gypsysoul
04-09-2007, 04:50 PM
A tv channel in England recently ran a list of 100 greatest tearjerkers. Here is the top 20. How many make you blub?
Or what would you put on the list?
20 - Dead Poets Society
Robin Williams avoids his trademark tics and tremors to deliver a convincing performance as an inspirational English teacher in a conservative American boys school. Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard are the students who start to appreciate poetry as a result. Unfortunately, the parents object to Robin’s liberal ways and it’s left to the pupils to stage a moving protest when he gets the sack.
19 - Sophie’s Choice
Based on William Styron’s bestseller, this is a thoroughly successful adaptation. Meryl Streep turns in the performance of a lifetime as Sophie, the Polish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp stranded in suburban, post-war New York. Her big secret is slowly revealed over several long summer days to young aspiring writer (and the film’s narrator) Peter MacNicol. When the revelation comes, it is truly heartbreaking
18 - Brief Encounter
David Lean breaks out the stiff upper lips for his restrained, yet emotionally charged, examination of forbidden passions in 1940s England. After a chance meeting at a suburban railway station, Trevor Howard and housewife Celia Johnson embark on a remarkably chaste, yet overwhelmingly passionate, affair. After numerous meetings and much soul-searching, the tears start to flow when the couple see each other for one last time in a railway tearoom.
17 - Stand By Me
Touching, high-quality drama about a bunch of kids who discover the meaning of friendship in 1950s America - whilst on an adventure to find the body of a dead boy. Based on a Stephen King story and directed by Rob Reiner, Stand By Me is the definitive coming-of-age drama and features a wonderful performance from a very young River Phoenix. Phoenix delivers such a heartbreaking story about his abusive father in one scene that you’ll find yourself crying along with him.
16 - Terms Of Endearment
Showered with praise, laden with Oscars, this hugely successful tearjerker boasts some magnificent on-screen chemistry between Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine. Although the story focuses on the fraught relationship between MacLaine and her daughter Debra Winger, it’s retired-astronaut-next-door Nicholson who brought cinema audiences flocking. Terms Of Endearment also features one of the most moving ever deathbed scenes, when Winger explains to her son that she isn’t going to be around forever.
15 - Watership Down
A beautifully animated version of Richard Adams’ classic tale of rabbits and men, Watership Down follows the trials of a group of rabbits who must abandon their doomed warren and find a new home. Although it looks cute, the film has more than its fair share of bunny peril and violence, and is more than a little upsetting. You’ll be choking back the sobs when Hazel is shot, and his little brother Fiver has a dreamlike vision of him to the sound of Garfunkel’s Bright Eyes.
14 - Gone With The Wind
The definitive Technicolor romantic epic. Rhett, Scarlett, burning sets and a whole slew of nostalgic and/or reactionary values, this is creator-producer David O Selznick’s finest hour and a cornerstone of the Hollywood monolith. Winner of 10 Oscars, hugely successful at the box office and containing one of the most quoted lines in the history of the movies, Gone With The Wind is the stuff of film legend. Vivien Leigh and Clarke Gable spend the whole of the American civil war falling in and out of love, before he finally leaves her in one of cinema’s saddest and most famous moments. Frankly my dear, he just didn’t give a damn.
13 - Blackadder
Blackadder had been one of Britain’s most successful ever comedies, but its final series set during the First World War managed to elicit genuine affection from the audience. Rowan Atkinson’s Captain Blackadder fails in his quest to get out of the trenches and is sent ‘over the top’ in the last ever episode. This grim image, the frame frozen which then dissolves into one depicting the same field now full of poppies, memorably ended the series on a note of dark satire.
12 - Beaches
Gary Marshall’s 1980s chick flick is as shamelessly entertaining as it is mushy. Two girls, one a privileged rich kid, one from the wrong side of the tracks, forge a lifelong friendship one summer, fall out and make up endlessly until the inevitable disease-of-the-week plot happens along. The tears will be welling up when the two friends sit on the beach for the last time together to the strains of Wind Beneath My Wings.
