Emotionally Strong Movies

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What do you think are the movies that have such strong emotional feeling to them... movies that are sooo sad that you can't help but get chocked up, shed a tear or even start bawling like a baby. Movies that make you feel so Happy/sad/angry etc. you do something drastic like quit your job or drink yourself to sleep or something along those line. A movie that makes you want to move to a different country to help people (etc.)

I guess this is a too broad topic, plus i didn't do a good job of describing it... I'm sorry, it seemed like a good idea in my head.



I searched but couldn't find a thread like this but if there is one here that I missed I am sorry and I will say I am not smarter than a fifth grader
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I guess this is a too broad topic, plus i didn't do a good job of describing it... I'm sorry, it seemed like a good idea in my head.



I searched but couldn't find a thread like this but if there is one here that I missed I am sorry and I will say I am not smarter than a fifth grader

Well if you define the emotion then there are plenty. Like saddest movies, Most exciting movies, funniest movies, etc...

Either way My favorite two films in the most broad sense of your topic would have to be Last of the Mohicans, and Braveheart. Love, action, anger, hate, etc...they both really were a rollercoaster ride for me.
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I know a lot of movies that portray a distressing situation and yet they have no effect on me. Others do, and here they are along with some new ones that I've thought of since my last post in the other "movies that have made you cry" thread.

Films like Grave of the Fireflies (mainly it's just the beginning that gets me) and Shohei Imamura's Black Rain (when she hallucinates the Carp) which use directly artificial storytelling or staging devices to enhance an emotional effect. Also, Imamura's remake of The Ballad of Narayama, but for a different sort of reason (two very brutal scenes of violence against defenseless people).

Arizona Dream (the end) and yet another Kusturica film, Time of the Gypsies (the vision of Perhan's Turkey).

The scene where Laertes finally meets Ophelia again after she's gone mad in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.

There are a couple sentimental scenes in Prospero's Books that have made me cry: when Prospero tells Ariel how he's going to miss him and also when he "drowns" his books.

The whole "He needs me" scene and the one following it in Robert Altman's Popeye, but that's more of a closet romantic weepiness.

But the movie that had the strongest emotional impact on me the whole way through is David Lynch's Straight Story. For a day or so after watching it I couldn't think of any part of that movie without starting to cry a little.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Movies are emotions. At least most movies are. Even in between the explosions, decapitations and monsters, the characters, writers, directors, etc., are feeling emotions. I will admit that even movies without those goodies can be highly emotional. Even old movies may depict a primitive sort of emotion that many primitive people today can still grasp. (I know; you're getting sick of this...)

I'm sorry. I wanted to post somewhere else, but I was told I didn't have enough time. Later, Gators.
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Movies I still cry when I see:
Spitfire Grill
Basically the last 20 minutes of the movie.

Steel Magnolias
From the time Roberts is found on the foor on. I hate when the dad comes home and the kids is screaming at her on the floor.

My Girl
When she goes crazy at the viewing. I cried for an hour after the movie ended and haven't watched it again.

Passion Of The Christ
I'm a Christian so it had an impact.



Lost in never never land
I have to agree with mark f, movies are emotions. If you aren emotionally involved somehow in the film, I'm don't end up being all that interested.

A film like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang makes me happy and content when I see it.

Finding Neverland renews a spirit of creativity in me every time I see it.

Bridge to Terabithia was quite emotionally draining when I watched it, because the end is just heart breaking.

Welcome to the Jungle made me want to kill the director.

The trailer for Hottie or the Nottie made me want to kill a lot of people involved with the idea and greenlighting of the film.
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Welcome to the human race...
The one film that burned straight into my mind when I saw this topic was Magnolia.

I've only seen it once, and that was a few weeks ago. To be fair, I'm quite aware of the film's shortcomings (long, overacted, borrows heavily from Altman, etc), so no, I don't think it's an excellent film (or do I?). But for some reason it just hit me really hard. The whole thing drew me in, gave me goosebumps, and I even ended up crying at one point because it got too much. This is coming from someone who never cries at movies. And of course, the ending, where you saw a flicker of hope in Claudia's smile after three hours' worth of "piss and ****", it's a beautiful moment.

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I have no problem with "movies are emotions" but I think we could come up with plenty of other values for x in the broad equation "movies = x", that are just as valid. "movies are illusions", "movies are dreams", "movies are ideas" and "movies are statements" are some off the top of my head. Why limit yourself to emotional involvement?



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What do you think are the movies that have such strong emotional feeling to them... movies that are sooo sad that you can't help but get chocked up, shed a tear or even start bawling like a baby. Movies that make you feel so Happy/sad/angry etc. you do something drastic like quit your job or drink yourself to sleep or something along those line. A movie that makes you want to move to a different country to help people (etc.)

