. Crowning Moment of Heartwarming occurs when you realize the ammo in the pistol was craftily loaded by the gunman's daughter with blanks, knowing her father would get into a situation like this.
• Crossing, a film about North Korean refugees. Its depiction of how people live in that country actually managed to get a theater crying. It definitely succeeds in portraying Kim Jong-il as an Always Chaotic Evil Overlord with 0% Approval Rating...
• Li Mubai and Shu Lien's Last Kiss, followed by Mubai's Famous Last Words and his death in Shu-Lien's arms in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
• Crow has a scene that gets me everytime. As Eric leaves Albrecht's apartment and Albrecht asks "Are you gonna disappear into thin air again?", Eric turns to him, the heartbreaking look on his face and says "I think I'll just use your front door." It told me that that he misses the simple pleasures of living.
• The film version of The Crow is rapid-fire Mood Whiplash, alternating between tear-jerking and fist-pumping, but even if you've held it together through the whole movie, the final few minutes, in which Eric has to explain to Sarah that he can't stay and take care of her shortly before the final battle, which culminates in him finally killing Top Dollar by inflicting upon him Shelly's final "thirty hours of pain" after having been stabbed through the gut, moments before he finally collapses on top of his own grave, and Shelly appears to bring him to Heaven is impossible to keep a dry eye through.
  • This is without the Reality Subtext taken into consideration.
  • The opening music is tear jerking, particularly near the end of the piece.
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was full of them toward the end. For instance, Daisy came back to the nursing home, and saw Benjamin at the piano. She said, "I'm Daisy," and he said, "I'm Benjamin".
  • The first ten minutes of the movie (i.e., the Gateau anecdote) can leave you in tears.
  • Toward the end of the movie, when Daisy is walking with 80-year-old Benjamin, who now looks like a toddler and has become so young he can hardly walk.

"I watched as he forgot how to talk...how to walk..."

• • When Benjamin (appearing to be in his early 20s) walks into Daisy's dance studio and sees her again for the first time in a decade, then sees their 12-year-old daughter. Especially the part where all he can do is just shake hands with her and say hi.

Caroline: "This Benjamin was my father? And this is how you were going to tell me?!"

• • An aged Daisy reclines on the bed with Benjamin, who looks 6 and is in his pajamas, as she reads to him the same children's book that had been to read to them 60-something years earlier by Daisy's grandmother.
  • Benjamin's death scene, when he dies as an infant in Daisy's arms.

"At that moment I knew... he knew who I was..."

• • The proverbial "curtain call", when we see a final zoom in to every central character.
  • The deaths of Benjamin's crewmates after their battle at sea. Captain Clark's death is especially hard-hitting, as well as Pleasant's.
• China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province is a 2009 documentary film. The 2008 earthquake in China. All those children, almost all of them only children.... One mom: "I have no tears left" and later you see her neighbors berating her for protesting the Communist Party. They just want some answers, dammit!

D

• The end of The Dambusters where Richard Todd, as Guy Gibson, says he has to write some letters and the scenes of the empty rooms and empty seats in the dining hall as the travel clock slowly ticks to a stop. Made even more poignant by the fact Richard Todd was an officer in the Paratroopers during World War II (he declined the offer to play himself in The Longest Day) and so had personal experience of having to write letters to the families of those that had died under his command.
  • Also Gibson's dog being hit and killed by a car and him looking at the scratch marks on the door and dropping the lead into the wastepaper basket, and knowing (perhaps from the book) that he was going to have his dog buried at the same time as he was due to be going into the attack against the dam, so that if he was shot down they would both be going into the ground at the same time.
• The last third of Dancer in the Dark is guaranteed to bring the audience to tears as Selma is torn down in front of the audience and the movie ends with Selma finally singing a song without daydreaming and being hung from the neck.
  • Also, this movie is so emotionally devastating that some people admit to not even being able to finish the movie because it is just that heartbreaking to watch.
  • Speaking of dancers, The Dancer Upstairs, especially the suddenness of the extremists machine-gunning the wounded schoolgirl they had seemingly left behind. They had left her so that they could take them both out when the investigator was over her. He backed up in time but felt guilty for doing so. The entire movie is principally how charismatic cult/extremist leaders recruit and target young children specifically for the things law enforcement will sometimes overlook because they're under age. The cult leader himself is a Mansonite hippy, and I'm sure we all remember what eventually happens to the Manson family members themselves...
• The final scene of Dances with Wolves, Dunbar and Stands With A Fist leave the tribe to protect them from searching U.S. soldiers. As they depart, they hear Wind In His Hair, one of the Lakota tribe members most hostile to Dunbar when he initially made contact with the tribe, shouting proudly from a hilltop that he is Dunbar's friend and always will be. The final text doesn't help the tear flow, either.
• The little girl in the documentary The Dark Side of Chocolate with the open wounds in her legs. Also the little trafficked boy crying. It's sad that this goes on and so many don't know about it.
• The ending scene of Dark Water (the original Japanese version), in which Yoshimi sacrifices herself to save her daughter.
• The end of Das Boot, where after surviving twice to die being depth-charged by destroyers and to be marooned in the bottom of the sea, the captain of the U-96 and some crewmen die during the Allies' bombardment of La Rochelle.
• The Masterpiece Theater movie of David Copperfield: Peggotty tells David through his door that he's going to be sent away to school, but that she'll always love him.
• Dawn of the Dead: "You're going to kill my family?!"
• Dead Poets Society
  • Neil committing suicide because his father won't let him act was bad enough.
  • The final scene, where, after Mr. Keating gets sacked, they defy the authority of the dean, standing on their desks to give him a farewell. "O Captain, My Captain!"
  • Neil's mom screaming "He's okay, he's okay!". * Sniff* Intense.
  • When Neil's father has just finished chewing him out, and Neil is sitting with his mother. He has a completely spaced-out and in-the-clouds look on his face as he says, "I was really great, wasn't I?"
• There's a relatively little-known indie film called Dear Wendy. In the last few scenes of the film, the group gets into an altercation with the law, and each member of the pacifist group is individually shot dead, with the exact path of each bullet being nearly scrupulously detailed, up to and including each bullet's path through the body of each victim.
• Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father will break your spirit, leave you without Kleenex for months and smile at the wonder of the human spirit.
• The entirety of the Bittersweet Ending of Deep Impact.
  • Particularly the scene where Oren gets the chance to talk to his wife (and infant son Oren Jr.) for the last time, especially considering that Oren was blinded earlier in the film and it's a son he'll never see. "Be good, Oren... be good..."
    • That scene was brutal. "Look at it this way: we'll all get high schools named after us."
• The Deer Hunter:
  • Two symbolical scenes: At first Mike shots a deer. But after the war, he's unable to kill a living being.
  • Russian roulette scene.
  • Steve (the one who lost his limbs) who doesn't want to come back home to live with his wife,
  • Nick being unable to remind his parents names.
  • An uneasy relationship between Linda and Mike (Mike loved her since the beginning, and Linda starts to love Mike in the end).
  • Mike returning to his hometown, deciding to drive to the hotel (despite everybody's waiting to invite him).
  • The apogee: Mike plays roulette with Nick after the war.
  • The ending meal, followed by credits.
• In the 2008 movie about Jewish refugees in Belarus, Defiance, one of the four brothers learns from survivors from a neighboring town that his wife and son are dead. His reaction is heartwrenching.
  • Later in the movie, the Jews are enduring a harsh winter out in the forest where they've made their home. With no food, everyone is slowly weakening and losing hope. So Daniel Craig leads his beautiful white horse out away from the camp, pats its snout one last time, and shoots it.
• The ending of De-Lovely when Cole and Linda Porter sing "In the Still of the Night" as the camera pulls back and they fade to black. I'm not usually the person to cry at the end of a movie.
• Unusually for a horror movie, most of the deaths are Tear Jerkers in The Descent. Most obviously Beth's well-acted I Cannot Self-Terminate scene, but the sisters [one of whom was The Cutie] trying so hard to protect each other, one throughout the film and one Taking a Level In Badass just before she died, and both failing, is pretty upsetting too.
• Despicable Me: when Gru reads the 'Three Little Kittens' book to the girls. Especially when he reaches the end of it.
• Dinner for Schmucks, where Tim finds the pictures of the mouse dioramas of Barry and his ex-wife.
  • "I called her Pudding..."
• In District 9 at the end of the film, when they are talking to the main character's wife about the handcrafted stuff Wikus would make her, and she shows them a flower made of scrap metal, then it cuts to an alien (aka Wikus) crafting another for her. This scene is just so sweet.
  • Christopher talking to his son after the fluid fiasco, showing him the District 10 brochure. "We go home now?" "No, we have to go here. See this tent? It might be ours. It will be better." "I want to go home!" He's just trying to make the best of a friggin' horrible situation. And him seeing the shuttle crash and thinking his son died in it, and just kneeling on the ground while he's beaten and questioned and not caring when he's about to be killed, not having anything left to live for. Thank GOD for Big Damn Heroes.
  • "Father!"
  • Wikus' huge Heel Face Turn itself, especially when he sacrifices himself to insure Christopher Johnson's escape.
• The section in Dodgeball where Steve is told that he's not a pirate.
• The end to Donnie Darko: Donnie lets himself get crushed to death by the airplane, because if he doesn't, the world will end on Halloween night (see it all here). Then, the song "Mad World" starts playing at the credits, and you really start to lose it.
  • The part that really go to me (it may have only been in the director's cut) was where Donnie gets into a debate in his English class over Watership Down, asking why the reader should care if the stupid rabbits live or die, and he sounds pretty desperate. He is so clearly trying not to be the Messiah, to convince himself he shouldn't have to die for these foolish, ungrateful people.
• Draco's death in Dragonheart, especially when it goes quiet and the only thing you can hear is the sound of his beating heart as it slows down and stops. Set to the heartbreakingly beautiful "To The Stars" rendition of the main theme. Damn you, Randy Edelman.

A Knight is sworn to Valor. His Heart knows only Virtue. His Blade Defends the Helpless. His Strength Upholds the Weak. His Word speaks only Truth. His Wrath Undoes the Wicked!

• Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, right after the challenge match at the karate convention. We've been taken on a tense thrill ride, as the seconds count down to the appointed time limit ... and with only about three seconds left, Bruce Lee wins. The swell of celebratory music and the rotating pan around Lee as the crowd realises what he's done left me in tears.
• Dreamgirls. Specifically, "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going".
• Drop Dead Fred
  • The main character has just taken medicine to get rid of Fred, then overhears her husband on the phone, finally realizes he's cheating on her, turns away with her world spinning around her... and then Fred, on the floor and still in pain, reaches out to her with compassion on his face: "Come."
  • The whole scene where Lizzie frees her younger self from where she was tied to the bed, then Fred tells her that she has to go now and he can't go back with her now. "Look, you've got you now. You don't need me, not anymore. So... goodbye."
• In The Duchess, when Georgiana has to give her out-of-wedlock child to her lover's family, and has to be all but dragged away by her friend - who, incidentally, became the mistress of Georgiana's husband mostly because his power enabled her to get her children back from her abusive husband.

E (all need Work pages created)

• The last 10 minutes or so of Daft Punk's Electroma. Everything from the silver robot's death and the gold robot's attempt(s) at suicide to the end credits. The whole movie's pretty sad, but those last scenes... blimey.
• The last half hour of Everybody's Fine. After suffering a heart attack on the plane home from visiting his daughter in Las Vegas, Frank (Robert De Niro) has a dream where his kids, as their younger selves, reveal their long-standing issues to him. He later wakes up with his three children he'd visited throughout the movie at his bedside and wonders where the fourth, David, is. He never answered the door to his apartment or returned Frank's phone calls, so he doesn't know why he's not there. Throughout the movie, it's made known that David has been arrested in Mexico for drug possession charges and his kids have been keeping the information from him until they know more about what's going on. Then his daughter tells him that David died of an overdose. After that, the movie is just a non-stop orgy of tears. This could fall under Narm for some.

F

• In the Tarsem movie, The Fall, with Lee Pace, after Alexandria falls and encounters her dream sequence, she wakes up to Roy sitting by her.
  • Odious beats up the Masked Bandit/Roy, shoving him in the water repeatedly, all while doing this in front of the Bandit's daughter. Just the way Alexandria was repeatedly screaming for him to get up, as tears streamed down her face makes it so heartwrenching. He lives, though.
  • All the while, in real life, while Roy is going through his Creator Breakdown, and Alexandria is pleading for him to stop. Also, the moment when Darwin's monkey shows Darwin that he captured the butterfly Darwin wanted as he's dying. This is quite possibly the only time the death of several line-less characters caused tears in many. Furthermore, the only time when learning a character dies (other than the scrappy, big bad, etc) isn't as sad as learning they didn't.
  • "No more fighting! He needs to go to his daughter, she's afraid!" As begged by a crying Alexandria. It breaks my heart, not only because she is clearly talking for herself, not the character—but also because Roy immediately has the bandit run to her to hug and comfort her as asked.
• Fearless: I did not win!
  • While we're at it "It's not about me any more" and "We stand strong"... and the rest of the last 20 minutes of the movie.
• In Felidae, there are several different tear jerking moments specifically Felicity's death.
• Fearless (and no, not the Jet Li movie): Fearless is a 1993 movie that starred Jeff Bridges playing a survivor of a horrific plane crash, and throughout the whole movie, seems to be stuck between in a state of not really feeling alive (in fact, through most of the movie, he comes off as kind of an asshole). He periodically has flashbacks showing what happened in the events leading up to the crash, starting with showing the passengers just moments before the plane starts having trouble. Each progressive flashback gets closer and closer to the point of impact, until the very last one at the end of movie, where it shows both the impact itself, and the few moments leading up to it. The final scene is one of the most emotional scenes in a movie. Just so you know, among the passengers on the plane were the protagonist's business partner and friend (the person he was sitting next to initially), two sisters who were taking their children on vacation without their husbands, a young boy who was travelling alone (and was played by a real life survivor of the crash that this story was based off of), and a mother who had her almost two year old son with her. Her baby is ripped from her arms and killed, one of sisters, along her children, die, and the business partner/friend is also killed, along with many others.
  • "I'm alive! I'm alive!" For some reason, this moment overwhelmed me with both elation and gut-wrenching grief.
• Three words: Field of Dreams.
  • "Hey Dad? You wanna have a catch? I'd like that." Brace for tears.
• The ending of Final Fantasy the Spirits Within. Captain Grey sacrifices his life to destroy the Phantoms. In front of his love. After his squad of True Companions died trying to get Aki and Dr. Sid out of New New York.
• The English narration of past events in Final Fantasy VII Advent Children was done so beautifully and simply that it was heartbreaking in its own right, but especially this one line: "Someone I love went back to the lifestream too."
  • Also, the final moments of the movie, watching Aeris walk away, then turn so we can finally see her face, the little farewell wave from Zack, and the final lines: "See? Everything's okay." "You're right. I'm not alone." The combination of Cloud finally smiling, surrounded by the children he has helped cure, being congratulated by his team-mates and some closure on Aerith. All this happening in that god damn church. The orchestral piece Cloud Smiles that plays during the scene tops it all off, as it is just fucking beautiful.
• Finding Neverland: Sylvia actually walks into Neverland in her home, before she dies. Then there was the ending scene just with James and Peter on the bench.
• Once the situation of Robin's character in The Fisher King really sinks in, it's heartbreaking.
• The death of Weebo in Flubber. Think the death of a non-humanoid robot isn't heartwrenching? Think again.
• The Fly 2: Despite being a gore-splattered sequel of Jeff Goldblum's body horrific Fly, the one scene that made me almost break down in tears was when Martin (Brundlefly's son) finds the telapod golden retriever he befriended two years earlier hideously mutated and chained in a tiny cage. Martin's employer, Bartok, kept the mutated dog alive for the past two years despite being promising Martin he had put it out of its misery a long time ago. And despite the dog being in terrible pain, it still fondly remembers Martin, who ends its misery by euthanizing it with chloroform. It's this scene that elevates Bartok's station as a smug snake into an utter and complete monster.
  • The Wikipedia article stated the mutated dog scene disturbed a lot of viewers when the movie came out in theaters.
  • The remake with Jeff Goldblum qualifies: the bit where at the end he's just desperately trying to cling to his fleeting humanity, getting a few screws loose in his head while he's at it, so he tries to absorb his wife and unborn baby into his being, ending with him a Body Horror and pulling the shotgun onto his forehead as a mutant fly creature, doesn't help there's like no epilogue and the film ends there.
• When Amy hits Igor in Fly Away Home. The thud and the way she screams after she hits him, terrified that she's hurt him badly always makes me tear up, even after seing the film dozens of times.
• After a brotherhood moment in Flyboys when The Squad stuck up for their friend
• Sparrow's death in The Forbidden Kingdom.
• Forrest Gump:

"Dear God, make me a bird so that I could fly far. Far, far away from here." *sniff* "I may not be smart, but I know what love is." "I really miss you, Jenny." Forrest: Then, Bubba said something I won't ever forget. Bubba: I wanna go home. "Sometimes there just aren't enough rocks."