11 - Forrest Gump Tom Hanks is the heroic dunce living through America’s recent history in Robert Zemeckis’ multi-Oscar winning comedy-drama. Top-notch performances and some impressive visual trickery contribute to one of the populist triumphs of the 90s. Hanks fills the timid, innocent Gump with such sentimental energy, that you can’t help but celebrate his triumphs and cry at his falls, especially when his beloved Jenny decides to leave him heartbroken
10 - My Girl
Growing up sure is hard to do, as post-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin discovers in this adolescent drama about a girl (Anna Chlumsky) who is obsessed with death, owing to her mother’s death and her dad’s funeral parlour business. She finds a friend in the form of allergy-riddled Culkin. Sadly, the pair don’t get beyond a first kiss before Culkin is stung to death by bees. It’s a tough old world out there.
9 - Field Of Dreams
If you build it, he will come. Weepy baseball fable with supernatural overtones starring Kevin Costner (who else?) as a farmer who builds a baseball pitch out in his corn fields to help the ghosts of the disgraced 1919 White Sox team find peace. Field Of Dreams is that rare thing, a poignant movie, which manages to drain the tear ducts, without ever resorting to cheap manipulation or clich餠sentiment. So genuine, you can’t help but be moved when Costner’s dead father emerges from the corn for an impromptu game of catch.
8 - The Champ
John Voight is an ageing boxer whose young son calls him ‘The Champ’ in one of the saddest of all sports movies. When his ex-wife, fashion designer Faye Dunaway, comes to claim the boy, Voight takes on a fight to justify the boy’s confidence in him. The crushing dignity of the film’s final scenes ensures there isn’t a dry eye in the house when The Champ reaches the final round.
7 - The Shawshank Redemption
It’s hard to believe that The Shawshank Redemption was ignored by both audiences and the Oscars on its cinema release, when you consider how popular it has now become. Much like Tim Robbins’ character Andy Dufresne, the inspirational movie’s warmth shines out. His touching relationship with fellow inmate Morgan Freeman only increases its emotional punch. Scenes like the one in which Robbins plays classical music to the rest of the prison, and when he is reunited with Freeman outside the prison, are some of the most moving in cinema.
6 - Bambi
Disney’s iconic fable about a year in the life of a fawn may have been made for kids, but that doesn’t mean it pulls any punches in telling children how life is. Birth, death and man’s inhumanity to animals are all present on screen as the young deer tries to survive in the forest. The moment that has traumatised millions of children, and adults, around the world comes after a forest fire, when Bambi realises his mummy isn’t coming back.
5 - Ghost
Heaven can wait for Patrick Swayze in this supernatural love story starring Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg. When Swayze is murdered in a street robbery, his spirit is unable to rest and he returns to find out who was responsible for his untimely death. A perfect balance of laughter and tears, Ghost’s most moving moment comes when Demi Moore finally says goodbye to her true love and he ascends to heaven. Another reason to cry about Ghost is that pants pop song ‘Unchained Melody’.
4 - It’s A Wonderful Life
A perennial Christmas favourite, Frank Capra’s classic heart-warmer is actually much darker than many people fondly remember. James Stewart’s Everyman character may eventually realise that life is wonderful, but he reaches the brink of suicide to do so. The magic of Bedford Falls, a throwback to small-town Americana that probably never existed, is revealed in all its uplifting glory in the final scene when George is reunited with his family, and showered with the much-needed money from his friends.
3 - Titanic
The ultimate blockbuster weepy, James Cameron’s disaster movie focuses on the unsinkable love between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, but it’s the ship that steals the show. Such is the power of Cameron’s special effects-driven recreation of the fate of the Titanic and its passengers that you can’t help but get swept away by it. The Academy and millions of teenage girls around the world wept as Leo finally sank beneath the waves into the freezing ocean.
2 - The Green Mile
Following The Shawshank Redemption, director Frank Darabont hooked up with writer Stephen King for another spiritual prison drama. Michael Clarke Duncan is the prisoner convicted of child murder, yet apparently capable of performing miracles, awaiting execution on the so-called Green Mile. Tom Hanks plays the prison guard who forms a bond with the gentle giant, and amongst the many moments that tug on the heartstrings, it’s the inexorable ending, as Duncan is strapped into the chair, which really opens the floodgates
1 - E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
Before the likes of Independence Day and Evolution, there was a time when movie aliens were cute and only wanted to be our friends. Steven Spielberg brings all of his magic to this wondrous tale of a young boy called Elliot, who befriends an alien stranded on Earth. It’s up to Elliot to get E.T. home and keep him away from the government. The film’s central relationship is so touching, that you won’t be able to hold back the tears when the little guy finally returns to his spaceship
Or what would you put on the list?
