Have You Ever Seen a Grown Man Cry?
Apr 22 '01
The Bottom Line These were the movies released in the past ten years that moisten my eyes
Oh the melancholy, the melancholy! The following list is proof that boys DO cry. Because cinema history is filled with pain and depression, I have limited my list of ten tear-jerkers to the last decade. Within each of these sorrowful entries you'll find the film's title and year, the alias I know it as, a single sentence plot description, and a short paragraph explaining why the misery is too great to stop the tears from flowing out of my eyes. Whip out the tissues - we begin...
10) THE HAUNTING (1999 remake)
AKA: "Doesn't Casper Look Cute?"
Plot: A handful of insomniacs stay in a haunted house.
This remake of the 1963 classic left me crying my eyes out for its shameless use of CGI. The specters look like Casper The Friendly Ghost with their ridiculously cartoonish and Disney-cute features. I also shed tears for the helpless souls who left the theater saying "those were great special effects!" May their ignorance find them bliss.
9) TOPSY-TURVY (1999)
AKA: "You Thought You Were Paying To See a Movie... Mwahahaha!"
Plot: In between excruciating scenes from the Mikado, there was roughly 15 minutes worth of a biography about Gilbert and Sullivan.
Oh how the New York critics loved this puppy! I figured that since everyone important seemed to hail it as the film of the year, why not give it a shot? What I soon learned was that in order to enjoy this movie, you needed to enjoy operetta. The pain flooded through my ears and eyes. My belly protested with fury. I prayed that should the "higher powers that be" let me live through this, I would quit my agnostic ways. From my mouth screamed with Braveheart intensity: "MERCY!" When I left the theater wiping away the crusted tears from my face, I slumped down to my knees, looked up at the sky and said, "just kidding."
8) PI (1998)
AKA: "Let Me Show You What I Learned in Film School"
Plot: A mathematician trying to find a formula that predicts the stock market finds something much more.
"Aronofsky!" they cried. "Aronofsky!" as if he was the second-coming of Akira Kurosawa. I eagerly went to see the "masterpiece" with hope that this was the Knife in the Water of a future Polanski, or the Boy Meets Girl of a future Leos Carax, or at most the Citizen Kane of an entire generation. Tears filled my eyes when I saw the truth. This isn't hope - this is a typical film student thesis project exercising a loose mess of camera and editing tactics that all film students learn and use - nothing original or inventive. I cried when I realized that Aronofsky isn't the great hope that he was built up to be. I cried because this era in film history still has no messiah to lead us to something new.
7) ENEMY AT THE GATES (2001)
AKA: "Feels Like a Dirty Handjob While Being Watched By a Bearded Ruskie Sleeping 6 Inches Away"
Plot: Two WWII propaganda-built sniper allstars faceoff in the Battle of Stalingrad.
Hollywood loves ill-fitting romance. What was once a true story is turned into a b-rated romantic comedy. As a topper, the film teaches us that the Battle of Stalingrad wasn't fought between the Germans and the Soviets. In reality, the Soviet Army was just a bunch of Brits dressed up in Russian uniforms fighting other Brits and Yankees wearing Nazi robe. Despite how this movie opened my eyes to that often covered up fact of history, I wept over intruding romances and the grimy love scene. The waste of a perfectly good true story moistened my eyes even more.
6) FORREST GUMP (1994)
AKA: "My Left Foot Writes a History Textbook"
Plot: A Southern retarded man is involved with most of the Baby-Boomers' historical happenings.
This lesson in generic filmmaking (characteristic of Zemeckis) didn't make me cry in the theater - instead my tears flowed during the year's Academy Awards. Zemeckis stole not only the Best Picture, but the Best Director as well! The horror, the horror. To add to my sorrow, the far better Pulp Fiction was the film beaten out for those two Oscars. What is it about the direction of Zemeckis that makes him a good director? Why do the people demand a lack of even the slightest bit of imagination from their entertainment? Why, why, why... Hold me (sob, sob).
5) TITANIC (1997)
AKA: "Sink the Damn Boat Already!"
Plot: Love and Leo before we finally get to see what we paid for - tragedy.