• • When Forrest meets his son for the first time, and he asks Jenny, looking frightened, "Is he smart, or is he...?"
  • Seeing Lieutenant Dan broken and legless after Forrest saves him. "I was supposed to die on the field! With honor! It was my destiny, and you...cheated me out of it! I was Lieutenant...Dan Taylor..."
• The Fountain. After the main character's wife dies, and he's sitting in his bedroom and absolutely sobbing, while tattooing his wedding ring on his finger since he'd lost it before her death. Actually, the whole ending of that movie too. Heartbreaking.
  • The moment where the main character sees the vision of his wife which has been haunting him for decades switch simultaneously with his wife's depiction of Isabella of Spain is particularly painful. Especially the moment when he smiles and says, "I'm going to die". The little laugh at the end.
• Four Lions, a Black Comedy about inept suicide bombers, stays upbeat until the last ten minutes. Earlier in the film, ringleader Omar tells his son how martyrs die smiling. By the end, all of his friends have died for nothing, including naive Man Child Waj, who was terrified. He walks into a chemist and blows himself up, but not before saying his last words to a colleague standing nearby.

Omar: Now, you stay here. And you tell them I was smiling.

• Freedom Writers: While the entire movie kind of gently tugs at your heartstrings, the biggest bit is the 'Toast for Change' scene, when one student reads an entry from his journal, saying how when he and his mom got evicted from their house, and how worried he was about being made fun of for being homeless, when he came to his English class first hour, nothing else mattered. He was home. He reads it all on the verge of tears himself, and then the whole class--people who were formerly gang rivals who hated one another--gather around him for a group hug.
• Idgie telling Ruth one last story in Fried Green Tomatoes.
  • And oddly (or perhaps not, all things considered), that final shot of the Whistle Stop Cafe, dilapidated and weathered and abandoned, with the whole town gone. It just seemed to encapsulate everything Idgie lost, everything we loved about her town.
• An old Spencer Tracy movie called Fury. His character had been arrested in a case of mistaken identity and a lynch mob stormed the town jail and set it on fire, killing his dog and narrowly missing killing him as well. Then again at the end, when his girlfriend talked him out of framing them for his "death" and he gave an impassioned-but-bitter speech about how he'd always thought of America as a place where you could find justice.

G

• Galaxy Quest, when Sarris' minion shoots Quellek. For Quellek, It Has Been an Honor to serve Alexander Dane, whose culture and philosophy he had emulated for life. For Alexander, watching the only one who respected him die in his hands spurs him to deliver the line he hates the most as an actor: "By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!"
• Gallipoli.
  • Frank (Mel Gibson) just can't quite run fast enough to get back to the trench with the order to stop the attack, and has to watch all his mates going over the top to their doom.
  • He doesn't see it, but instead hears the whistle blown by the Major to start the attack, causing him to collapse howling in despair. Who would've thought the sound of a tin whistle could be so traumatic.
  • Also during that scene, the soldiers awaiting the order to go, all writing last letters to loved ones and fixing them to the sandbags with their bayonets, then hanging their valuables - rings, watches, lockets - on the bayonet handles. Wordless and quite beautiful.
  • Just...

Archie: What are your legs? Springs. Steel springs. What are they going to do? Hurl me down the track. How fast can you run? As fast as a leopard. How fast are you going to run? As fast as a leopard! Then let's see you do it.

• • C. E. W Bean's accounts of Gallipoli were polished up to publish and might not have been a completely accurate and impartial reflection of events...but that bit? Completely true - there was a young Australian soldier (Wilfred Harper) who was last seen running for the trenches without a rifle, like 'a schoolboy in a foot-race'.
  • [1] The soundtrack really doesn't help...
• Gettysburg: After Pickett's Charge.

General Robert E. Lee: General, you must look to your division. Major General George E. Pickett: General Lee... I have no division.

• • What gets me is when the officer on the horse during Pickett's charge is shot by the cannon right as the music turns tragic, and then it cuts to Lee pulling his binoculars away from his face with this sad expression...
    • It's made even more poignant when you realise that this is Pickeet's first time in an actual battle, He'd previously always arrived after the fact, and him realising just how brutal warfare just hammers it in.
  • Also, after Armistead has been shot, and is looking for his best friend, who was on the opposing side and whom he hasn't seen since before the war started.

Brigadier General Lewis A. Armistead: Would like... to see General Hancock. Can you tell me... where General Hancock may be found? Lieutenant Thomas D. Chamberlain: I'm sorry, sir. The general's down, he's been hit. Brigadier General Lewis A. Armistead: No! Not both of us! Not all of us! Please, God!

• • • Added to by Reality Subtext; Richard Jordan, who played Armistead, died shortly after filming, and this is his final scene ever.
• Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai: During the final shootout when Louie shoots Ghost Dog as Ghost Dog pulls his gun from its holster. All the while Ghost Dog's best friend Raymond is frantically shouting in French (he only speaks French) "It's not even loaded!" and begging Louie not to shoot his friend. Louie, an Italian gangster, doesn't understand what Raymond is saying and shoots Ghost Dog twice more, killing him.
• Ghost Town. The scene where the main character finally submits to the ghosts requests and goes around telling their survivors what they wanted to say is surprisingly touching for what was a riotous comedy up until then.
• The final scenes of Gladiator, particularly the death of Maximus.
  • And within that scene, the wheat field. Coupled with "Now We Are Free".
• Glory, Denzel Washington's character violates orders and Colonel Shaw, played by Matthew Broderick is forced to have him whipped... in front of the whole regiment.
  • Moreso because when Pvt. Trip's shirt is ripped off, it's revealed his back is already a mess of scars from having been whipped as a slave. Shaw watches every moment, trying to keep a professional face but obviously hurting.
  • And then there's the Colonel's death in battle. And Washington picking up the flag for the first time. And the regiment seemingly being so close to victory but being slaughtered. And finally, the sad music playing as all the bodies, black and white, are set into the pit together.
    • Or even better, when the regiment is still in training, they receive news that the Confederate army had declared that any Black man found in uniform will be hanged, as will any White man found in command, there'll be no prisoners. Colonel Shaw says the Army will allow a discharge for anyone who wants it. The next morning he asks his friend, "How many are left?" When he doesn't answer, the camera pulls back to show that NOT ONE Black or White soldier has left. A choked up Shaw can only say "Glory Hallelujah". Damn straight.
    • And the fact that almost all of it is true! Studied this film as part of a 6th Form coursework on the modern media portrayal of the Civil War, and almost every part of this film is accurate, including all the above facts. Glory Hallelujah indeed.
    • One detail of the movie disagrees with historical sources. They say that Col. Shaw actually fell inside the fort upon being shot and that his entire regiment attempted entry to be with their Colonel, only to be slaughtered to a man. Probably a more powerful statement than even the movie made.
• The Battle of Fredricksburg, as depicted in the film Gods and Generals, when the Irish Bridgade of the Union army encounters an Irish regiment of the Confederate army. Ordered into an impossible meat-grinder of a charge, the Union brigade is cut down in swathes. At the height of the slaughter, the Confederate commander, overwhelmed by the sight of so many of his countrymen dead by his own hand, breaks down into Manly Tears. When one learns that some of the officers on either side had formerly fought together in the Rebellion of 1848, having fled to America to escape British reprisals, it becomes almost heartbreaking.
  • There's a few similar scenes in the sequel, Gettysburg, in which the officers discuss those on the opposing side with whom they had previously served, some even being close friends, which are very moving.
  • The river scene where Union and Confederate soldiers trade coffee and tobacco elicited this so subtly, words cannot describe it.
• The film version of Godspell: As with the play, it ends the morning after the crucifixion of Christ as his disciples (some crying) carry him away, leading into a reprise of "Day By Day". They round a corner of a building, and the camera then rounds it as well—and other people of New York City are walking past, a huge crowd of them, as the song continues in voiceover (we hadn't seen anyone but Jesus and his disciples in the city since the long prologue); the last shot is a freeze-frame of ordinary people going about ordinary lives. After the intensity of the crucifixion sequence, this ending is a punch to the gut.
• The end of Godzilla vs. Destoroyah: Godzilla dies a slow and painful death due to a nuclear meltdown. That and when Godzilla mourns the death of his own son and cries in agony. It's perhaps the saddest Godzilla movie ever made.
  • Two Words: "Goodbye, Yoshido." (This is what Kiryu (Mecha Godzilla) says to one of the main characters right before sacrificing himself to save Japan from Godzilla at the end of Tokyo SOS.)
  • Try watching the original Gojira and not crying after learning that it's inspired by two horrific tragedies in Japan's history (the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the Lucky Dragon 5 incident). Go ahead, try.
    • The makers of the film painstakingly made the scenes of Godzilla's attack on Tokyo so eerily similar to how Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked after being bombed.
    • A good portion of the the original Gojira can bring you to tears. The children crying in the hospital, the leveled landscape of Tokyo, the mother and her children on the side of the street, the school children singing 'Oh Peace Oh Light Return', and finally (Serizawa's heroic sacrifice and last words).
  • One scene in Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah (1992): A Japanese WWII veteran turned mega business mogul comes face to face with Godzilla, who had saved his troops from an American Attack during WWII before he was even Godzilla. As the sad music starts to swell, you can see the recognition in Godzilla's Eyes amid the flashbacks to said time in the past. It looked as if Godzilla was cherishing said memories. And then, after the businessman nods, as if saying "yes, it's me", Godzilla roars (mournfully?) and (promptly blasts the man into oblivion with his breath weapon).
  • Rebirth of Mothra trilogy: The death of Mothra Leo's mother is very tear-inducing. What gets me is Mothra Leo putting his head under her wing, crooning for her not to leave him and trying to prevent him from drowning. He fails and she sinks into the ocean with very sad music. Every a reviewer who picked on the film at Million Monkey's Theator said it was an emotionally draining scene for two models made out of rubber and styrofoam.
  • Why is there not even one mention of Godzilla plunging into Mt. Mihara at the end of "Godzilla 1985," followed by Raymond Burr's ending monologue?
• The death of Bonnie in Gone with the Wind, made all the more tragic by the fact that it could have been prevented entirely had Scarlett remembered an event from the beginning of the movie before the last second.
  • Melanie's death scene, and the one immediately afterward, when Scarlett, the Aspie Poster-Girl, finally realizes that Ashley loves his wife more than he ever will her.
• The German film Goodbye Lenin
  • Alex's mother finally leaves her room and walks the now-Westernised streets of what was East Berlin.
  • And when Alex is riding home in the taxi and the taxi driver is his childhood hero, the cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn.
  • At the end, Alex is showing his mother another fake news tape, and she says it's wonderful, but she's looking at her son, not the TV... she knows that he has been faking these news reports for her, and she knows that it's just a sign of how much he loves her.
• Goodbye, Mr. Chips. "I thought I heard you saying it was a pity... pity I never had any children. But you're wrong. I have. Thousands of them. Thousands of them... and all boys."
• Good Morning Vietnam: The What A Wonderful World scene. Those shots of Vietnam's lush jungle and rice paddies and villages, and then shots of said peaceful villages being blown to bits. The shot of the lone bloody sandal sitting on the ground among the wreckage.
• The Good Son with the crazy kid played by Culkin...Would any mother make that same decision?!
  • What, let him die? Seeing as it was a choice between him and the kid who was more of a son to her than he was, then.....
• One of the more memorable scenes from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is when The Good, Blondie, comes across a dying Confederate soldier and wordlessly covers him with his coat and gives him One Last Smoke. Manly Tears big time.
• Good Will Hunting: "It's not your fault."
• Gorillas in The Mist - After watching Diane Fossey (brilliantly played Sigourney Weaver) gradually gain the trust of the mountain gorillas, to see her sobbing over the decapitated corpse of her favorite gorilla Digit is heartwrenching. "They took his hands... they took his head... They took his HEAD!" Tears everytime.
• Gran Torino, when Walt (Clint Eastwood) tricks the gang members who have terrorized the neighbourhood into murdering him, thus galvanizing the community into breaking their code of silence and sending the gang to jail, allowing Walt's young friends Thao and Sue to grow up properly.
  • The end, in which the Gran Torino is willed to Thao.
• No love for Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator? Charlie Chaplin plays a man who gets mistaken for the movies Expy of Adolf Hitler at the end. Becasue of that, he ends up having to give a speech in front of everyone who followed the dictator. His speech is so amazing, and so beautiful... And then you remember what the real Hitler did.
• The final scene in The Great Ziegfeld, when Ziegfeld's stage extravaganzas flash before his eyes before he expires.
• The Green Mile
  • The end . Especially during the death of John Coffey.
  • Paul's final monologue: "We each owe a death - there are no exceptions - but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile seems so long."
  • The revelation of how the two little girls Coffey supposedly raped and murdered really died: Complete Monster Wild Bill did it, and he had kidnapped them by threatening them that if one of them made a sound, then he'd kill the other one.
  • When Coffey walked into the execution chamber singing "Cheek to Cheek."
  • The whole movie is just one long blur of tears.
    • When Paul says, "On the day of my judgement, when I stand before God, and He asks me why did I kill one of his true miracles, what am I gonna say? That is was my job? My job?"
    • The cruelty of the witnesses at Coffey's execution, hurling epithets at him, none of them knowing that John is anything but a "monster."
    • Coffey begging Paul not to put the shroud over his head: "Please boss, don't put that thing over my face. Don't put me in the dark. I's afraid of the dark." The stricken expressions on the guard's faces when he says that crushes my heart.
• Grumpier Old Men: "Looks like God remembered you, Pop"
• Guess Who's Coming For Dinner. Especially when you know the backstory behind the relationship of Ms. Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
• The ending of Gwoemul.

H

• The upcoming (and already released in Japan) movie Hachiko. The trailer alone is enough to weep.
• For a movie that is often critisized for being a cliche slasher film and unnecessarily violent, Annie's death in the remake of Halloween II is quite heartbreaking. Especially Sheriff Brackett's (her father's) reaction to it.
• Happy Feet had a wealth of them.
  • The blackest moment in the film: Mumble has been in the zoo for some five months, and he's lost his mind. He hears something, and turns around. It's -- it's Gloria! And, his mother, and -- and, look! There's the other little guys, and -- when he offers the fish, and his mother can only reply: "It's alright, honey. We can wait." And, promptly disappears.
  • The main character's reunion with Gloria. Magnificently underplayed.
  • The line, "Don't ask me to change, Pa. 'Cause I can't." is heartbreaking.
• The end of Hair (theatre) (movie, not musical), starting when Berger realizes he's being shipped to Vietnam in Claude's place, through his reprise of Claude's song, and all the way to the shot of the rest of the Tribe at his grave.
• The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: the scenes where Solomon is accused of molestation and then his bike is taken away.
• The ending of the 1943 movie Heaven Can Wait, when Satan sends Henry to the elevator going up, where his beloved wife is waiting for him at the top. Also a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
• Heavenly Creatures:
  • The ending, from the tea shop scene through the credits. Knowing that Honora is going to die, and that even (and perhaps especially), her murder isn't going to be enough to let Pauline and Juliet be together and will ultimately separate them forever just kills me. This is intensified by the acting, you can tell that at least Juliet (and maybe even Pauline) knows that this is only going to make things worse, and yet they can't see any other way forward. The inevitable and total nature of the tragedy is heartbreaking.
  • And the music—Butterfly's Humming Chorus, with all that it implies, makes it that much worse.
  • It was a condition of their release that they never meet again. Just as St. Mario sings "you'll never walk alone". Oh my God.
• The death of Nuala in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. He doesn't even need to say how much he loves her.