20 - Dead Poets Society
Robin Williams avoids his trademark tics and tremors to deliver a convincing performance as an inspirational English teacher in a conservative American boys school. Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard are the students who start to appreciate poetry as a result. Unfortunately, the parents object to Robin’s liberal ways and it’s left to the pupils to stage a moving protest when he gets the sack.
19 - Sophie’s Choice
Based on William Styron’s bestseller, this is a thoroughly successful adaptation. Meryl Streep turns in the performance of a lifetime as Sophie, the Polish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp stranded in suburban, post-war New York. Her big secret is slowly revealed over several long summer days to young aspiring writer (and the film’s narrator) Peter MacNicol. When the revelation comes, it is truly heartbreaking
18 - Brief Encounter
David Lean breaks out the stiff upper lips for his restrained, yet emotionally charged, examination of forbidden passions in 1940s England. After a chance meeting at a suburban railway station, Trevor Howard and housewife Celia Johnson embark on a remarkably chaste, yet overwhelmingly passionate, affair. After numerous meetings and much soul-searching, the tears start to flow when the couple see each other for one last time in a railway tearoom.
17 - Stand By Me
Touching, high-quality drama about a bunch of kids who discover the meaning of friendship in 1950s America - whilst on an adventure to find the body of a dead boy. Based on a Stephen King story and directed by Rob Reiner, Stand By Me is the definitive coming-of-age drama and features a wonderful performance from a very young River Phoenix. Phoenix delivers such a heartbreaking story about his abusive father in one scene that you’ll find yourself crying along with him.
16 - Terms Of Endearment
Showered with praise, laden with Oscars, this hugely successful tearjerker boasts some magnificent on-screen chemistry between Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine. Although the story focuses on the fraught relationship between MacLaine and her daughter Debra Winger, it’s retired-astronaut-next-door Nicholson who brought cinema audiences flocking. Terms Of Endearment also features one of the most moving ever deathbed scenes, when Winger explains to her son that she isn’t going to be around forever.
15 - Watership Down
A beautifully animated version of Richard Adams’ classic tale of rabbits and men, Watership Down follows the trials of a group of rabbits who must abandon their doomed warren and find a new home. Although it looks cute, the film has more than its fair share of bunny peril and violence, and is more than a little upsetting. You’ll be choking back the sobs when Hazel is shot, and his little brother Fiver has a dreamlike vision of him to the sound of Garfunkel’s Bright Eyes.
14 - Gone With The Wind
The definitive Technicolor romantic epic. Rhett, Scarlett, burning sets and a whole slew of nostalgic and/or reactionary values, this is creator-producer David O Selznick’s finest hour and a cornerstone of the Hollywood monolith. Winner of 10 Oscars, hugely successful at the box office and containing one of the most quoted lines in the history of the movies, Gone With The Wind is the stuff of film legend. Vivien Leigh and Clarke Gable spend the whole of the American civil war falling in and out of love, before he finally leaves her in one of cinema’s saddest and most famous moments. Frankly my dear, he just didn’t give a damn.
13 - Blackadder
Blackadder had been one of Britain’s most successful ever comedies, but its final series set during the First World War managed to elicit genuine affection from the audience. Rowan Atkinson’s Captain Blackadder fails in his quest to get out of the trenches and is sent ‘over the top’ in the last ever episode. This grim image, the frame frozen which then dissolves into one depicting the same field now full of poppies, memorably ended the series on a note of dark satire.
12 - Beaches
Gary Marshall’s 1980s chick flick is as shamelessly entertaining as it is mushy. Two girls, one a privileged rich kid, one from the wrong side of the tracks, forge a lifelong friendship one summer, fall out and make up endlessly until the inevitable disease-of-the-week plot happens along. The tears will be welling up when the two friends sit on the beach for the last time together to the strains of Wind Beneath My Wings.