"They're making a new movie about the sinking of the Titanic? Yipee!" Little was I paying attention that James Cameron was the "director" who was going to take on this challenge. What I got was not a story about the Titanic - what I got was a story that just happened to be on the Titanic. Sitting through well over two hours of crap, Cameron finally stopped the agony for a fifteen minute portrayal of the actual sinking. I cried out of pure joy that the b-rated romance was over - but that wouldn't last for long. Soon after the boat makes its exit, we get treated to another half hour of a painfully bad story before Cameron lets us go. The Academy awarded one of the worst American directors in history for his exploitation of the tragedy with plenty of unearned Oscars. I cried once more and swore to myself that I would never see another James Cameron movie again.
4) NIXON (1995)
AKA: "A Fun Game of Kick the Corpse"
Plot: Oliver Stone's remake of Citizen Kane with the late Richard Nixon being the victim of his shameless pulp.
Oliver Stone portrayed Nixon as a psychotic, power-hungry, haunted, evil, racist, and pitiful freak with a strange obsession with JFK (although Stone himself is the only one who worships the Kennedy family like Gods). Released shortly after the death of Richard Nixon, the film served as Stone's attention-getting absence of tact. Speculation was the name of the game. Stone went too far and fictional, injecting an extreme-leftist's demoralizing view of the faulty ex-President. Not even Warren G Harding deserves such a treatment. In the end Stone wants us to cry out of pity for Nixon. Instead, I cried out of pity for Oliver Stone, whos soul will surely burn in the flames of Hell for this unbridled episode of necrophilia.
3) STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999-00)
AKA: "Lucas Does an Animation Film!"
Plot: Prequel to the Star Wars Trilogy involving the childhood of Darth Vader and the learnings of Obi Won.
Nothing can describe the joy I felt when I heard that George Lucas was planning another Star Wars installment. Half a decade later, I waited out the line for a day in Chicagoland's humidity. A shout of joy escaped my trembling lips when those oh-so-familiar trumpet blasts signal the beginning of the film. Two hours later, I wept like a schoolgirl when I realized that this was just a CGI-fest. I wanted a movie and what I got was a videogame. All the light-sabers and annoying Jar Jar Binks in the world couldn't save the God-awful special effects written on some computer screen somewhere. When will filmmakers learn that computer effects are no more realistic than the cartoon drawings of Roger Rabbit? It hurts! The sorrow! Death to computer effects!
2) FAIL SAFE (2000 TV remake)
AKA: "Clooney Gives Classic Cinema the Finger"
Plot: A live television remake of the classic techno-thriller in which nuke-carrying planes get accidentally ordered to drop their deadly cargo on Moscow.
Not only does this George Clooney remake use almost the exact same script, sets, and costumes of the original, he also uses the same camerawork and war footage! Not unlike Psycho, this classic had no reason to be remade, let alone remade as a failed clone of the original. The tears were jerked from my eyes as I witnessed the Hollywood mega-cast goof up during the live broadcast. The blasphemous example of what not to do on live television climaxed in Keitel's stumbling over the words, "the matador! the matador!" My weeping continues after more than a year since watching it.
1) THE SCARLET LETTER (1995)
AKA: "I Get It! That Was Just Symbolism for Indian Warfare, Sexual Voyeurism, and Gary Oldman's Penis in Hawthorne's Words! Silly Me."
Plot: Last of the Mohicans meets The Crucible meets Basic Instinct meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Debbie Does Dallas with the characters and setting of The Scarlet Letter.
Undoubtedly the worst adaptation of literature in Hollywood history. Dracula Dead and Loving It is closer to its source than this. I am convinced that Nathaniel Hawthorne's angry rolling around in his grave is the source of recent natural anomalies like global warming, deterioration of the ozone layer, and El Nino. My eyes tear up and my body trembles in fear of what curse Hawthorne's spirit will cast next. The sorrow! The misery! The repulsion!
So that is my list of the biggest tear-jerkers in the modern era of Hollywood filmmaking. Proof that boys cry. Oh no! My eyes are getting moist just thinking about these ten cinematic horrors! I'm choking up... talk amongst yourselves...
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Epinions.com ID:
third_man
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Member: Michael Scott
Location: Chicago, IL - Ocean City, MD
Reviews written: 33
Trusted by: 36 members
About Me:
Certified celluloid junkie - I prefer my cinema hardboiled, never over-easy.
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