Abe: I never got the chance to tell you how I felt. * their hands touch, sharing a psychic connection* Nuala: It's beautiful.

• Branagh's version of Henry V—that incredible walk across the field after the battle. And then the scene between the King and Captain Fluellen: "I wear it for a memorable honour ... "
  • Judi Dench as Mistress Quickly narrates the death of Falstaff: "So he cried out 'God, God...God,' some three or four times..."
  • The scene following the Battle of Agincourt when the soldiers sing Patrick Doyle's beautiful composition of "Non nobis domine" while Henry carries the body of the Boy across the battlefield.
• The montage in Highlander of Connor and his wife living happily together, and then watching her grow old and eventually die in his arms while he never ages. It doesn't help that the scene is set to Queen's "Who Wants to Live Forever."
  • The dialogue exchange between the two as well:

Heather: Will you do something for me, Connor? Connor: What, blossom? Heather: In the years to come, will you light a candle and remember me on my birthday? Connor: Aye, love. I will. Heather: I wanted to have your children. Connor: They would have been strong, and fine. Heather: Don't see me, Connor... let me die in peace...where are we? Connor: We're in the Highlands. Where else? Darting down the mountainside, the sun is shining. It's not cold. You've got your sheepskins on, and the boots I made for you. ...Goodnight, my bonny Heather.

• • Then it comes back near the end, when Connor goes to church on her birthday, and lights candles for her and Ramirez. And just a few minutes later, he finds out what really happened the night the Kurgan killed Ramirez...
• So many moments in Alan Bennett's play/film The History Boys...
  • The scene when Hector breaks down into tears in class.
  • The bit where Posner and Hector discuss the poem "Drummer Hodge."
  • Most of the Posner/Dakin subplot, but especially Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.
  • All of the last 10 minutes of the film.
  • When Hector tells Irwin that he's spent his career knowing he's a laughingstock, and having his heart broken over and over with no resolution to it. And warning Irwin not to end up like him.
  • Most of the history discussed through the story is equally distant. But watching the discussion off the Holocaust drove the point home that people her own age can still be devastated by something half a century before as though it happened to them personally, because in a very real sense, it has.

Posner (after gradually becoming agitated, yelling): The difference is, I didn't lose any relatives in the dissolution of the monasteries! Irwin: Good point! Scripps: You keep saying 'good point'. Not 'good point', sir, true!

• Hocus Pocus, at the end when Binx dies, we see his human ghost and then he goes off to be reunited with his sister in the afterlife.
  • Anything with Binx, starting his first appearance trying bravely, but vainly, to save his little sister.
• Hollywoodland has a very beautiful scene between Eddie Mannix (played by Bob Hoskins) and his wife, Toni (played by Diane Lane) where he tells that if she had anything to do with the death of George Reeves that it didn't matter and he would make sure she was safe from any of the consequences.
• In Homeward Bound, when Shadow has fallen in the muddy hole, and can't quite get out, even with Chance and Sassy encouraging him. * sob*

"I love you, Shadow". The End. Shadow: You've learned all you need to know, Chance. Now all you need to learn is how to say goodbye.

• • Also when Peter tells him to stay at the ranch, and he has to sit there and watch as they leave. And he repears, "...Peter...wait...stay..." *cries*
  • The last scene. Peter thinks that Shadow didn't make it, after Chance and Sassy come back. He turns, brokenhearted, to go back inside... and Shadow slowly limps up the hill, and then he sees his Boy... and runs to him.
  • The little boy turns away. "He was too old, he couldn't make it. He was too old." Shadow limps over the hill, and just the emotion in his voice... "Peter." Cue wah-wahs.
    • "Peter, I worried about you so!" *SOB*
  • Does anybody else cry like a hysterical child when Sassy falls in the river? The panic and desperation in her voice and how the dogs run to save her breaks my heart. Especially when Shadow is devastated when he fails. Their reunion is so touching.
• Hotel Rwanda: The scene that really struck a chord was when the foreign internationals were being evacuated out of the hotel, especially Joaquin Phoenix's reaction "Christ, I feel so ashamed." And the arrival of the priests and nuns and foreign aid workers with all the Rwandan refugees, and then being told that they had to leave them all behind. Helped by a fantastic score.
• Hot Fuzz, in the scene where the viewer is led to believe that Danny has killed Nicholas.
  • Also when Danny gets shot, and then the police station blows up and Nicholas finds Danny, covered in blood, and starts crying, saying, "Everything's going to be fine."
  • Also Danny facing his dad in the pub on the subject of his mum: If she could see what you've become, I think she'd kill herself all over again.
• House of Flying Daggers: The last third or so of this movie, particularly the ending, when Mei is threatening to kill Leo with the dagger stuck in her chest if he attacks Jin, and then Jin throws away his sword and starts hobbling towards Leo, desperately yelling at her that he is closer to Leo than she is, so she cannot save him with her dagger, because he knows that if she pulls it out she will bleed to death. And then... yea.
• The first 5 minutes of How Green Was My Valley: "Can I believe my friends all dead, when their voices are still a-glory in my ears? No, and I will stand to say no again! There is no fence around time that has gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if only you can remember. And so I can close my eyes on the valley as it is today and see it as it was when I was a boy. Green it was, and possessed of the bounties of the earth. In all Wales, there was none so beautiful..." And then there was the end...
• The Human Centipede has one at the end where Jenny dies of the blood poisoning that has been worsening since the operation. In their current condition, they can't even speak to each other -- Lindsay can do nothing but grip her hand until she goes.
• And also from the 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Charles Laughton's shattering final line: "Why was I not made of stone like thee?"

I

• Neville being forced to kill Sam in I Am Legend. It gets even worse when Neville talks to the mannequin, telling it that he promised his friend he would.
  • The true ending of that movie, the one where Neville realizes that the vampires are the good guys and he is the monster of their legends, hence the title. But the studio forced the filmmakers to make a more generic kill-em-all ending.
    • The real ending also kind of makes the scene with Sam all the more tragic, when you realise Sam might still be in there somewhere.
• In Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, the protagonist, who knows he will die of cancer, has dedicated his remaining life to building a park for children. Before he dies, he sits slowly rocking back and forth on a swingset, singing a song called "Life is Brief".^[1] One of the most touching movie moments ever.
• Immortal Beloved:
  • "Ode to Joy"
  • The scene where Beethoven and Johanna miss each other at the hotel.
  • The part where they have to turn him around so that he would notice people are applauding. Doubly so because it really happened.
• In Bruges consists mostly of a bit of this, then a bit of Dead Baby Comedy, and then more of this. A few good examples are when Colin Farrel's character accidentally shoots a four-year old boy, and the profoundly tragic death of Brendon Gleeson's character. "Harry's here. I'm gonna die now."
• Inception. The contents of the safe in the third dream level is nothing short of horribly, joyfully heartrending.
  • The real intention behind the word, "disappointed" and his face as he sees the pinwheel and realizes that his father really did care for him...only to watch him die again.
    • Seconded. Cillian Murphy's face when he looks into the safe is absolutely devastating.
  • Mal's suicide. Mostly because of the raw, underplayed delivery of the line "Mal! No! Jesus Christ!"
  • The ending has aspects of this. You see Dom reunited with his children, happy for the first time in years. Then the camera pans over.
    • YMMV, as many (myself included) believe that the top falls over. The ending is left up to you.
  • When Arthur explains Mal to Aridane. The look on his face.... Just hurts...
• The President's speech in Independence Day.

"Is Mommy sleeping now?" "Yeah... Mommy's sleeping."

• There's an independent film called Ink, a dramatic fantasy about the forces of good and the forces of evil fighting over the soul of a man, using his estranged daughter, who's maybe about seven-years-old, as bait. It's a beautiful, heartwrenching movie, and the very definition of Tear Jerker.
• Go watch the lovely horse film International Velvet. Now try not to cry at the plane scene, where one of the riders' horses has to be put down when he freaks out on a transatlantic flight and they can't risk the other horses flipping out as well.
• There's the Anthony Hopkins/Cuba Gooding, Jr. film Instinct. That massacre scene absolutely ruined me.
• Inu No Eiga:Say, Marimo
• The documentary Invisible Girlfriend. This film focuses on Charles, a man who suffers from schizophrenia, and who believes that Joan of Arc is his Invisible Girlfriend. However, he also remembers a real bartender in New Orleans, a woman named Dee Dee, who he decides is his Invisible Girlfriend made real in flesh and blood. He decides to bicycle the 400 miles to New Orleans (he doesn't have a driver's license) to meet up with her again. While this could have ended any number of ways, what happens when he goes back to the bar where Dee Dee works is particularly heartwrenching.
• The death of Yinsen in Iron Man - especially since we learn that the family that he had been hoping to see again were dead -- and that he had always planned to go out this way, to be reunited with them. (Though if you didn't see that twist coming...) Even Tony looked choked at that one.
  • It turns out that it was the weapons manufactured by Tony's company that were responsible for the destruction of Yinsen's hometown and the murder of his family. This only serves to make Tony's redemption all the more noble and touching.
  • "You're all I've got, Pepper."
  • In the sequel, Tony complains that his father Howard Stark never cared about him. He's proven wrong when he comes across an old film reel that contains footage of Howard admitting that even though he's never shown it, he's always loved Tony and considers him his greatest invention.
• Is Anybody There? is sadistic when it comes to this. The scene that stands out as being specifically made to make people cry is Clarence feeling ridiculous, but still quietly and desperately asking for his wife in the mirror again and again.
  • Also, the end, when the old people each get their moments of happiness and Edward opens up and plays soccer with the mentally handicapped old man who he'd previosly yelled at, who is just so damn elated about it. Also, Edward's moment with the badger.
• George Bailey's close call in It's a Wonderful Life.

"I want to live again! I want to live again... please, God, let me live again."

• • And then the snow starts to fall again...
  • Oh, geez, George crying and desperately hugging his child, when he thinks he's going to lose them all, and he doesn't tell them... And another scene, when young!George tells the druggist he was about to poison a kid by accident... although that scene's still hard to watch, every time, what great acting form both of them...
  • The exchange between Clarence and George in the Pottersville cemetary.

Your brother Harry Bailey broke through the ice and died at the age of nine. That's a lie! Harry Bailey went to war! He got the Congressional Medal of Honor! He saved the lives of every man on that transport! Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn't there to save them because you weren't there to save Harry.

• • • And then George sweeps the snow away...
  • At the end, George watches his brother raising a glass to him, singing, and you think about how Harry is only there because of George's existence.
  • When George comes back home and is postively insane with the happiness of living, even with the prospect of going to jail. Then his kids show up and he runs up to hug them all. The contrast between this and the way he treated his kids the last time he was home is just beautiful.
  • 'Dear George, Remember no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the Wings!, Love Clarence' Gets me every time, then the bell ringing, Wink, atta boy Clarence.

J

• The ending of Jack. Come to think of it, Jack is a considerable cavalcade of depression from start to finish.

"What do I want to be when I grow up? Alive."

• • Made worse by the fact that the trailers made it out to be a Big-like comedy. "Hey, look! Robin Williams is playing a kid in adult's body! This is going to be hilarious!"
• Jacob's Ladder. There's one scene, in particular, where Jacob is crying over the death of his son that's like a punch in the gut. Tim Robbins does an incredible job of portraying the feelings of grief and anguish that his character feels.
  • Also the beautiful ending - Jacob realising he's dead and reuniting with his son. A great impact of Maurice Jarre's music here.
• Troy's death in Jarhead.

"We're still out there in the desert..."

• Throughout most of The Jazz Singer, Jakie Rabinowicz (Al Jolson) is estranged from his father, a Cantor at the synagogue, for not singing in the traditional family way. When he returns years later, his father is suddenly taken ill, and he has to choose between a big break on Broadway and becoming the Cantor at the synagogue. He chooses the latter, and delivers a heartbreaking rendition of Kol Nidre. His father suddenly sits up, exclaims "...we have a son again," and then passes away. The mother is especially heartbroken, since she'd believed Jakie's singing would help to bring a miracle to pass. Then - just when you think it couldn't possibly get any worse - his father's spirit materializes and touches him, accepting his atonement for disrespecting his family.
• The entirety of Journey of August King, but especially the ending. August King (Jason Patric) takes a runaway slave named Annalees (Thandie Newton) to safety. Along the way, he's lost everything that once mattered to him, and when her former master catches up with him, he destroys August's house to punish him. August tells him, "Two days ago I thought I was pretty well off, and now I have nothing. I've never been so proud."
• A French/German/English film called Joyeux Noel: The entire second half of the movie. (Hint: It's about WWI.) Particularly one part where a Scottish soldier, on Christmas morning, curls up with his brother's frozen corpse while weeping.
  • The German lieutenant picks up a Christmas tree and gets up over the trenchline, doing nothing but singing a Christmas carol with all his strength.
  • Possibly the most saddening scene in that movie is when, after the truce, the German soldier is running toward their trenches, and the Scots desperately try to warn him by shooting in the air before being forced to shoot him by their officers. Even worse, he was a French soldier disguised as a German whom the Germans smuggled behind their lines to visit his mother.
• The Joy Luck Club - The very last scene, when Jing-Mei meets her Long Lost Twin sisters in China, and has to tell them their mother has died. Becomes a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming when they seize on the fact that they have a sister, a family they never knew they had.
  • "妹妹(Little Sister)!" "姐姐(Big Sister!)" And that was enough...
• J.T. was a made-for-TV movie about an impoverished inner-city youth who adopts a stray cat for Christmas. He slowly nurses it back to health...and then a car runs it over and kills it.
• Michael Winterbottom's Jude the Obscure, especially when Jude's little boy hangs his two baby brothers and then himself "because we were to menny". And the rest of it is none too cheerful, either. And the ending of the book is even bleaker.
  • Jude finally breaks down and starts crying after reading the suicide note.
• Amy Adams. Junebug. The hospital scene. Rachel Weisz does not deserve her Oscar.
• Jurassic Park. More specifically, when John Hammond realizes that the park is dangerous and explains why he wanted to build it in the first place. The way he talks about his old flea circus is just so sad. The man is the archetypal adorable grandfather and you're watching the dream of his lifetime break right in front of his eyes.
• Just Like Heaven. Most of the 2nd half, and particularly when Elizabeth wakes up and... doesn't remember who David is. It gets better, but that didn't stop that moment from being a total tear jerker.

K

• Kal Ho Naa Ho is about a guy who falls in love with a girl, but convinces her that he is married so he can set her up with a friend of hers, because the guy has a heart condition and only weeks to live and wants his beloved to be happy.
• The 2010 remake of The Karate Kid, when Mr. Han talks about the accident that he caused, killing his wife and son. "I try and I try, but I can't remember what we were arguing about...I hope it was something important."

"Every year, I fix the car. Still fix nothing."

• A Korean movie named Keurosing (Crossing): There are no words to express how tragic this movie is. Not only does the protagonist's wife die of tuberculosis before he can reach her with free medicine, but also his son attempts to illegally cross Mongolia, dying in the cold desert night as he waited for his delayed father to pick him up. The father arrives just hours after his child's death.
• Kidulthood has a few, most notably Katie's suicide, and also Trife's final words saving Sam's life.
• Kick-Ass: "I was using low-velocity rounds, child." Everyone else in the cinema is laughing, and I'm weeping like a child. Even though it was the whole point of the training, he still couldn't bring himself to use full-power ammunition. What? It is just me? Oh well.
  • The low-velocity rounds? Maybe. But rest assured, " I love you too, Daddy. Sleep tight." completely destroyed me.
• The deaths of Sidney, Chang, and the title character in John Woo's The Killer.
  • The last one was especially wrenching since the Killer didn't even get to say goodbye to his love interest or die in her arms because he's just as blind as she is at this moment and they miss each other when groping for each other while crawling on the ground—a result of Sally Yeh and Chow Yun-Fat having to shoot on different days during the scene.
• Every single time (not yet King) George struggles to speak in The King's Speech. And in the scenes when he explains to Lionel that it was his (unintentionally) abusive father and brother and (intentionally) abusive nanny that all helped make him what he is.
• William reuniting with his father in A Knight's Tale.
  • Later:

Wat: 'Sir William Thatcher', that is your name. Your father heard that.