11 - Forrest Gump Tom Hanks is the heroic dunce living through America’s recent history in Robert Zemeckis’ multi-Oscar winning comedy-drama. Top-notch performances and some impressive visual trickery contribute to one of the populist triumphs of the 90s. Hanks fills the timid, innocent Gump with such sentimental energy, that you can’t help but celebrate his triumphs and cry at his falls, especially when his beloved Jenny decides to leave him heartbroken
10 - My Girl
Growing up sure is hard to do, as post-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin discovers in this adolescent drama about a girl (Anna Chlumsky) who is obsessed with death, owing to her mother’s death and her dad’s funeral parlour business. She finds a friend in the form of allergy-riddled Culkin. Sadly, the pair don’t get beyond a first kiss before Culkin is stung to death by bees. It’s a tough old world out there.
9 - Field Of Dreams
If you build it, he will come. Weepy baseball fable with supernatural overtones starring Kevin Costner (who else?) as a farmer who builds a baseball pitch out in his corn fields to help the ghosts of the disgraced 1919 White Sox team find peace. Field Of Dreams is that rare thing, a poignant movie, which manages to drain the tear ducts, without ever resorting to cheap manipulation or clich餠sentiment. So genuine, you can’t help but be moved when Costner’s dead father emerges from the corn for an impromptu game of catch.
8 - The Champ
John Voight is an ageing boxer whose young son calls him ‘The Champ’ in one of the saddest of all sports movies. When his ex-wife, fashion designer Faye Dunaway, comes to claim the boy, Voight takes on a fight to justify the boy’s confidence in him. The crushing dignity of the film’s final scenes ensures there isn’t a dry eye in the house when The Champ reaches the final round.
7 - The Shawshank Redemption
It’s hard to believe that The Shawshank Redemption was ignored by both audiences and the Oscars on its cinema release, when you consider how popular it has now become. Much like Tim Robbins’ character Andy Dufresne, the inspirational movie’s warmth shines out. His touching relationship with fellow inmate Morgan Freeman only increases its emotional punch. Scenes like the one in which Robbins plays classical music to the rest of the prison, and when he is reunited with Freeman outside the prison, are some of the most moving in cinema.
6 - Bambi
Disney’s iconic fable about a year in the life of a fawn may have been made for kids, but that doesn’t mean it pulls any punches in telling children how life is. Birth, death and man’s inhumanity to animals are all present on screen as the young deer tries to survive in the forest. The moment that has traumatised millions of children, and adults, around the world comes after a forest fire, when Bambi realises his mummy isn’t coming back.
5 - Ghost
Heaven can wait for Patrick Swayze in this supernatural love story starring Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg. When Swayze is murdered in a street robbery, his spirit is unable to rest and he returns to find out who was responsible for his untimely death. A perfect balance of laughter and tears, Ghost’s most moving moment comes when Demi Moore finally says goodbye to her true love and he ascends to heaven. Another reason to cry about Ghost is that pants pop song ‘Unchained Melody’.
4 - It’s A Wonderful Life
A perennial Christmas favourite, Frank Capra’s classic heart-warmer is actually much darker than many people fondly remember. James Stewart’s Everyman character may eventually realise that life is wonderful, but he reaches the brink of suicide to do so. The magic of Bedford Falls, a throwback to small-town Americana that probably never existed, is revealed in all its uplifting glory in the final scene when George is reunited with his family, and showered with the much-needed money from his friends.
3 - Titanic
The ultimate blockbuster weepy, James Cameron’s disaster movie focuses on the unsinkable love between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, but it’s the ship that steals the show. Such is the power of Cameron’s special effects-driven recreation of the fate of the Titanic and its passengers that you can’t help but get swept away by it. The Academy and millions of teenage girls around the world wept as Leo finally sank beneath the waves into the freezing ocean.
2 - The Green Mile
Following The Shawshank Redemption, director Frank Darabont hooked up with writer Stephen King for another spiritual prison drama. Michael Clarke Duncan is the prisoner convicted of child murder, yet apparently capable of performing miracles, awaiting execution on the so-called Green Mile. Tom Hanks plays the prison guard who forms a bond with the gentle giant, and amongst the many moments that tug on the heartstrings, it’s the inexorable ending, as Duncan is strapped into the chair, which really opens the floodgates
1 - E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
Before the likes of Independence Day and Evolution, there was a time when movie aliens were cute and only wanted to be our friends. Steven Spielberg brings all of his magic to this wondrous tale of a young boy called Elliot, who befriends an alien stranded on Earth. It’s up to Elliot to get E.T. home and keep him away from the government. The film’s central relationship is so touching, that you won’t be able to hold back the tears when the little guy finally returns to his spaceship