Sunday, July 11, 2010

Top Ten Tearjerkers

Today I bought a book with some of my birthday money. The book is called Ten Bad Dates With De Niro and consists of various lists about movies. I get the feeling as I go through I'll make my own lists based on the lists in the book. This is the first of those.
These are the Top Ten Movies That Made Me Cry Enough To Leave A Dent Of Weepiness In My Brain.
Do keep in mind that there will be spoilers here, as well as the occasional quote of exactly what makes me cry. Because if I'm going to start crying, you're all coming with me!

10) Repo! The Genetic Opera - The only reason this isn't higher on the list is because I've seen the movie so many times I've trained myself not to cry most of the time (sometimes it still gets me). Specifically Blind Mag's performance of Cromaggia and Nathan and Shilo singing I Didn't Know I'd Love You So Much are what start the waterworks. But what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?
9) The Muppets Christmas Carol - I found out recently that the part of this movie that makes me (and, truly, everybody) cry, the song When Love Is Gone, wasn't even in the theatrical release! The filmmakers added it for video. The power of the song is so great, that typing the name of it made me tear up. Whenever I watch the movie I run out of the room so I won't have to hear the song, but I end up crying anyway. At least I'm crying in private.
8) The Chipmunk Adventure - The Chipettes have escaped from the eight year old pharoah in Egypt who wanted to marry them and are flying away again in their hot air balloon. Brittany asks Eleanor for a sandwich out of the cooler she brought along only to find out that there are no sandwiches, only the baby penguin the pharoah had given them as a present. The penguin is sick from the heat and misses his parents, so to cheer him up (?) the girls sing him the most soul stabbingly sad song in the history of children's cinema, My Mother.
7) Toy Story / Toy Story 2 - I clumped these together because ... well, because I felt like it. It's my list, I can do what I want. Much like the past few entries, these movies are here mainly for songs. In Toy Story we have I Will Go Sailing No More, when Buzz Lightyear figures out he is not a spaceman, but the toy Woody has been telling him he is. In a last act of trying to prove himself right, he climbs to the arm of a couch to the lyrics "No, it can't be true, I could fly if I wanted to. Like a bird in the sky, I believe I can fly." He jumps, falls, and his jetpack wings break off. "Clearly now, I will go sailing no more." The song from Toy Story 2 is called When She Loved Me and if you think I'm going to say anything more about that, you are a crazy person. Typing the name was bad enough. I will say that I was once trapped in a souvenir store in Downtown Disney while thing song blasted from every speaker in the store. It was the world's saddest Hell.
6) The Pied Piper Of Hutzovina - This one is a complete mystery to me. I've watched it twice and have cried pretty much all the way through both times. I have no clue why. It's not the horrible, sobbing sort of cry, though. It's just tears leaking down my face for no discernable reason. It's the world's most mysterious weepfest.
5) Truly, Madly, Deeply - I saw this movie when I was young enough to not quite understand what was going on and to not really remember it now. To the best of my knowledge, it went something like this: A woman's husband died and she just couldn't get over it. So the ghost of her husband, as well as some of his ghost buddies, moved back into the house. I guess he was sent back to help her get over the loss or something. Eventually she met a man who she also loved and came with the added bonus of not being dead. So the woman become conflicted. At one point ghost husband asked her if she wanted him to leave and she told him no, never. At the end of the movie she moves on with her life and leaves with the alive guy while ghost husband watches, crying, from the window. I was completely inconsolable after watching this movie because in my little nine year old brain, ghost husband can never leave the house now because she asked him to stay. Also, I never liked alive guy, I wanted her to stay with ghost husband. But I'm pretty sure the point of the movie was supposed to be the opposite of that, we were supposed to be happy or proud of her for moving on. So my reaction probably says more about me and my intense fear of losing the past than anything else.
4) Snoopy Come Home - Anybody who can watch this movie without crying is a sick individual. I read a book once that described Snoopy's going away party in this movie as one of the funniest scenes in animated film history. The person who wrote that book has no soul.
3) [500] Days Of Summer - I probably have some personal demons that made me react to this movie the way I did. I'd really rather not go into what they are. But because of those demons and this movie, I don't like Zooey Deschanel anymore. Which sucks, because I think she's awesome. Every time I see her now, though, I feel a wave of hatred and an urge to cry.
2) Love, Actually - "By next year, hopefully I'll be dating one of these girls [pictures of pretty ladies] but until then let me say, without hope or expectation, but because it's Christmas (and at Christmas you tell the truth) to me, you are perfect and my wasted heart will love you until you look like this [picture of a gross, old mummy]." Anyone who claims their heart doesn't break watching that scene is a dirty, no good liar. Runner up: The scene when Emma Thompson confronts Alan Rickman about seeing someone behind her back and, in less than two seconds, cleans up her tears and happily hugs her children for their performances in the Christmas pageant.
1) Ink - No movie in my memory has made me cry more than Ink and never have I held a movie that's made me cry so much in such high regard as I hold Ink. It's a damn near perfect movie, and it earned those tears.

And now, two movies I cried after seeing for no reason other than I wanted my hour and a half back (and I was probably also PMSy):
2) Hitch
1) Juno

And now the two episodes of television shows I considered putting on my movie tearjerker list because they're just that powerful:
2) Buffy The Vampire Slayer "The Body" - For most of season five Buffy's mom had been fighting brain cancer. Near the end she made a recovery and started dating a nice guy she met at the museum she worked at. In the episode before this one Buffy comes home to find, first, flowers the man sent to her mom with a very nice card and, thirty seconds later, her mom lying dead on the couch. The Body is about Buffy and her friends dealing with the loss. There's a quick scene of Buffy imagining that she'd found her mother in time and saves her life before it jumps back to reality. There is no music in the episode at all. And, surprisingly, the most upsetting moment (and the one part that really makes me cry) comes from former demon Anya. At the beginning of the scene she's making her usual tactless comments, asking what the doctors are going to do with the body and everyone else getting frustrated with her for saying such horrible things, but then it becomes clear why she's asking all these questions: "But I don't understand. I don't understand how all this happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's - there's just a body and I don't understand why she can't get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid. And Xander's crying and not talking. And I was having fruit punch and I thought well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch ever, and she'll never have eggs or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why."
1) Futurama "Jurassic Bark" - Fry finds the fossilized remains of his dog and remembers all the good times they had together and how much he loved the dog. Professor Farnsworth has a machine that can bring the dog back to life and Fry gets very excited, getting everything ready for having his dog back and, in the process, ignoring Bender, who spends the whole episode being jealous and hating the not-yet-revived dog. As they're about to put the dog into the machine to bring him back, something (I don't remember what because I only ever saw the episode once) happens that sends the dog flying into flaming hot molten stuff, seeminly unretrievable. Bender (for those not in the know, Bender is a robot) goes in and rescues the dog and puts it in the machine for Fry. The machine says the dog was fifteen when it died, but Fry only knew him until the dog was four. Certain that the dog lived a full life after he'd gone and that the dog wouldn't remember him, Fry decides not to revive the dog. The episode ends with a flashback of the dog spending the rest of his life waiting outside the pizza place where Fry worked for him to come back while I Will Wait For You by Connie Francis plays.

There. I've now sufficiently made myself cry like a little sissy girl. Why the hell did I think this list was a good idea?

End of line.
-Sally

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