• Knock Knock Knocking at Heaven's Door: Watching Slim Pickens sitting by the edge of the river he had planned to float down as he slowly died from being gutshot in Pat Garret and Billy the Kid.
• Knowing. How so? Well it turns out the final prediction is an advance solar flare that'll kill every single living organism on Earth. So, how does the main character stop this? Well, he doesn't and the thing that actually happens is that his son is taken away by Aliens to repopulate a new world with another girl. Those two saying goodbye to each other is just so emotionally moving that it more than makes up for all the earlier chuckle worthy drama. Oh and AFTER this, he goes back to his sister and parents, where they all get incinerated WHILE HUGGING. Goddamn you, movie. * sniff*

L

• Ed Exley's speech about why he became a cop in L.A. Confidential. Not so much the speech itself (though it is moving), but the reaction he gets from his partner, the crooked but conflicted Jack Vincennes, when he asks why Jack became a cop. The normally ultra glib Vincennes is silent for a long, long moment before giving the devastated answer "I don't remember."
  • Also when Dudley kills Jack
• The ending of Ladder 49, when Joaquin Phoenix tells John Travolta that there's no way he can get out of the burning warehouse and to call the other firefighters back. He tells Travolta to take care of his wife and children for him. Then Travolta looks back at the rest of the firefighters on the scene with an anguished look on his face and gives the order to evacuate the building. The scene then cuts to Joaquin Phoenix's wife tending to their children at home, and she looks outside to see the chief's car pull up in front of her house and John Travolta and a priest walk out.
• One of the last scenes of The Lake House, when Kate puts the warning message for Alex in the mailbox, trying to prevent his death, and then just falls to her knees, holding onto the post and sobbing for him to be all right: "Don't try to find me. Come to the lake house. I'm here."
• The death of Littlefoot's mother in the original Land Before Time.
• The end of Lady Hamilton (American title, That Hamilton Woman):

"And then?" "Then, what?" "What happened after?" "There is no then. There is no after."

• Almost the entirety of The Laramie Project, which, given the subject matter, isn't too hard to imagine.
  • Specially when the students stand up in front of the Fred Phelps stand in and his group quietly... dressed up in white tunics, like angels.
• The Last Emperor when the old Pu Yi visits the Forbidden City, sees the little boy trying out the throne, and Pu Yi shows him the cricket. Then he's gone, and the camera pans to a tour guide telling a group of English-speaking tourists, that the last emperor of China died the year that scene took place, meaning he might have been a ghost (same with the cricket!), watching a little boy that might have been him, playing in the place that used to be his home
  • It drives the point home that after watching Pu Yi's sad and astonishing life for 2 hours, the guide summarises it in 2 or 3 sentences.
• The ending of Last Night, a movie about a group of people in Toronto spending their last day before the end of the world. In fact the whole film.
• Uncas's death and Alice's suicide in Last of the Mohicans. The looks they exchange after he's been wounded and they realize he's going to die are heartbreaking, and her expression before stepping of the cliff is hauntingly beautiful - sad but completely calm. And the entire sequence is hammered home by a perfect score.
  • Listed as a Awesome Moment for the last two minutes, the first five of the Last of the Mohicans finale are prime Tear Jerker material.
• Katsumoto's death in The Last Samurai was plenty sad already, but the real clincher was when he spoke his final words, shortly after glimpsing sakura trees near the battlefield (referring to a discussion he had with Capt. Algren earlier in the movie:
  • "Perfect...they are all...perfect..."
  • The entire surviving Imperial Army gathered around Katsumoto's body and, despite having suffered massive casualties during the battle, every last one of them knelt in respect.
• Watching Lawrence of Arabia won't make you cry, but there's a very high probability you'll feel down for a few days afterwards... The beginning and ending of the movie are sad and bittersweet enough to depress most people, and the last hour is particularly wrenching because of Ali's heartwrenching lines, from the angry "Surely you know the Arabs are a barbarous people. Barbarous and cruel. Who but they? Who but they?" after Lawrence has a Turkish garrison massacred, to his final exchange with Auda after he leaves Lawrence in Damascus.
  • NO PRISONERS!!!!!! NO PRISONERS!!!!!!
• The ending of Legally Blonde 2 when Bruiser is reunited with his mother.
• Lethal Weapon 3: Murtaugh shoots and kills Darryl, one of Nick's friends, and completely breaks down, trying to resuscitate him. Seeing Murtaugh, usually the most calm and collected cop, breaking down over it is a real shock. Similarly, a lot of the climactic fight of Lethal Weapon 4, when Murtaugh is trying to find Riggs, is similarly disturbing.
  • The boat scene in Letheal Weapon 3 where Riggs finally explodes about Murtaugh retiring
• Most scenes toward the end of Letters From Iwo Jima. When Kuribayashi is just lying on the beach, remembering being lonely "driving home alone". And when he kills himself with his souvenir pistol.
  • The 'elite' soldier's desertion, only to be carelessly shot anyway; the letter; the little kids singing on the radio; all of these are Tear Jerker moments, but the worst? "BANZAI! BANZAI!"
  • The moment at which Kuribayashi commits suicide, despite being essentially conjectural:

Kuribayashi: "Is this still Japanese soil?" Saigo: "Yes; this is still Japan."

• • Shimizu's death. After crying while privately confiding to Saigo that he doesn't want to die for nothing (a Tear Jerker moment in itself), he makes a pact to surrender with Saigo. He goes first and makes it, until a Jerkass soldier forced to be his guard shoots him so he can get off guard duty—just so he could die for nothing.
  • The ending, where the unsent letters all fall from newly found bag, as the voices of the soldiers who wrote them echo on the screen. Letters that were never sent or received, almost burned if not for Saigo.
• The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou: "I still wish I could breathe underwater."
  • In the climax of The Life Aquatic, Steve finally sees the Jaguar shark he's pursued throughout most of the film. With the entire crew of the Belafronte crammed into the small submersible and watching in awe, Steve says (in reference to when the shark ate his best friend, Estaban), "I wonder if it remembers me." When he says this, he starts crying uncontrollably, prompting the entire crew to put their hands on his shoulders in support. Bill Murphy's acting sells the scene.
• The Bittersweet Ending of Life Is Beautiful.
  • The entire second half of the movie in the concentration camp has a number of tear jerker moments. One is of the heartwarming kind when Guido finds a microphone for a loud speaker and repeats his trademark line to his wife, Dora, "Buongiorno, Principessa!" (Italian for Good Morning, Princess!). A second one comes from knowing that Guido dies to save his wife and son.
  • The soldiers take Guido away to shoot him, and he, knowing his son is watching, marches off with a funny walk and a smile on his face. And then...::bang::.
    • "And now-" "Mama!" He's alive, Dora!
    • Dora's plea is especially sad when you realize that she knows what that would mean for her.

Dora: My husband and son are on that train. I want to get on that train. Did you hear me? I want to get on that train.

• In Little Miss Sunshine when Dwayne realizes he's color blind and can't achieve his dream of flying jets. His subsequent breakdown was heartrending to watch, especially when you consider how emotionless he's been up until then. Then it was followed closely by a Tear Jerker Crowning Moment of Heartwarming when his little sister Olive simply and silently sits down and puts her arm around him, prompting him to pull himself together and go back to the family.
  • Abigail Breslin confiding in her grandfather. "I don't wanna be a loser."
  • Another beautiful one is the scene right after the grandfather dies, when they're on the highway and Olive asks if they think there's a heaven.
• The 1995 version of A Little Princess, when Sarah is dragged kicking and screaming away from her amnesiac father, begging him to remember her. Turned into happy tears when he remembers her at the last moment, running out into the rain and screaming her name.
  • Before that, after Sarah's father is believed dead and she's spending her first night in the attic, "Poppa?"
    • And she does the only thing she can, drawing the 'protection circle' from her story with a bit of chalk on the floor, and huddling there. It makes me just sob.
  • Sarah's " we are all princesses" monologue. Even though she's lost everything, she keeps her hope and belief that she has worth.

Sara:I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty, or smart, or young. They're still princesses. All of us.

• • When she calms down the litle girl that's crying about her mother and she gives the speech about how their mothers are beautiful angels in heaven watching over them. Waterworks.
• Beth's death scene in Little Women.

Beth: If God wants me with Him, there is none who will stop Him. I don't mind. I was never like the rest of you, making plans about the great things I'd do. I never saw myself as anything much. Not a great writer like you. Jo: Beth, I'm not a great writer. Beth: But you will be. Oh, Jo, I've missed you so. Why does everyone want to go away? I love being home. But I don't like being left behind. Now I am the one going ahead. I am not afraid. I can be brave like you.

• Though mostly a ginormous action film, The Longest Day had at least one tear-jerking moment, when one slightly mad Frenchman walks up to the British troops coming off Juno beach, dressed in his Sunday best, offering champagne and simply saying "Welcome! Welcome to you all!"
  • The shot of the nuns marching fearlessly through the battle to aid the wounded is pretty powerful.
• Paulie's scene on the roof at the end of Lost and Delirious.
• The plot-thread of Love Actually in which the rather shy, lonely Laura Linney finally gets together with her long-time crush... only for him to abandon her when she has to interrupt their evening to calm down her mentally-ill brother.
  • Even worse: Emma Thompson discovering her husband's infidelity while a sad Joni Mitchell song plays very sadly.
  • The scene where Liam Neeson's character breaks down and cries over the death of his wife is just so much worse now.
  • The little boy hugging Liam Neeson, all smiles... Gahh!
  • The opening scene of people greeting each other at the airport, with the narration "When the planes hit the Twin Towers, none of the phone calls from people on board were messages of hate or revenge. They were all messages of love."
• The Lovely Bones: "I wish you all a long and happy life." Damn you, Saoirse Ronan with your big blue eyes and your acting talent. *cries uncontollably*
• How is Love Story not on here? God, that ending...

M

• My Life As A Dog is a story based on an autobiography of a boy who gets bustled from home to home when his mother falls ill and eventually becomes slightly abusive. The story is tender and very well-acted on the children and adults' parts.
• The Magdalen Sisters. The very last minute of the film will stay with you for the rest of your life.
• And speaking of Anderson, that singalong to the devastatingly sad Aimee Mann song in Magnolia.
• The scene in The Majestic, where Peter goes to tell Harry that he's not Luke:

I'm not... I'm not ready to say goodbye."

• The "Slipping Through My Fingers" duet between Sophie and Donna in Mamma Mia!!. Especially when Sophie asks her mother to give her away at the wedding which also makes it a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming. This was then followed only a few minutes later by Donna singing The Winner Takes All to Sam.
• Man on Fire: The ending where Creasy dies. The song had been played other times in the movie, but right there it just fits so well. And the shot of the mountain from inside the car, that goes still right at the moment of his death.
• Another Jim Carrey tearjerker is Man on the Moon, in which he plays the infamously eccentric Andy Kaufman. The scene that tends to bring people to tears comes as he is wasting away from lung cancer and goes down to the Philippines to partake in so-called "psychic surgery" as his very last resort; as he is laid down for the treatment, he sees that it's a con accomplished with sleight-of-hand. Realizing he's doomed, he laughs. The image dissolves from this to him lying in a casket at his funeral.
• A fair bit of The Man Who Fell to Earth is tearjerking. Notable example? When Mary-Lou asks what Thomas's children are like, he replies with a mournful gaze across a lake, "They're like children. They're just like children."
  • And then there's the ending: Thanks to the government's intervention and his own weakness, Thomas is left an alcoholic holding on to thin strands of hope that will never come to pass -- his planet and family are dead and will never hear his goodbye, and no one loves him on Earth. And We Are As Mayflies to him... Tears? How about rage?
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It's a bit hard to explain why if you haven't seen it, since it all just fits perfectly. Suffice to say, a man goes against all his principles and then has to live with other people praising him for it—or did he?
  • Perhaps it's because for all his principles and achievements in civilizing the West, Senator Stoddard realizes it wouldn't have been possible without men like Tom Doiphon. Meanwhile, Stoddard gets all the acclaim and gets the girl while while Doniphan dies alone and forgotten.
• The last parts of Marley and Me.
• The end of Martian Child where David talks his adoptive son Dennis (who was abandoned by his parents and locked into a delusion that he was actually a Martian sent to earth) down from the roof by telling how stupid his parents must have been to abandon him, how special Dennis is and how much David loves him will bring an immediate tear to the eye of anyone who lived through a childhood of loneliness and abandonment and just couldn't understand why.
• The Marx Brothers: Harpo Marx isn't the type of person one expects to be on this list. The horn-honking mute womanizer is often responsible for all the Crowning Moments of Funny that Groucho isn't responsible for, but there's a reason that they gave him the name Harpo. This scene is bipolar in its very nature, and most of their movies had moments exactly like this; one minute Harpo will be up to his old antics, but as soon as he sits down at that harp, the world stands still in awe of his innate skill.
  • What makes these scenes all the more poignant is that not only is he actually playing, but he never took a lesson in his life. He would later try to take lessons from professional concert harpists, but they, too, would instead find themselves watching his, dumbstruck at how good he was already.
  • With all due respect to Harpo's obvious talent, part of the reason professional lessons would have been of no benefit is that Harpo's technique, being entirely self-taught, was very unorthodox and completely "wrong" compared to the way professional harpists manipulate the instrument. So, for Harpo to gain anything from those teachers, he would have to first "unlearn" his self-taught technique, and start practically from scratch learning to play the harp "correctly." And in the end, he probably wouldn't have been as good.
  • Harpo has another uncharacteristically emotional scene in The Cocoanuts. Polly is crying by herself when Harpo wanders into the shot with his usual wide-eyed expression. He watches her for a moment without her noticing, then pulls a lollipop out of his coat and taps her on the arm with it, offering it to her. She looks between him and the lollipop a few times, then just breaks down, hugs him and cries on his shoulder. Given Harpo's usual interactions with women, this scene was heartbreakingly sweet.
• Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Mary Shelley'sFrankenstein has quite a few moments, but the one that got me were the scenes where the creature helps the family and has the conversation with the blind old man only to have it ripped away because the rest of the misunderstanding family. Played beautifully by Robert De Niro.
• The ending of The Mask of Zorro especially Diego's death
  • Summed up beautifully by what Alejandro's Book End story to his son, whom he named after his dead brother.

Alejandro: "Whenever brave deeds are rememebered, your grandfather will live on."

• Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World contains a couple. Firstly, as the HMS Surprise is rounding Cape Horn, one of the seaman Wharley is washed overboard whilst trying to secure a flapping sail to one of the masts. As he swims towards the wreckage of the mast, still attached to the ship by it's rigging, it is revealed that the wreckage is pulling the ship under, threatening to sink her and kill all her crew. The Captain Aubrey must make the decision to cut the ropes and sacrifice Wharley to save the ship, doing so along with the Ship's Master, and also Wharley's best friend Nagle. As Jack cuts the last rope and the wreckage floats free, we see Wharley, still swimming, disappear behind a large wave. This is accompanies by Vaughan Williams "Fantasia on a Theme", and made even more powerful as the scene cuts to the rest of the crew below decks celebrating their survival, oblivious to Wharley's death. If you're not teary eyed by now, we then see Nagle sorting Wharley's possetions and shutting them in his sea chest, including a sketch he had done for his sweetheart with the words "Home Again" (there seems to be something in my eye just typing this).
  • The aftermath of the final battle is also a tearjerker (with Vaughan Williams again contributing). We see the dead lined up on the deck being sown into their hammocks, including Nagle, and also teenage Midshipman Calamy, just promoted to Acting Lieutenant. As is tradition, they are sown into their Hammocks by their messmates, and Calamy's friend and fellow Midshipman, 12 year old Blakeny looks on, before asking if he can do the final stitches. Having lost his arm earlier, he is unable to, and needs help from "Awkward Davis", a large, dangerous brute, but incredibly loyal to his Captain, who does so without words. We then get the funeral service, where Aubrey (played by Russell Crowe) reads out the names of the dead, stumbling slightly at the ships Sailing Master, Allen, then choking as he reads out "Peter Miles Calamy, Lieutenant".
  • The suicide scene. Oh man, the suicide scene, and his choice to let it be witnessed by the one person, the one twelve-year-old boy, who's been nice to him, and saying goodbye... * sniff*
• The Matrix Trilogy. "It is done".
  • "Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo." Considering that it's Smith who echoes one of the last things the Oracale said to Neo just makes it all the more beautiful...A sort moment where you realize that Smith has been wrong about everything he ever said.
  • The endings of the "Beyond", "Program" and "World Record" shorts in The Animatrix. The former is notable because it could probably stand on its own, and still be just as depressing. Any more would be a spoiler.
  • The Animatrix story The Second Renaissance after the human armies have been defeated and humanity's been tortured into submission. We get the image of a child dancing in the snow, what we can see on a pullout as nuclear fallout in a destroyed landscape, until he hears his parents calling him, and he runs toward them giggly until his parents morph into Agents and reach out to drag him into the white door (i.e.- the matrix) while he screams and tries to escape.
  • The countless of robot skeletons in imagery clearly remniscent of the Nazi death camps is seriously powerful too, along with the imagery of helpless androids and gynoids beaten to death by human mob. That war made both sides into victims and bastards.
  • One shot, the single short montage shot in which the skeletal, terribly humanlike robotic Horseman of the Apocalypse, still riding over the twisted-metal remains of his fallen compatriots, simply comes apart at the seams and dissolves into scrap—and the next machine we see is a full-blown Sentinel, a many-eyed tentacular machine that is utterly inhuman. The complete abandonment of the human form, the complete loss of what made the machines justified in the first place.
• The Matthew Shepard Story: The whole story of Matthew Shepherd is sad enough, but towards the end, when Shepherd is in the hospital and a cop is describing how she found him, she mentions how his face was bruised and bloody except for two clear streaks coming from his eyes...
• The majority of Mean Creek, but particularly after George drowns. Whether you think he was a bully or simply misunderstood, you can't deny that he didn't deserve that.
• Meet Me in St. Louis, when Judy Garland's character was trying to put on a brave face about the impending move for her younger sister's sake and then the kid ran out into the yard, crying, and started destroying all her snow people because she didn't want anybody else to have them if she couldn't.
• Memoirs of a Geisha. Loss of family, spending your life trying to impress somebody who might not even know why, the dying art, the ruined town, former friends' lives ruined... Somehow, it's even worse seeing it than reading it, and the Happy Ending is surprisingly depressing. There's something indescribably tear-jerking about watching what's supposed to be this beautiful, mysterious world transformed into something cheap and gaudy. After watching a movie about how hard the main characters worked to maintain this illusion, how dedicated they were, the sheer enormity of all they lost and gave up because of it –- it's seriously depressing to see it all reduced to a tourist attraction, and to realize that all of that sacrifice came to nothing in the end.
• Henrik Vanger finding out what happened to Harriett in Men Who Hate Women.
• Midnight Cowboy. It's possible that for some time, you'll get depressed when hearing a harmonica.
  • Joe holding Ratso in his arms, as the bus pulls into Miami at the end.
• A Mighty Heart
  • Most obvious is the anguished, torturous Howl of Sorrow when Marianne watches the video of Daniel's execution.
  • The short scene of Daniel and Marianne's wedding, especially when knowing his eventual fate.
  • "If you could say one thing to your husband now, what would you tell him?" "I love you."
  • The entire film. Anyone who's even slightly aware of the real-life story behind it knows how it ends, which can make watching the characters desperately trying to find him both heart-breaking and somewhat futile.
• A Mighty Wind: Mitch and Micky's kiss at the end of the tribute concert
  • And the three-band performance of the titular song immediately after is a Crowning Momentof Heartwearming, to boot.
• Million Dollar Baby. It would be an awesome boxing flick. But then comes paralysis, followed by euthanasia... Really depressing.
• Why has no-one mentioned Millions yet? Its full of downer moments but the biggest one is when Damian runs off with the remaining money with intent to burn it. He has already seen it tear his already dysfunctional family further apart and has had their house bombarded with beggars and news reporters. Over the train tracks, he sees another saint (he sees saints throughout the book) when he asks her what her miracle was she says. "I made you." it is his dead mother. The conversation they have is heart rending. And then, to top it off, his brother Anthony arrives just too late to see her.
• Milk. The candlelight vigil at the end.
  • '"I ask this... If there should be an assassination, I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out - - If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door... And that's all. I ask for the movement to continue. Because it's not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power... it's about the "us's" out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us's. Without hope, the us's give up - I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you... You gotta give em' hope... you gotta give em' hope."'
• The Downer Ending of The Mission, specially the death of Father Gabriel. If not the whole damn movie.
• The "If I Didn't Care" scene in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, during which Delysia - who is singing the titular song, and who has been bubbly and seemingly superficial and uncaring about the consequences of her multiple infidelity throughout most of the movie - finally understands exactly what it is that she's giving up; her only chance at being loved and happy - with Michael, the poor pianist who truly loves her and whose heart she has broken - in favour of her superficial, career-advancing flings with her wealthier but ultimately uncaring other lovers. You can see and hear the character's heart breaking right up there on stage; her voice cracking is bad enough, but especially affecting is the moment she realizes she can't keep singing and stares helplessly at Michael, who takes over from her with equal emotion. Fortunately, it all ends happily.
• A lot of scenes in Moon can be real tearjerkers:

"I wanna go home!"

• • When Sam finds out that his wife died a long time ago, and he had no idea.

" How did mommy die, sweetheart?"

• • "We're not programs, GERTY. We're people."
  • The entire soundtrack is a combination of this and Awesome Music.
  • The ending: Sam #6 going back to Earth as Sam #5 watches from the crashed rover, and Sam #7 waking up....
• Several scenes in Moon Child. Overall, it's a pretty sad movie. There's Toshi's death scene where Sho is screaming his lungs out. There's Kei's scene in prison where he is asking the inspector to throw him out into the sunlight so that he can die (with an apathetic face). There's Sho begging Kei over the phone to come save him because he doesn't know what to do anymore. But the absolute worst is Sho's "death" scene, where he has just been shot in a showdown against a traitorous friend and is bleeding on the floor. Kei comes in several seconds to late, shoots Son in anger, and holds onto Sho while he keeps coughing up blood. All he can do is scream at him not to leave him as Sho makes their signiture salute and lays there drowning in his own blood. For a movie about vampires and yakuza, there sure are a lot of these moments.
  • The scene where Yi-Che, who has been relatively mute for most of the movie, finally speaks.
• The Chinese film Mother Love Me Once Again is the story of a single mother and the child she bore from a rich man who loved her then left her.
• Satine's death in the end of Moulin Rouge. Probably because other than the above, it's a textbook happy ending.
  • The opera it is mostly based on is even more emotionally manipulative at the end.
  • The end of the original 1952 version: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec lies on his deathbed, after having become an acclaimed artist, and as he realizes that all he ever wanted was the simple days at the cabaret, the dancers from the first scene come back to dance one last time before his eyes, then fade out as he dies.
• Mrs. Doubtfire
  • The initial argument scene is very upsetting... yeah his character was irresponsible... but Robin, her hero, is getting yelled at. And anyone whose parents have had a divorce have probably cried too.
  • The ending. Unlike the rest of the film, it's not funny at all, but it is still a great ending. Robin Williams has given no shortage of proof that he is a very versatile actor, but there's no greater feat than that. You see a man who you know is dressed as a woman, and your first instinct is to laugh, and as though that wasn't enough, you've just spent the whole film laughing at the character. Yet somehow, the way the character delivers a moving speech intended for the children of parents who divorced has a way of making you sit up straight, ignore his crossdressing and actually want to listen and cheer at what he has to say. When you see that sort of "one in a lifetime" scene, it makes you say, that's talented acting, directing and writing at work.
• Understanding the "true meaning" of Mulholland Drive turns a weird, interesting oddity into a profoundly disturbing, heartbreaking... well, Tear Jerker. The whole film can be summed up as: That thing you fear most, that eats away at you at every waking moment and haunts your nightmares? It's real.
• For some this may be considered Narm, but for some people the scene from The Mummy Returns where Rick and Imhotep are hanging off the edge of this... Cliff thing, and if they let go- they're in Hell. Evy and Anakh Su-Namun are watching them... When Evy comes to Rick's rescure even though he tells her to run that's part one. Part two is when Imhotep begs for help, but Anakh Su-Namun yells "No", and runs. Imhotep just watches, then he smiles, and let's go . After everything he had done for her, and she abandones him. * Sniffs*
  • The scene where Evie dies. Rick's breakdown, Alex's heartbroken "Mum?", and Jonathan of all people being forced to be the strong one and comfort the others after he's just watched his sister murdered. Heartbreaking.
• Tiny Tim in A Muppet Christmas Carol. Damn you, Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. Tiny Tim always... always liked watching the ducks on the river... Seeing the empty chair, the hat, the crutch, and the little reprise of "Bless us All"...

Ebenezer Scrooge: It's so quiet. Why's it so quiet, Spirit?

• • Kermit/Bob Cratchit's speech about meetings and partings, and the Reality Subtext of Muppet Christmas Carol being the first film done by the Muppets following the deaths of Jim Henson and Richard Hunt.
  • The song "When Love Is Gone", sung during the breakup between Scrooge and the woman he loved is so heart-renchingly sad it was cut from the DVD edition. Apparently too many people were sobbing like Rizzo at the end of the scene to make it through the rest of the movie...
  • When Beaker gives Scrooge is scarf as a gift. Michael Caine's reaction is great. This is probably the first gift anyone has ever given Scrooge, ever.
  • When the Muppets did a tribute for Henson just after his death, they are told in a letter by an absent Kermit (Kermit was voiced by Henson) to get a show ready for some guy named Jim, who the Muppets have never heard of. After a series of video testimonials from various stars about how wonderful he was, having a usual wacky show ready to go off, they find letters to Kermit written by children saying how sorry they are...and then they realize that Jim is dead. After a moment of quiet shock, Fozzy suddenly says "Cancel it. Cancel everything. We can't do a tribute for a guy as great as this, not with whoopie cushins and penguins." The others agree, but Robin speaks up, saying "Uncle Kermit thought we could do it. Maybe this Jim Henson isn't really gone. Maybe he's still somewhere inside us, believing in us!" and you can tell by his voice that little Robin is desperately trying to believe his own words. He starts singing the wonderfully moving song "Just One Person" and is slowly joined by Scooter, then Gonzo, then others until the entire Muppet cast is singing about how maybe if you believe in yourself, others will believe in you "and maybe even you can believe in you, too." Tears were already flowing...when Kermit walks in the door and quietly praises "What a good song. I knew you guys could do the tribute for Jim." It was made clear that the Muppets and puppeteers were not giving up on the joy they brought people, they were not giving Kermit up, and that they would keep doing it all in Jim's memory. Such a beautiful, beautiful tribute...
  • In Muppet Treasure Island, Long John is forced to aim his pistol at Jim, and despite being the movie's ruthless villain, can't fight his tears of regret, let alone shoot the kid.
• Muriel's mother in Muriels Wedding arrives late to the wedding and is stood in the back. When Muriel walks directly past without seeing her, her mother starts to cry. Cue tissues.
• No love for PBS's Masterpiece Theater's My Boy Jack? Especially this scene...
• My Dog Skip: The scene where the cute little doggie gets hit in the head with a shovel.
• My Girl
  • The funeral scene. Made all the more heartbreaking by Vada's apparent denial of her friend's death—she runs right up to his open casket and breaks down, asking if he wants to play with her, and where his glasses are.

"Put on his glasses. He can't see without his glasses!"

• • The scene after Vada has accepted the situation, and encounters her friend's mother in town. She knows her friend is in good hands.

" Don't worry about Thomas J. My mother will take care of him."

• My Name Is Khan is one of the saddest movies ever. Made all the more heartrending because the main character is autistic and cannot understand the grief of the people around and the sheer wretchedness of the events as they unfold. So the viewer is forced to feel extra grief to make up for what he can't fee. When his stepson is killed by classmates worked into a fury over 9/11, you start crying. Then when his wife blames him because he is Muslim and she and her son were Hindi and tells him to leave, your heart shatters into tiny pieces. And then when you can see that he really doesn't get just why it's so bad and just what it's done to everyone, it's like a giant foot has come and crushed those tiny shards of your heart into dust. Fortunately, the ending lifts your spirits a little.
• The ending of the film Lo. Justin meets April for one last time, and she convinces him that they can't be together since they would be hunted down, even though Justin insists he still loves her and that she still loves him. As she's leaving, Justin looks away, then back and sees the demon Lo, gazing at him sadly before disappearing. Lo was April and it is terribly heartbreaking.
• In Kung Fu Panda 2, the best example is Po finally remembering Shen's attack on his villiage, especially the final moments when he remembers drifting away before seeing his mother run trying to lure Lord Shen away.
• Mozart and the Whale thrives on this. Donald and Isabel are both autistic and the only ones who can understand each of them are each other. And with that, they are clumsy, awkward, and shy to the point of terror and each of their obsessions are constantly running into each other. They end up Happily Married, but boy do they earn it.
• My Little Pony: The Movie: The scene towards the end, when Paradise Estate is about to be buried by the Smooze. The Little Ponies there are all on the roof, ready to Face Death with Dignity. The adult ponies get the foals to close their eyes so they won't have to see it. Mercifully, Megan's group returns with the Flutter Ponies and the day is saved, but still. Yeah, that was upsetting.

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• Offside, the movie about the Iranian women trying to sneak into the World Cup qualifying match, when the First Girl tells everyone on the bus why she was at the football match. And then they light the sparklers.
• All of Okuribito (Departures); it's about a guy who learns how to clean, dress, and make up bodies for burial, in front of their families. Naturally, the biggest tear jerker comes at the end when Daigo claims the body of his long-Disappeared Dad and finally remembers his face.
• Om Natten (At Night), a short Danish film nominated for the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film: It depicts the lives of three young women living with cancer. One of them is about to undergo a risky procedure that will either save her or kill her. She breaks down in front of her father, saying she doesn't want to go through with it, and she's sorry she can't be stronger or brave like he wants her to.

P

• Pay It Forward
  • when the kid dies.
  • The candles.
• Penny Serenade (1941) with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.
• At the end of the 2003 version of Peter Pan with Aunt Millicent. "Then I... am your mother".
  • Then there's Mr. Darling trying to contain his immense relief that his children are okay in the end and tries to act formal, only shaking John's hand... which backfires in them hugging each other in tears.

• The ending of Philadelphia, the Tom Hanks movie about a man dying of AIDS. If that sounds like a tear jerking combination on its own, the movie ends with home movies of the just-dead guy as a kid. Ouch...
• The Pianist. This movie is visually stunning, and hits home several times.
• The Piano. The scene with the axe.
• The BBC documentary "The Pink Floyd And Syd Barrett Story", of all movies. When they played "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond" at the end they very nearly had me in tears...
• The final church scene in Places in the Heart.
• The Plague Dogs. Just the entire freaking film. It was made for people who want to commit suicide but just lack the courage to pull the trigger.
• The Polar Express
  • The scene where the boy tries to believe so he can hear the beautiful bell's sound, where he finally sees Santa Claus, when he gets chosen to receive the first gift of Christmas, when he loses the bell and subsequently regains it, and when the epilogue reveals that only he can hear the bell's "sweet, sweet sound", as can those who truly believe.
  • Five words: When Christmas Comes To Town.
• Prayers for Bobby: No matter what your opinion on the film's controversial theme, the Griffith family's heart-wrenching devastation to the news that Bobby committed suicide has got to have a lasting impact for any viewer.
• The Prestige... the People Jars, Borden's adorable daughter who looks like something out of an American Girl doll catalogue, the awkward brotherly moments, Borden ready to be hanged, the deaths of the two guys' respective wives... 'Which knot did you tie?'... BUT MOST OF ALL, THE BIRDS. They make very clear that when they look like they've just crushed a poor innocent canary? They have.
  • The part with Tesla talking about obsessions can be really jarring for who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder.
• "Today-ay-ay I consider myself-elf-elf the luckiest man-an-an on the face of the earth-rth-rth." --Lou Gehrig, Pride Of The Yankees.
• The ending of Leon/The Professional. Leon's far from a good man, given his job, and there's a certain grim satisfaction in seeing the villain brought low, but Leon getting shot after thinking he killed the villain, and having to kill both of them with grenades to finish the job, leaving poor Matilda all alone as well was pretty harsh.
  • "This is for Matilda." Cue tears.
• A documentary called Promises. It was about a group of Palestinian and Israeli children, who are brought together and become friends through the film. Many of them change their entire views on the whole situation. At the end, the filmmakers bring them back together many years later, as young adults. One of the Israeli boys was in the military and wasn't allowed to participate. A few other children from different sides refused. One girl expressed interest in becoming a suicide bomber. Many of them think it was all a mistake. There's a scene where one kid, who really misses having been friends with the others, dissolves into tears. Many of my classmates did, too.
• Both of the scenes in The Proposition that involve Sam singing "Peggy Gordon", an old Irish drinking song. The first time is intercut with a scene of Mikey, a mentally-handicapped teenager, being brutally flogged. The second time he sings it, he's raping Emily Watson's character. There's also something sad about watching Arthur die, even if he deserves it.
• Pump Up the Volume: Particularly the scene when the suicidal nerd calls up Christian Slater live on his radio show. But there's a good moment as Christian Slater commences his final broadcast: he's playing the depressing song "Everybody Knows", but it's a triumphant, major-key, full-power march version of the song.
• The Pursuit of Happyness: The scene in which Gardner himself is told that he has successfully made it through his training and is now officially a broker with Dean Witter. His face goes blank with shock and relief and then the tears well up in his eyes as he realizes that he and his son are no longer going to be homeless.

