Which Movies Make Grown Men Cry?

FIVETHIRTYEIGHT ^ | 01/14/2015 | Walt Hickey

[SeekAndFind]

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

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

What movies make people cry the most?

[wally_bert]

Forgot that one.

[edpc]

How is Field of Dreams not on the list? I mean the ending. That's gotta get to any man.

After all......you see that long line of cars, realize you're going to spend hours on that single lane dirt road with a car full of screaming kids and an annoyed wife just to hand Costner $20. That'll make any man cry.

[Jeff Chandler]

My husband wouldn’t watch a romance movie in the first place.

There are exactly three male-acceptable romance movies:

1. It Happened One Night
2. Roman Holiday
3. Romancing the Stone

[Lee'sGhost]

Mission to Mars and Interstellar.

Watching Tim Robbins and Matt Dameon explode is so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes.

[CatherineofAragon]

Okay...that IS a dark opening scene. I found a video of drunk guys watching it.

[miss marmelstein]

I’m probably in the minority about this but I always think Laurence Harvey steals that movie. It’s certainly either him or his hat.

[Larry Lucido]

The very thought of seeing The English Patient brings tears to my eyes.

[cuban leaf]

I bawled like a baby.

But I was just ANGRY when someone changed the wheels on Han Solo’s car after it crashed in American Graffiti.

[wardaddy]

Blackhawk Down

Sole Survivor

Any movie where child dies after valiant struggle

Now that I’m old and been married a long time Notebook likely would be misty

[Hulka]

Another excellent movie. Moving.

[miss marmelstein]

I have a feeling the Hackmans were probably visiting New York City and he was hijacked into the store.

[dfwgator]

Finding Nemo is another one like that.

[FlJoePa]

That - and even sadder - Something for Joey

[cuban leaf]

It’s like those “worlds ugliest cars” and other such lists. It’s hopelessly subjective and not very well researched.

[wardaddy]

James Garner

Gina Rowland.....I loved her

Long marriage....she’s dying....looks back

[Fiji Hill]

I saw Bambi at a drive-in theater in 1957. I was a kid at the time, and I loved it.

But later, I became familiar with Bambi: A Biography from the Forest (Berlin: Ullstein, 1923), Felix Salten's classic story that was translated from the original German by Whittaker Chambers--yes, that Whittaker Chambers, the one who would later expose the Soviet agent Alger Hiss.

The next time I saw Bambi, in DVD format, about three years ago, I hated it for making hash of Felix Salten's story.

[Lee'sGhost]

LMAO! Really? The sister become his dead wife. That’s too funny.

[needmorePaine]

Return of the King when Theodin says, “ I go to my fathers, in whose mighty company I shall not now feel ashamed.”

Same movie, when Gandalf tells Pippin about the Undying Lands:

PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way.
GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
PIPPIN: What? Gandalf? See what?
GANDALF: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
PIPPIN: Well, that isn't so bad.
GANDALF: No. No, it isn't.


Something about Ian McKellan's delivery and the music in that scene that gets to me.

[cuban leaf]

Cars did it to me.

But In the early 60’s my dad took 3-6 month contracting jobs at missile silos so we did a LOT of driving on the two lane highways of the western US. And my wife and I relived a lot of it on our honeymoon in 1998, actually stopping in the very town Radiator Springs was based on. They gave us a free burger but we had to pay for our Snowcap t-shirts.

[Hulka]

Yes. The best. My favorite movie.