I guess this is a too broad topic, plus i didn't do a good job of describing it... I'm sorry, it seemed like a good idea in my head.
I'm going to take this as feeling emotionally connected to a movie for whatever reason.

Movies that have spoken to me...

The Joy Luck Club
The mother daughter story speaks to me everytime. Also, both my parents were brought up very much like the daughters. They were trying desperatly to be 'american' and break away from the traditional ways, and their parents were in the whole culture globe of their peers (neighborhood /community), just as the mothers of this story were. There's just so many issues in this story I can relate too...being the mom, being the daughter, wanting what's best for your kids, trying to understand your parents, trying to please your parents and wanting their approval, wantng to live your own life without them butting it...but on the flip side, hoping your kids will listen to your advice and wanting to butt in from time to time ...and on and on.

Rain Man
A scene at the end speaks to me. I know I've posted something about this in another thread (many moons ago)...but it's the scene towards the end when the fire alarm goes off and Raymond has an emotional episode because of that noise. Dustin Hoffman nailed that scene and it gets to me every time. Some of you know that my son has aspergers/autism (no where near the level of Raymond, he's high functioning), and there was a very long time he too was overly sensitive to noise and has had many melt downs/episodes the way in which Dustin played it. Luciky my son has grown out of this stage, for the most part, but that scene still hits me hard.

Bread and Tulips
This lovely Italian lark definately spoke to me during a time when I had alot of stress going on in my life (won't go into it). I really connected with this mom, who she was and what she needed. The thought of getting away from everything in your life for a little while and only worrying about yourself brought up some fantasies.



Hello Salem, my name's Winifred. What's yours
steel magnolias - so beautiful and funny it gets me every time. the friendship these women have is so touching i love it

cinema paradiso - its so affecting to see how a mans whole life revolves around movies, that he genuinely loves them. I'm a film student at university so this film in particular i can really relate to.
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I know that for many of you a movie is often an emotional experience that can bring you to tears or perhaps even inspire a change of life. I’ve rarely if ever had such an experience, although I remember at age 10 getting a little choked up at the end of The Robe (1953, the first film ever released in Cinemascope) when Jay Robinson as Caligula sends Richard Burton and Jean Simmons to be executed because they are Christians. (Had I known then what I later learned about Burton’s lifestyle, I might have laughed at the irony of casting him in such a pious role.) But usually any emotional reaction to a movie on my part was caused by something other than what was on the screen. For example, when my daughter was very young, I took her to see Disney’s The Jungle Book. When it got to the scene where it appeared the friendly bear had died, I looked over at her, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. Seeing her crying brought a tear to my eye, too.

On the other hand, I’ve very often been inspired or moved by the written word—particularly by one article that I think is one of the most powerful pieces of prose ever written. It’s a short newspaper column written by Ernie Pyle, the best war correspondent who ever lived. It’s called "The Death of Captain Waskow" and is about a group of combat infantrymen bringing the body of a popular officer, Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Tex., down from a mountain in Italy where they had been fighting in World War II. This simple, short article—just a few hundred words—written Jan. 10, 1944, won Pyle the Pulitzer Prize, the equivalent of the Oscar for newspaper writers. I can’t even think of this story without choking up and can’t read it without crying. Of course, Hollywood made a movie of it—a very good movie, in fact, The Story of GI Joe (1945) with Burgess Meredith as Pyle and Robert Mitchum as Waskow. The real Ernie Pyle was on the set when they were filming the picture, home temporarily from covering the war in Europe and on his way to the Pacific to report the final push against Japan. He died just a few months later, before the film was released as I remember, shot through the head by a Japanese sniper on a small island of no major importance except for him and the other soldiers who died there. He never knew that Meredith won an Oscar for playing him.

Now the movie includes the scene of which Pyle had written, and the actors speak and perform exactly like the real soldiers he described. But that movie scene never moves me because I know Mitchum got up afterward and went on to play many parts for many years. One thing Pyle taught me is that in the real world, death is forever.

Like I said, it’s a powerful bit of prose—I first read it before I’d reached my teens in a book collection of Pyle’s reports from the front, and I decided then I wanted to become a newspaper reporter and try to write that well. I never have, of course. But take a look—this is why I love the written word over the movie image.

http://www.pbs.org/weta/reportingamericaatwar/reporters/pyle/waskow.html



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Colour out of Time
The Elephant Man (1980)


Great Actors, great director, great story ... I recall being emotionally wrungout after watching.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080678/

Memorable Moments
WARNING: "2 scenes" spoilers below

Mrs Kendal says "Why, Mr. Merrick, you're not an elephant man at all."
John Merrick "Oh no?"
Mrs Kendal replies "Oh no... no... you're a Romeo."

and this one
John Merrick screaming "I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!"
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Irreversible



"Black Beauty" very heart renching.