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• Rabbit Proof Fence: Molly and Daisy finally make it home but Gracie didn't. Molly apologizing to her grandmother for having lost her is so heartbreaking.
• Rambo
  • Rambo's outpour of repressed grief in the finale of First Blood is said by David Morell, the author of the original novel, to have saved the marriages of many emotionally broken Vietnam War Veterans, who finally learnt how to cry again.
  • The massacre of the Karen Villagers in the fourth Rambo film, as well as the bittersweet finale when the titular old warrior looks over the carnage he has caused. The music climaxes when Sarah finally finds Michael, symbolizing that Rambo and the others had done their jobs ("This is what we do. Who we are."). Yet it immediately becomes somber and mournful, with Sarah staring tearfully at Rambo and the others, who all remain silent and stoic. She's crying because she realizes that it's her fault that they had to go through this. They had to risk their lives, kill countless others, and will endure nightmares for the rest of their lives (as Rambo does early in the movie). Yet, they don't even ask for a simple "Thank you". That in itself is a Tear Jerker (doubly so because many - particularly the critics - just don't get it. This is a movie about soldiers, nothing more and nothing less).
    • Brian Tyler's musical motif "Battle Adagio." It would take one with a heart of stone to not get teary eyed to this theme.
• Rango has one in Rango's Heroic BSOD, after Rattlesnake Jake calls him out on his tall tales and runs him out of town. He wanders alone across the desert night with a lost and forlorn look on his face, until he gets to the highway. Rango finds his imaginary friends, then sits there watching the traffic for a bit before finally saying to himself "Who am I? ...I'm nobody."
• The scene in Ray where Ray is in rehab, going into withdrawal.
• Red Dawn was a Narmful movie in some places, but Erica's death scene, where she asks Jed to kill her so she won't be interrogated, and he breaks down and when the mortally-wounded Jed sits on an old swing set and holds his likewise-dying brother, telling him, "Daddy'll be here soon, Matty" always get me.
• Reign Over Me, featuring an amazing dramatic performance by Adam Sandler
  • When the lawyer showed Charlie the photo of his dead family. It felt really good when the judge (Donald Sutherland) tells him point-blank to shut up.
• Repo! The Genetic Opera
  • "Didn't Know I'd Love You So Much".
  • "Cromaggia". It may have been Blind Mag's Awesome Moment, but it's a gut-wrenching one.
• Requiem for a Dream is a film about failure and despair. It may not make you cry, or even tear up at all. But chances are that something inside of you will die watching it, and it may be a while before it grows back.
• Reservoir Dogs. It doesn't really incite tears, but the sadness at the tragic conclusion lingers for days. There are also scenes earlier in the film showcasing Mr Orange's agony and terror and Mr White's attempts to comfort him that really tug at the heartstrings.
• Return of the Living Dead has the scene where Frank, upon realizing that his time was coming because of Trioxin, walks to a burning oven, kisses his wedding ring, hangs it on a switch, offers a final prayer to the Lord for forgiveness for what he's about to do, climbs into the oven, and shuts himself in. The scene makes even the background music (titled "Burn the Flames", for those wondering) sound poignant.
• Return to Paradise has you root for one character's salvation throughout the whole movie, just to see him get hanged in the end. It is a very emotional, brutal and intense scene, that makes my waterworks overflow by just thinking of it.
• The ending of Ring 0: Birthday. As a prequel, you know it's coming, but that doesn't make the ending any less powerful and gut-wrenching.
• Road to Perdition
  • When Sullivan dies.
  • When the Father has to go on the killing spree in the rain. It's only sad if you realize he's given up his 1 shot at redemption to ensure they don't come after his son. But realized sadness still counts!
    • "I'm glad it's you." Holy crap...
    • Not only is Sullivan giving up his chance at redemption, but he is gunning down the man that he loves like a father. The most heartbreaking part is when the camera shows his face close up moments before he guns down Rooney, and it's twisted in pain and he is clearly holding back the tears.
  • Also, to an almost greater degree, the end of the film version of Lone Wolf and Cub, which inspired it.
• The Robe has a pretty sad ending. The film is about a Roman who buys Jesus' robes after his crucifixion. The main character and his wife/girlfriend are executed at the end. However, this is represented by the couple walking out of the courtroom while the background fades into Fluffy Cloud Heaven behind them. Needless to say, it's a real Tear Jerker.
• The Nazi propaganda cartoon, from the Rocketeer, counts as both this trope and nightmare fuel. Particularly the scenes of invading America. Expressed by a burning American flag falling to the ground and the American eagle being replaced by the Nazi one. Here it is.
  • When the mobster fully admits to being a criminal, but would still rather die than work for a Nazi.
• The death of Mickey in Rocky III and later Apollo Creed in Rocky IV.
  • Admit it, you at least teared up when, upon against incredible odds, winning by a margin of one second the Heavyweight Title from Apollo Creed, Rocky gives a shout-out to his wife watching at home: "Yo Adrian! I DID IT!!"
  • This troper couldn't feel anything for the Rocky-sequels, but teared up at the end of the first one. All he wanted all along was to "go the distance" and not get KO'd. So he doesn't even want to know if he has won. When the points are read all he does is search for "ADRIAAAAN!"
• For me there's a real tearjerker scene towards the end of Ronja the Robber's Daughter. After Mattis has repeated "I have no child" as a mantra during the summer and he is finally reunited with Ronja, he holds her in his arms and cries: "I have my child!"
• Richie's suicide attempt in The Royal Tenenbaums always leads to tears. Beautifully shot, and especially painful considering the haunting Elliott Smith song (and the implications that go along with it).
  • Oh my god yes. And also Royal's death, with Chas holding his hand in his final moments, after they have finally bonded.
• The Rugrats Movie: Near the end of the movie, Tommy Pickles had practically lost it all: he's lost in the middle of the woods with his brother, Dil, and his friends have abandoned him because he wanted to protect his brother over sticking with them. When Tommy tries to take care of Dil during the storm, Dil's newborn greediness kicks in, drinking the last bottle of milk down, then hogs a blanket Tommy was trying to share. When the two rip it and Dil finds it funny, Tommy snaps, tossing away his "'Sponsertility" (a pocket watch Stu Pickles gave him), then dragging Dil out into the rain blaming him for everything wrong that's happened since they got lost. Tommy plans to dump a jar of banana baby food for the circus monkeys to come in and take Dil away, but before he does, Dil looks up at Tommy in pity and fear: his big brother was scaring him! When Tommy sees himself in a puddle, he realizes what he's become and embraces Dil, apologizing for what he was going to do. Tommy, then, takes them back to their little shelter, retrieves the pocket watch and falls asleep with Dil, singing a small version of a lullaby Stu and Didi were singing in the beginning.

"Dil wants the monkeys, and the monkeys want the nanners, everybody gets what they want!"

• In Rumble Fish the final showdown between The Motorcycle Boy and the police, followed by Rusty James letting the titular fish free into the river... where they stop fighting, just like his big brother promised.
  • The book is even sadder--Rusty James is arrested before he can release the fighting fish, and they die on the floor amid the broken glass and the shallow puddles of water.
• Russian Ark is the first full-length single-continuous-shot movie (they got it in one take -- surely that counts as a Awesome Moment for everyone involved) whose plot consists of an unnamed Russian guy falling through a hole in time to wander through the halls of the Hermitage -- the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg -- observing chronologically disjointed moments in the palace's history, like a series of psychic impressions. Along the way he meets a fellow Chrono-Displaced Person in the guise of a cynical European, who claims to have done this sort of thing before. In any case, the entire movie can make you cry if you're really into art, architecture or history (there are tons of cameos, from Catherine the Great to Pushkin), but two stand out. One was right near the end, when the European decides to stay with the beautiful Last Ball instead of moving on with the hero. And the other happens at about the mid-point; the European chases a group of little girls down a hallway, pretending to be a ghost, until one of them gets called to have breakfast. We follow her to the dining room, where she says good morning and apologizes for being late, and it's just a cute little happy family scene until you check their clothes and realize that they're from the second decade of the 20th century, which leads you to realize who they must be and what's going to happen to them.

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• A Sad Movie is rather mean in that, at first, it makes you think the movie will be tragic (just look at the name!). But then the movie turns out to be a romantic comedy focusing the relationships between four pairs of people. The Tear Jerking comes at the very, very end when every single one of those four relationships end, at best, bittersweetly. And the movie does this to you just when you think it's all going to be a happy ending for everyone.
• Salinui Chueok. The whole damn thing, mixed with a confusing dose of intentional Narm: (don't try to say that you didn't giggle nervously when Kwang Ho ran onto the train tracks and died.
• Saw has a lot of them, but John and Jill's relationship takes the cake. You see how he loved her before the death of Gideon, their unborn son and John's transition to Jigsaw. Just try watching Jill's miscarrage or the tape to Gideon without crying.
  • Here's one that hit close to home for me and haunted me for a long time: Corbett Denlon asking for her mom in Saw V. Dear god...
  • The death of Josh on the Carousel. He knows he's gonna die since his boss's wasted his second choice of survivor before he could even get a shot so he is finally honest with his employer, also forcing him to look him in the eyes and realize that his death, and all of the others who died up to that point is all his fault, and calling him out on his misandrist bias. Doubles as a Dying Moment of Awesome.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
  • Scott is on the bus after breaking up with Knives, and then the song Teenage Dream (by T-Rex, not Kate Perry) starts playing.
  • Scott comes across Knives after defeating the Katayanagi Twins and the song Anthems for a 17-Year-Old Girl briefly plays in the background as Knives says to him, "I just came to see your show..."
  • Both the regular and alternate ending will make you cry, no matter which girl, Ramona or Knives, you wished Scott would get engaged with, seeing the other one depart alone will still be heart-braking.
• In the 1970s musical Scrooge, Bob visiting Tim's grave, as the beautiful song Tim sung earlier eerily plays in the background, is enough to make the strongest man tear up.
• Secondhand Lions. Most of the second half of the movie is a massive Tear Jerking Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, but the most heartbreaking part is the speech that Uncle Hub (played by an always-terrific Robert Duvall) gives to the protagonist.

Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.

• • Also, the death of Jasmine the lioness.
• Jay Chou's movie Secret IS this. When Xiao Yu mistakes Xiang Lun to have moved on from her and suffers an asthma attack after returning to the past is probably just one of the movie's most heartbreaking scenes.
• May's death in The Secret Life of Bees. A good deal of the parts concerning Lily's mother, too.
• Selena: The scene in the hospital where her family are told that she did not make it.
  • The worst part about it, you know it was coming since it happened in REAL LIFE as the movie is created as a tribute for the Tejano legend.
• The end of A Series of Unfortunate Events when the orphans get the letter from their parents. The music that's playing while she reads it, and the terrible burned up background doesn't help.

"Dearest children - since we've been abroad we have missed you all so much. Certain events have compelled us to extend our travels. One day, when you're older, you will learn all about the people we have befriended and the dangers we have faced. At times the world can seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe us when we say that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. And what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may, in fact, be the first steps of a journey. We hope to have you back in our arms soon, darlings, but in case this letter arrives before our return, know that we love you. It fills us with pride to know that no matter what happens in this life, that you three will take care of each other, with kindness and bravery and selflessness, as you always have. And remember one thing, my darlings, and never forget it: that no matter where we are, know that as long as you have each other, you have your family. And you are home."

• Big Bird, painted blue and forced to sing for a crowd, in Sesame Street Presents Follow That Bird. Surprisingly for a "Sesame Street" film, the whole movie is a colossal downer, what with Big Bird being forced to leave the family he's known his whole life to "be with other birds" (essentially, it's "Losing Isaiah" - for preschoolers.) The Blue Bird of Happiness scene itself is by far one of the most traumatic non-Nightmare Fuel moments for '80s kids.
  • The "One Little Star" song. "One little star, in the darkening blue, do you long for another, just the way that I do?"
• The ending to Seven Pounds. While the movie was pretty emotional overall, the saddest part was at the end when Will Smith's character kills himself so that his love interest can have his heart and live.
• Shakespeare in Love, particularly during the end of Romeo and Juliet. And again, when the Queen forbade William and Viola from being together. And AGAIN, when it is shown that Will's next play would be a tragedy, mirroring Viola's shipwreck on the way to America. Their play should be renamed "William and Viola".
• Shaun of the Dead
  • When Shaun's mother reveals that she's been bitten and begins dying slowly, inevitably forcing Shaun to have to kill her. The movie turns pretty melancholy after that point.
  • The climax, when Ed volunteers to be left behind to die so he won't slow Shaun and Liz down. Especially the reprise of the joke from earlier - "I'll stop doing it when you stop laughing" / "I'm not laughing" -- and you realise he's really not laughing: he's crying.
  • Shaun says to Liz, "You don't want to die single, do you?". The look on his face, covered in blood and trying valiantly to smile through his tears...
  • The entirety of the basement scene was like this. So many tears.
  • Philip tells Shaun he always loved him, actually. Shaun's tears.
  • David tries to apologize to Shaun but get dismembered by zombies before he can do so. Prior to this he almost but not quite becomes The Woobie when his feelings for Liz are revealed. He never had any chance to really sort his issues out.
  • Mary. Something about that girl in the backyard evokes a sense of utter sadness, particularly when Shaun and Ed describe her as drunk. This gets even worse if you read the tie-in comic "There's Something About Mary", which reveals how she became a zombie. Turns out in life she was a shy, lonely young woman with an unrequited and unnoticed crush on Shaun.
• The Shawshank Redemption
  • Brook's final monologue and death. It particularly strikes hard after he hangs himself and the camera pans over his carved message on the ceiling which simply reads "Brooks was here" while the old man's limp body hangs below.

Brooks: I don't like it here. I'm tired of being afraid all the time... I've decided not to stay. I doubt they'll kick up any fuss... not for an old crook like me.

