One of my blogcrushes is a wonderful movie review site called Pajiba. They hate most everything that they are forced to watch, but the few flicks that make it through their gauntlet I’ve found to be more than worth a watch. Plus, they make fun of everyone. Any time I can laugh at the expense of a celebrity is time well spent.
I write all that feel good stuff to justify stealing one of their ideas. The other day, one of the reviewers posted a list of the Top 20 Tearjerkers of All Time. I agree with a couple of his choices, but I figured I’d post my own. I invite everyone to play along. And since most of my Buffalo blogging family is on some kind of mysterious posting siesta, maybe this will give them some new material.
Top 5 Movie Tearjerkers
5. Dead Poets Society – when Ethan Hawke runs across the pristine snow, no musical soundtrack, and drops to his knees, I lose it every time. Strangely, I feel nothing when the father goes downstairs and discovers the body, or at the end, when you are supposed to well up with tears as the newly independent thinking students all stand on their desks (except for those couple of tools who learned nothing from their brilliant but misunderstood instructor).
4. The Family Stone – every time one of Diane Keaton’s kids find out she has cancer – for obvious reasons.
3. Dumbo – when Dumbo visits his Mom and she rocks him back and forth with “Baby Mine” playing – ugh – the most heart-wrenching Disney moment of all time.
2. Four Weddings and a Funeral – the eulogy scene makes me weep like a child. I actually went out and purchased a book of W.H. Auden poetry so I could read the lines for myself.
1. Saving Private Ryan – I cry at multiple times throughout this movie - in the beginning when the old man looks down at the gravestone, when the black car winds up the driveway to tell the mother her sons are dead, when General Marshall reads from the Lincoln letter, whenever anyone (except Vin Diesel) dies, and especially at the end. When Tom Hanks says, “Earn this,” and then kicks off, I’m reduced to a blubbering mess.
I’ll throw in a book for good measure. I’ve never cried while reading a book, save once. When I was a child, I owned a collection of stories titled Animals Can Be Almost Human. Inside its cover was a short story by James Thurber about a golden retriever. I can’t remember the name of the story, but the dog, who is the author’s best friend, dies in the end. I was crushed when I read it. I can remember sitting on my bed doing the hubba-hubbas over that one.