• • For tears of joy, try everything after Andy's escape from Shawshank. When he escapes from Shawshank is enough to get the eyes watering: he's just crawled through just under half a mile of raw sewage, he gets to his feet in the middle of the pouring rain, he's stumbling, dragging his pack behind him ... and then there's that fanfare of trumpets and strings as he removes his shirt and stands, arms raised, laughing, in the rain.
  • When Red's letter started to repeat the same speech as Brooks', just in anticipation that he might maybe meet the same end?
  • The last bit: "Get busy living ... or get busy dying. That's goddamn right." Pan up. SO WAS RED.
  • When Tommy is murdered by Hadley and Norton. You see it coming a split-second before it happens, but it's still a shock. Tommy was dumb, surly, and a habitual criminal...and also friendly, outgoing, had a baby girl and was trying really hard to turn his life around for her sake and for his mentor, Andy's, and was going to provide evidence that Andy was innocent after all...and he was murdered for it.
• The montage from She's Having a Baby. It has tearjerker written all over it. Kevin Bacon sitting in the hospital waiting room, crying to himself as he thinks back to his time together with his wife.. John Hughes really knew how to tug at someone's heartsrings.
• In She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, when Capt. Brittles goes to inspect his troop for the last time due to his retirement and all the men are in their best uniforms and when they present him with the watch that they all chipped in to buy and Brittles puts on his glasses to read the sentiment "Lest We Forget."
• The end of Shiri: Hee's death is tear jerking, but the clincher is when Yu went to meet the real Myung-hyun in the mental institution. The beginning of the movie was no emotional picnic either.
• John Cameron Mitchel's Shortbus may be famous for featuring explicit, non-simulated sex but good god it's an incredible emotional release. The entire ending sequence is a Heartwarming Moment, Awesome Music, and pure catharsis are rolled into one. They're happy tears, to be sure, but oh there's always a lot of them.
• The segment in Short Circuit 2 where the villains brutally attack Johnny 5 while he pleads for his life. Follow that up with a showing of Johnny's desperate attempts at survival (including stealing a car battery as an alternate power source and breaking into a Radio Shack so he and recovering Jerkass Fred would have the tools needed to repair him), and you've got yourself a segment that threatens to make you have a heart attack at how agonizing it is.
• Sin City. Specifically "The Hard Goodbye". Frank Miller's work is often criticized for a lack of humanity, of being filled with lousy people in a lousy town, and Sin City is built around that. However, the story of Marv fighting to avenge the death of the one woman named Goldie who gave him some love is very touching. Over the course of the story, Marv kills countless people, tortures many of them and kills one of the most powerful men in town. And he enjoys it. Given his violent tendencies and the comment that he'd be right at home on an ancient battlefield killing people, its possible to think that he's simply using Goldie's death to have some fun. But then, he is almost killed and is sentenced to death. Hours before his execution, he gets his only visitor in 18 months. It's Goldie's twin sister, Wendy, who aided Marv in the killings. But Marv has a mental illness and he gets confused. So when Wendy walks in the door, he thinks it's Goldie, and he says "I got them for you good, didn't I Goldie?". We are instantly reminded that he gave his life to avenge this one woman who he only knew for a couple hours. Cue the Manly Tears. Then he apologizes and says "Sorry, I got confused again." What does Wendy say? "You can call me Goldie." She spends the night with him. Two Tearjerkers in 30 seconds at the very end of the first story of what's seen as one of the most nihilistic, violent and heartless mainstream comics around.
  • The ending of That Yellow Bastard. "An old man dies. A young woman lives. A fair trade. I love you, Nancy." BANG!
• The 2005 version of War of the Worlds. The characters are making their way through a valley, along with a few hundred other refugees. A fairly substantial group of soldiers trying to hold back the tripods tripods closing in on them while the refugees pass, despite the fact that their weapons do nothing. So they CHARGE.
• The end of Sky Blue. Poor Jay...
• The entirety of Snoopy Come Home. Case in childhood trauma point. The cold cereal is the clincher. It's one those Schulz touches that's too irrevocably human to bear.
• In Snow Cake, when Alex breaks down feeling guilty about Vivienne's death. Made even worse when you realise that it's not the first time he lost a would-be friend in a car crash. His son was killed before he could even meet him. That time, he was so angry, he went to the driver's home and hit him. And accidentally killed him.
• The end of Snow Dogs: Not the very end... but the bit that starts with the reporter and ends with the dogs racing over the snow-covered hill...
• This scene from The Social Network.
  • The last scene, with Mark Zuckerberg sitting alone, refreshing the page while waiting for his ex-girlfriend to accept his friend request. The song playing over the scene made it worse -- baby, you're a rich man, but what else do you have?
  • The hallway scene in the house in Palo Alto. That one line. Jesse Eisenberg was robbed.

"I- I want– I need you. Out here. Please don't tell him I said that."

• Sophie's Choice. Watching Meryl Streep shove her daughter into the soldiers' arms and then burst into tears as her daughter screams while being carried to her death is one of the most haunting, horrific scenes in cinematic history. That Oscar was well-deserved.
• The scene where Sol "goes home" in Soylent Green is this on many levels. When Sol realizes what he must to do expose the terrible secret of Soylent Green, Thorn tries to stop him but finds out too late so all he can do is watch as his closest and best friend dies. Sol is also one of the few characters old enough to remember the Earth when it was still full of natural beauty. The beautiful nature footage he is shown before his death, set to classical music, deeply moves both characters (Sol: "I told you." Thorn: "How could I know? How could I ever imagine?") and drives home the film's environmental message. Finally there's the Reality Subtext that Edward G. Robinson (Sol) was dying in real life and the only other person on the film who knew was Charlton Heston (Thorn), who cried real tears during that scene.
• The end of Spartacus is a Tearjerker, a Crowning Moment of Awesome, and a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming all rolled into one. Spartacus' large army of slaves is captured by the Roman army, who declare that they all face crucifixion unless anyone will identify which of them is Spartacus. Spartacus starts to stand up to give himself up and spare his people, when the two people to either side of him stand and both declare that they are Spartacus. Following that, every single person stands up one by one and shouts "I'm Spartacus!" A single tear falls down Spartacus' cheek as he sees just how devoted to him his men are.
  • "He will know who his father is. Because I'll tell him!" (You know it's a good movie when a Yaoi Fangirl cries for the straight couple).
• Toward the end of Speak (the Film of the Book), when Melinda shows Mr. Freeman all of the tree paintings/projects she's done in the old janitor's closet.
• In Speed Racer, after Taejo reveals that the file he had offered didn't exist, Speed goes on an angsty dive around Thunderhead. Racer X follows him and gives him the most moving pep talk EVER. Speed asks if X is actually Rex and X says no. Which is a lie. Then he says, "I'm sure if he were here, he'd be immensely proud of you."
• Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. "Sound the Bugle". That is all.
• In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, when Spongebob and Patrick end up dying in the Shell City Giftshop.
• Stage Door. The impetus for Katharine Hepburn's magnificent performance in the play.
• Stand by Me. All their backgrounds were depressing, and Chris's death at the end was the most heart-wrenching scene. Why do people grow apart?
• Stargate: The Ark of Truth. Daniel, lying on the floor of his cell in agony from recent torture, begs Morgan to help them, practically breaking down.
• The Star Trek movies have more than a few:
  • The scene between Data and Picard near the end of Star Trek: Nemesis as Data says goodbye and makes his Heroic Sacrifice.
    • When Riker recalled the first time he and Data had met: in a holodeck, with Data trying in vain to whistle. The heartbreaking bit, though, was that Riker just couldn't remember what song it was Data had been humming... The audience knew, and several of them started whistling it right then and there.
    • And just to make it worse: B4, trying to sing "Blue Skies" - with some help from Picard. (Brent Spiner is a freaking genius.)
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Spock's Heroic Sacrifice, his moving farewell to Kirk, Kirk's eulogy at the funeral, Scotty playing Amazing Grace on the bagpipes...James T. Kirk struggling to keep it together will do that to a man:

Kirk: Of all the souls I encountered over the years, his was the most... [voice cracks] ...human.

• • • Kirk racing desperately through the Enterprise to get to his friend -- and then McCoy, Scotty, and someone else having to use all their strength to keep him from going in there himself.
  • Or The Search for Spock. "My God, Bones, what have I done?"
    • McCoy's response could probably count as this, a CMOA and a CMOH all wrapped into one.

McCoy: What you had to do. What you always do: turn death into a fighting chance to live.

• • Kirk and Klingon Chancellor Azetbur's reconciliation at the end of The Undiscovered Country:

Azetbur: You've restored my father's faith. Kirk: And you've restored my son's.

• • • The last scenes are also very sad, and much more so to those who have watched the entire original series and the rest of the films. Enterprise is about to be decommissioned, meaning that it is the final voyage of Kirk and his crew, and the end of an era. The fact that they also decide to 'take their time' in getting back to Earth also makes this a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
  • Star Trek: Insurrection features an interstellar dispute over a Fountain of Youth planet. Geordi La Forge, blind since birth, suddenly generates the ability to see without the aide of his visor while on the planet. Captain Picard finds him on a hill asking, before they leave, to watch a sunrise for the first time. Then you see the sunrise itself. Then you see the tears welling up.
  • The first ten minutes of the new Star Trek movie, where new daddy Kirk makes an epic Heroic Sacrifice to save his wife and the rest of the escaping Kelvin crew.
    • Kirk and old Spock were in the cave talking about the existence where Spock came from and where Kirk knew his father.
    • Spock introducing himself with: "I have been, and always shall be, your friend."
    • Papa Kirk's last words and the delivery thereof: "I love you so much... I love you-"
    • A short shot in this scene from Papa Kirk's perspective, showing red "Systems Failed" messages across the Kelvin's screen while explosions and destruction goes on around. All this being set to a piece of music that is a tear jerker all on its own.
    • And the opening scene comes back later to gut-punch you with the line:

Pike: Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved 800 lives, including yours and your mother's. I dare you to do better.

• • And then later on, when Vulcan is being destroyed and Chekov is beaming up the elders that Spock has gathered, his mother among them, and the ground collapses under Spock's mother, and she screams for her son--especially Chekov's frantic repetition of "I'm losing her! I'm losing her!" and then his shell-shocked face after the remaining Vulcans appear on the pad, with Spock's arm stretched out, reaching at nothing.
  • In a crossover with both Heartwarming Moments and an Awesome Moment, Leonard Nimoy's voiceover of the famed TOS narration, which then segues into a grand orchestral recapitulation of Alexander Courage's original theme, is wrenching.
  • "I have been, and always shall be, your friend."
  • Spock Prime: As he was helpless to save his planet, I would be helpless to save mine. *shot of him staring up into the sky with heart-broken expression* Billions of lives lost, because of me, Jim. Because, I failed.
  • Kirk's death in Star Trek Generations. In a film which missed so many chances to be one of the best Star Trek films ever, Kirk's death, set to a beautiful and touching piece of music is heartbreaking.

Kirk: It was the least I could do... for the captain of the Enterprise. It was... fun. Oh my...

• The ending of Straight Story - two brothers finally meet. The viewer cries..
• Stranger Than Fiction - for much of the movie, the driving action involves Harold Crick learning that he is a character in a book. After meeting the author and getting to read a copy of the book, he returns to her and calmly accepts his own impending death because the book is just that wonderful.
  • The fact that he accepts this after the entire movie had built up his growing appreciation of life outside numbers and his job, including falling in love for what was probably the first time in his life, doesn't help. Emma Thompson's character being completely unable to write the sentence and having a complete breakdown over it fits in here too.
• Sunset Boulevard makes you feel really horrible for Norma. And it was a true story, since that was what had happened to Gloria Swanson, who played the role.
  • She got ditched by the industry, yes, but happily she didn't go nuts over it.
• Sunshine
  • When Capa ends up in the Payload chamber heading for the sun, Capa finds Cassie slumped on the floor. There's this beautiful, gentle moment between them where he tells her they're flying into the sun.
  • When Capa blasts across the void of space to reach the door to the payload. The music, accompanied by the close-up of Capa screaming, and the visual itself, is tear jerking.
  • Just before that scene, the bit where Capa is in the space suit trying to get to the payload chamber and he falls over in the suit. He's struggling to get up and you can tell how frustrated and angry with himself he is. Always gets me
  • When Searle is left on Icarus I and as Icarus II is flying away, you just see Searle sitting in the observation room, waiting for his death, and you hear Cassie say "Searle, we're leaving now. We love you."
    • Mace's death. Don't know why, but that scene really got to me.
• Super 8: Joe's mother locket flies, he grabs it as the thing shows the picture inside (she with baby Joe)... and decides to let go. The locket is absorbed by an alien ship, it takes off slowly, the end. (the only thing that makes it less sad is "The Case" playing afterwards)
• In the DVD of the original 1978 Superman, there's a restored scene where Superman talks to his dad (or rather his hologram) following his first outing as a hero. Jor-El tells him to be wary of the thrill of being a hero..

And further, do not punish yourself for your feelings of vanity; simply learn to control it. It's an affliction common to all. Even on Krypton. Our destruction could've been avoided but for the vanity of some who considered ourselves indestructible. (Jor-El hesitates) Why...if it wasn't for vanity...right now..I could embrace you with my own arms. My son.

• • The opening: A stage curtain parts to reveal not Superman, or a busy city, or an operatic space utopia, but a boy reading a comic. It's a really great way of saying that this mythology, for all its success and influence, started as a humble little funnybook for kids.
  • The most tearjerking moment from the first Superman movie was definitely Pa Kent's death. After he tells his adopted son that he is on Earth for a special reason even if he doesn't know what that might be. Glenn Ford's acting was amazing when he just clutched his left arm and saying softly "Oh no..." and his collapse in a long shot. Then his funeral with John Williams' music plays as young Clark Kent tells his mother that even will all his powers he couldn't save his own father.
  • Superman getting stabbed with Kryptonite then thrown off into the water in Superman Returns.
    • The scene towards the end where, after hurtling Lex's kryptonite-continent into space, Supes plummets back to Earth, apparently dead. The scene hit full-force, no pun intended, with that soul-crushing THUD at the end of his descent.
  • The part where he flies above the Earth after watching Lois and family and he hears his father say "For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you...my only son", with heartbreakingly beautiful music. Then when he flies with Lois, there's even more heartbreakingly beautiful music. And this is all before he even dies!
  • The scene in the original movie where Brando (proving why he was worth his hefty paycheque) bids farewell to his infant son Kal-el before Krypton's destruction, along with those gentle lines "The son becomes the father, and the father ... the son."
  • Tear Jerker and Crowning Moment of Awesome: the end of the Fortress of Solitude sequence which features the strongest images of Jor-El as "God", John Williams' wonderful music, and the hopeful, uplifting monologue: "They can be a great people, Kal-El -- they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. It is for this reason above all, their capacity for good, that I have sent them you ... my only son." Then Jor-El's smiling face becomes a mask, which slips onto Superman's face -- the son becoming the father. And then John Williams finishes it off with a triumphant clarion call on horns to Superman's theme: DAAAA-DA-DA-DA-DAAAAAAAAHHH ... DAAAH DAAAH DAAAH ... as Superman flies for the first time in the costume.
  • In the Richard Donner cut of Superman II, when Kal-El returns to the Fortress of Solitude powerless and encounters the image of his father -- who had predicted his choice to become human. The subsequent sacrifice of the final remaining essence of Jor-El (thus fulfilling the prophecy "The father becomes the son; and the son, the father") is wrenching.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The whole movie is a colossal downer, from Sweeney scream-singing about taking his revenge on humanity and abruptly swinging into "and I'll never see Johanna/no, I'll never hug my girl to me," and "and my Lucy/lies in ashes/and I'll never see my girl again," to Mrs. Lovett locking Toby in the bakehouse, realizing what has to be done. But the absolute crowning moment is the ending, with Sweeney cradling the wife he longed for all those years in Australia, whose memory drove him to homicidal madness and rage... the wife he killed in a moment of blindness, the death from his own slit throat dripping onto her face. It gets even worse, as Mrs. Lovett is smoldering in her own oven; and Toby has returned to an urchin's life in Victorian England, the only mother figure in his life killed by the man he suspected all along. But at least Johanna and Anthony got away...we hope.
  • They didn't. "No, Anthony, they never go away."
  • It's very easy to read Sweeney's movements while Toby is sneaking up behind him as baring his throat for the blade; which is worse; that he is killed after murdering the wife he has lived through hell to see again, or that he is so completely crushed he wants it?
  • The most saddening part of the scene was Mrs. Lovett desperately and tearfully trying to explain her deception to Todd, who is barely even listening to her. Todd then turns to a clearly distraught and terrified Lovett to calm and reassure her before tossing her into the oven and quietly watching the slow, burning death of the only chance he has to be loved again, before slowly closing the door of the oven, making sure that the last thing she sees is his contemptuous look, and his last words to her being "Life is for the alive, my dear", which she had said to him before, imploring him to move on. It is made all the more poignant by the fact that the final song draws lyrics and music from the triumphant "My Friends" and the cheerful "A Little Priest", which is also probably the only song where Todd and Lovett are on quite the same page.
  • The moment when Sweeney began to tell Anthony about the barber and his wife. Between the pain in his voice and the despairing music, it weights heavily on the heart -- especially as the visuals flash back to the day Benjamin Barker was hauled away from his wife and child. (Tim Burton has said shooting that flashback left him in tears.)
  • Also, Sweeney's part in the song "Johanna," if one can ignore the blood, and focus on the words, is a crushingly depressing song about Todd accepting that his daughter's gone for good, and that seeing would only hurt worse because she'd look like his wife.
  • "Not While I'm Around" . The look on Mrs. Lovett's face as Toby sings to her is heartbreaking.
• The whole ending scene in Swing Kids.
• Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, when miss Geum-Ja starts scoffing cake. This does not sound like a tear jerking moment, but with that plot, and that shot, and that music... Oh dear.
  • While we're talking of Park Chan-Wook's films, the final scene in Im A Cyborg.
• The ending to Synecdoche New York.
• A Czech movie called The Shop on Main Street. The fact that it's set during the Holocaust doesn't help to begin with. Then throw in the ending, where the main character hanged himself after accidentally killing the old lady whose shop he'd been running and you get an instant hankiefest.

T

• The end of Tae Guk Gi, a Korean movie about two brothers who fought in the Korean War. All the death and violence wasn't even as bad as the ending: Jin-seok, having lived his entire life thinking his older brother was still alive somewhere, returning to the battlefield where they saw each other for the last time, and realizing that his brother had never made it out of there.
  • Made even worse when it's combined with Please Wake Up as Jin-seok begs Jin-tae to get up and fulfill the promises they made at their last meeting.
• The ending of Taken.
• Just watching the trailer for the HBO movie Taking Chance. It's a simple story about one Marine escorting the body of another back to his hometown, based entirely on a true account. Very well made film, very hard to watch, especially if you are in the Armed Forces.
  • Those videos of the original Chance? God...
  • when Strobl crossed paths with the other escort...and found out the body he was taking home was his brother.
  • This scene:

Lt. Col. Michael Strobl : "If more men were like Chance in this world, we wouldn't need a Marine Corps."

• The end scene of The Talented Mr. Ripley is a horrible Tear Jerker. Tom Ripley has escaped suspicion for murdering and impersonating Dickie Greenleaf, and is on a boat to Athens with his lover Peter, when he runs into Meredith, who thinks Tom is Dickie, and coincidentally knows Peter. Worse, she's on the boat with her entire family - Peter has no-one but Tom. Resolved, Tom goes to Peter in his room and asks Peter to tell him "some nice things about Tom Ripley." Baffled, but playing along, Peter does so as Tom cuddles up to him. Cut to Tom entering his own room, miserable and shaken, as Peter's list (which makes it very clear that he's in love with Tom) goes on in voiceover - and then changes to the sounds of Tom sobbing as he chokes Peter to death.
• Of all places, in the 1972 Tales from the Crypt movie. The segment, "Poetic Justice", counts as one big tear jerker.
• The documentary Taxi To the Dark Side. Invisible Children after the Mood Whiplash from the beginning.
• Tears of the Sun. Bawled my eyes out. Especially at the ending where, after all the death and fear and chaos, the young man is safe with his people, and they punch their fists into the air with hope.
• The Terminator hugging John one last time in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
  • Terminator's viewpoint flicking off for the final time. *sniff* .
  • When the Terminator gives John a thumbs-up while diving to his doom.
  • "I know now why you cry, but it's something I can never do," as T-800 runs a finger down John's tearful face.
  • Sarah Connor's final monologue: "If a machine, a Terminator, could learn the value of human life... maybe we can too."
  • When the Terminator points to himself as the last possible source of the technology to inspire the creation of SkyNet. It's the point where you can see all the above coming, and the gut punch doesn't hurt any less because you know it's on its way.
  • The end of T3
  • Marcus' Heroic Sacrifice in Salvation
  • Kyle Reese's confession to Sarah in the first film. The dude has been nothing but a shouting, wild-eyed, badass military man for the whole movie, then he finally breaks down and tells Sarah how he feels. Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.

Kyle: I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you. I always have.

• Testament. Jayne Alexander deserved an Oscar that she didn't get. It's a movie about a family coping with the aftermath of a nuclear war, and it is unbearably sad. In particular, the scene where Alexander's character is shown with a stoic expression sewing something, and then the camera pulls back and you realize she's sewing a funeral shroud for her oldest child.
• The last few minutes of Thelma and Louise.
• Lots of scenes in The Thin Red Line, particularly:
  • Attack on the village, accompanied by Hans Zimmer's "Journey to the Line".
  • The sequence of scenes, showing death of private Witt, the vision of his "other world" and the funeral, with Sgt. Welsh saying: "Where's your spark now...".
• The end of Thirteen Days; the Cuban Missile Crisis has been resolved, everyone's relieved and relaxing... except for President Kennedy, who excuses himself to dictate a letter of condolence to the parents of the only American military officer killed during the Crisis.
• Jake Brigance's summation at the end of A Time to Kill.
• The end of the courtroom scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, when the children are told to stand up. ("Your father's passing.")
  • And the scene a bit later, where Scout recognizes who rescued her and Jem from Bob Ewell. "Hey, Boo."
  • The scene where Atticus sits on the porch and listens to Jem and Scout talk about their late mother.
  • That music.
  • Everything from:

Scout: "Why. there he is, Mr. Tate. He can tell you his name...Hey, Boo."

• • To:

Older Scout: [narrating] "I was to think of these days many times. Of Jem, and Dill, and Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson, and Atticus. He would be in Jem's room all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning."

• • The image of Gregory Peck holding Mary Badham (Scout) on the seat on the verandah .
• This tropette has cried several times during Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life when Lara is forced to kill Terry. And the music right there? Just wait for the key change.
• Top Gun. Goose's death was the cause of a waterfall of Manly Tears. Especially because of the Mood Whiplash!
• All of Trip To Bountiful. ALL OF IT. Especially when after all her hard work, Carrie Watts arrives in the remains of her long-abandoned hometown of Bountiful, and begins to cry as she looks around her father's old farmhouse. Then she's forced by her overly-concerned son a his awful wife to return home just as quickly as she came.
• In Troy -- King Priam's line "I have fought many wars in my lifetime. Some were fought for land, some for money, and some for power... I suppose fighting for love makes more sense than all the rest."
  • Anything remotely connected to Patroclus/the death thereof in that movie, particularly for someone who got to like him as he was in the Iliad and managed to project that on what was going on. (Yeah, all... ten lines of him.)
  • The scene that always gets me is when Hector prepares for his battle with Achilles. Watching him say goodbye to his family, in particular his infant son is heartbreaking. Knowing that the situation he is in really isn't his fault makes it even worse.
• The Truman Show has a triumphant tearjerker ending!
  • And yet, despite deserving what happens, some sympathy has to be set aside for Christof, as he obviously truly cares for Truman, only he can never hold Truman and is never able to truly convey how he feels for his surrogate son.
• Turtles Can Fly is about a group of refugee children near the Iraq-Turkish border, most of whom have some some of physical injury/disability.
• There are two such moments in The Tuskeegee Airmen: first, Cuba Gooding's last moments after his plane is hit by a German fighter and Laurence Fishburne knock the Nazi down. Knowing what's about to happen, Cuba tells Laurence to get out of range and to safety - them, as his plane heads down in flames, sings the squadron's anthem. Even the racist bomber pilot they were protecting is moved. Also, the last five minutes of the film; Laurence is presented with the Distinguished Flying Cross and a promotion to Captain for taking out a German destroyer. He is then informed that their next mission is bomber escort over Berlin, and that they were't assigned - they were requested to fly the mission. The film ends with photos of the actual Tuskeegee Airmen, their list of accomplishments - including the fact that they never lost a single bomber to enemy fire - , and that sixty-six Tuskeegee Airmen died in battle.

U-V (all need Work pages created)

• Under Wraps, this Disney channel original movie. The mummy is going to die if the kids don't get his sarcophagus back from antique dealers, and he knows it, and he goes through all of these terrible circumstances (being mistaken for a burn victim, etc.) trying to get it back, and then he finds his lost love, and to make matters worse, it's a Romeo and Juliet meets Hunchback of Notre Dame-type story about how the mummy was actually a high priest and the woman was somebody-or-other, and they finally get to be together in sarcophagi next to each other in a museum. Squick.

• V for Vendetta (film),
  • The scene where V smashes the mirror.
  • The sequence with Valerie, and Evey's subsequent release. "God is in the rain."
    • Oh, God. The Valerie sequence and its haunting conclusion:

Valerie: But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you. Valerie.

• • • • When V died at the end and was put in the train. Also tears of joy as the house of parliament was blown up.
  • "Is it meaningless to apologize?" "Never."
  • "I don't want you to die." "That's the...most beautiful thing...you could have given me...."

• La Vie En Rose: "You must be brave, Edith." "Is it Marcel? ...What?" "The plane crashed..."
  • This must be seen to be believed, as it is all done in one continuous camera shot. Marion Cotillard's acting is sublime. Edith Piaf learned of the crash and went on to perform a recital that night. The song playing, "Hymne A'L'amour", was written by Piaf for Marcel, the only man she ever really loved.

• Voces Inocentes, a Spanish-language film about a boy named Chava in El Salvador during their civil war. That would suck enough, but here's the clincher: At 12, the military recruits boys to be Child Soldiers and fight the guerilla army. Chava is 11. Oh Crap.

W

• The ending of the Chinese film Wait 'til You're Older. The child protagonist Kwong, wanting to grow up, takes an aging potion. However, it backfires horribly and he finds out that he only has a few days to live before dying of old age. Realizing he has no time left, he makes amends to his father and stepmother, whom he hated before, and finally accepts her as his second mother. The film ends on a bittersweet note with an aged Kwong resting in his stepmother's arms before his inevitable death. There was not a single dry eye in the theatre.
  • He really should have known that Growing Up Sucks.
• WALL-E: WALL-E is severely damaged by Auto closing the holo-detecor on him. After the Axiom returns to Earth, EVE frantically flies back to WALL-E's home to repair and re-energize him. She's successful, but WALL-E does not recognize EVE, as it seems as if his memory banks were erased. He reverts back to his original programming and starts compacting trash. EVE tries to jog his memory back by showing off the random objects that WALL-E has collected but to no avail. Believing that he's "gone", a heartbroken EVE grasps his hand and gives him a farewell kiss. As EVE lets go of WALL-E's hand, he doesn't let go..and He's Back. It ended happily, but if you weren't at least trying to hold back tears before the end...you have no soul.
• Watchmen: the flashback leading up to Jon's disintegration. And Rorschach's death, obviously.
  • The death of Hollis Mason, shamelessly edited out of the theatrical cut but restored for the DC is absolutely heart-wrenching, even more so than in the book.
  • The opening titles, showing the idealism of the first Minutemen falling away as they get old (or murdered), and the political changes taking place as the new Watchmen take their place. The scene with the hippy fearlessly putting a flower in an MP's gun during a protest... only for the line of MPs to open fire is what does it. It's peace and idealism being shot in the face.
    • Dr. Manhattan's split second hesitation before killing Roschach. Crudup sold the lines beautifully.

Doctor Manhattan: I can change almost anything, but I can't change human nature.

• The movie version of Watership Down. When the Black Rabbit finally comes for Hazel. Actually, you'll probably spend at least fifty percent of the movie in tears and the other fifty shuddering from the Nightmare Fuel. And this is an animated movie about rabbits!
  • "Bright Eyes burning like fire..." This scene, despite being slightly trippy, is even worse when you understand what Fiver's mental processes are. This is done by reading the book. There's a reason it's considered a masterpiece.
  • You know what's even worse? That song was originally written about the writer's father.
• Were the World Mine: when Timothy breaks the spell and says goodbye to Jonathon. It's a combination of Timothy looking like he wants to share one last kiss but being too much an actor to break character like that on stage and Jonathon's look of confusion that does it for me. The fact that The Show Must Go On, so the music plays a triumphant tune as the spell on the lovers is broken doesn't help, either.
• Honestly, if you don't find yourself crying at least once during We Were Soldiers, especially during the scene with the reinforcement charge and any of the poignant moments that underscore the horror and senselessness of war. The song Sgt. McKenzie.
  • Most sand-in-the-eyes moment in the film? The Taxi driver, who has just had his head proverbially bitten off by Mrs. Moore for freaking her out by coming to her door with a death notice telegram... and asking her for directions to the right house.

Ma'am, I don't like this job. I'm just trying to do it.

• What Dreams May Come.
  • The movie is absolutely beautiful. He goes to hell for the sake of his wife! And the very end of the movie mirroring the very beginning, except that it's their reincarnations meeting as children...*sniffle*
  • And then there is the part where he realizes the woman he's been talking to all day is really his daughter..
• Where the Red Fern Grows (1974) practically has you to the tearjerking point the whole time. When the ending finally arrives after what seems like years of watching, you're left sobbing.
• Renee Zellweger crying at the end of The Whole Wide World.
• The last five minutes of the manly-man's adventure The Wind and The Lion
  • "I'll see you again, Missus Pedicaris . . . when we are both like golden clouds on the wind."
  • "I'd like to be alone with my bear."
  • Raisuli's letter to Theodore Roosevelt
  • "Is there not one thing in your life that is worth losing everything for?"
• The 2003 horror movie Willard is a combination of awkward, uncomfortable moments and a creeping sense of unease. One heavy Tear Jerker occurs, however, when Willard's first and dearest rat, Socrates, is killed by Willard's boss at work, followed by Willard's complete breakdown.
• Most of The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
  • • Sinéad's screaming at the end. That alone could make the movie.
• The HBO movie Wit, an adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning play of the same name. It is about an English Literature professor, Vivian Bearing, portrayed by the incredible Emma Thompson, and her battle with cancer. This is a movie that hurts so much that Roger Ebert cannot watch it a second time.
  • The scene with Vivian's old professor visiting her and reading her the Runaway Bunny.
• Withnail and I:
  • "I shall miss you, Withnail."
  • The fact that only a pack of wolves know just how good an actor Withnail can be. Especially that in the original ending Withnail kills himself with a shotgun.
• The All Just a Dream ending of The Wizard of Oz. Such a fantastic adventure, and none of it really happened...
  • The original ending called for a pan down to under her bed, where the Ruby slippers were.
  • The Books and quasi-sequel Return to Oz subvert All Just a Dream. Not only will Dorothy return to Oz, she will come to live there as heir to the throne.
  • Countless reviews analyzes of the film have consistently named The Wicked Witch of the West to be the absolute most evil character in the history of film. But after seeing Wicked, you'll cry when Dorothy accidentally kills her to save The Scarecrow.
  • All the scenes where the Lion cries, but the worst one is the ending scene. Dorothy obviously never gets to see them again, and everyone's crying and the Tin Man's heart is breaking... *sob*
  • Watch Charley Grapewin as Uncle Henry while Dorothy is telling everyone what happened. He is absolutely straightfaced. He believes her.
  • At the end of the film, Dorothy got exactly what she wanted from Oz: A carefree, perfect world where everybody is kind and friendly, yet more than anything else, she wanted to go back home and see reunite with her aunt. As Dorothy herself said: "Toto, we're home – home! And this is my room – and you're all here – and I'm not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all! And... oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!"
• In The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, when Wilhelm is deathly ill, he has a vision of his fairy tale characters coming to tell him that if he dies now, before he has written their stories down, no one will know that they ever existed.
• The World According To Garp, especially the end where Garp gets shot and is taken in a helicopter to the hospital, but dies on the way, and before he dies he says "I'm flying..." (a reference to when he was a kid and obsessed with his pilot father). Cue "There Will Never Be Another You" by Nat King Cole
• World's Greatest Dad. Yikes. When he discovers his son's body? Holy Christ. Best performance of grief friggin' ever. And it doesn't fade to black anywhere or anything... Just the song "Love is Simple" is depressing.
• World Trade Center, a movie about 2 Port Authority officers who fight for their lives to survive 9/11, after having survived the collapse, and it's based off of a real story? Yeah, I'll just leave you to dry your tears

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