The Six Films That Made Me Tear-Up, Ugly-Cry, and Downright Sob
Rocky III, Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias, The Passion of the Christ, The Help, and The Whale
There are six films, in particular, that totally broke my heart, leading to real life sobbing whether I sat in the movie theater, or alone on the sofa while in the middle of folding laundry.
For a feral Gen-Xer, like myself, who drank water from the hose, kissed a Ralph Macchio look-alike alter boy in the closet-game of Seven Minutes in Heaven at twelve, and played outside until the street lights came on, going to the movies was considered a real treat, an occasional occurrence unlike the kids of today. It was a big deal back then.
Without further ado, here’s a list of the six films that made me tear-up, ugly-cry, and downright sob. The films are in their respective order, beginning when I was eight.
Rocky III (Balled My Little Eyes Out)
The first movie I ever cried my eyes out to was Rocky III, which came out in theaters in 1982, when I was just a tender-hearted eight-year-old. I remember the scene so well. It was the scene when Clubber Lang, The A-Team’s own Mr T, pushes Rocky’s father-figure trainer, Mickey Goldmill, played by the great Burgess Meredith, right before a fight, who then inadvertently suffers a heart attack.
After the fight in which Rocky loses, he goes immediately to see Mickey, who’s propped up on a table in the locker room. With labored breathing, he asks Rocky how the fight went, and Rocky lies, telling him it was a knock-out, second round. As Mickey’s labored breathing escalates, Rocky keeps saying “We got more to do.” Just then, Mickey turns his head to look at Rocky, before telling him “I love ya, Kid” right before he dies.
This is when Rocky begins to deeply mourn for Mickey, cradling his head in his arms as he keeps saying over and over again, “We got more to do….We got more to do” When the gravity of Mickey’s loss finally hits Rocky like Clubber Lang’s right hook, he proceeds to wail in the most guttural of tones as Adrian turns away to cry while Paulie, Rocky’s rough around the edges brother-in-law, looks on as the camera slowly pans out before segueing to Mickey’s funeral.
It was at this exact moment when I totally lost it, balling my eyes out while I sat in a row with other children that included my BFF and her three siblings. Her mother ended up calling for me, the last one in the row of children like a game of Telephone to come sit on her lap until I’d eventually settled down to watch Rocky get pay back for Mickey in the final fight with the swag and bravado Clubber Lang after being mentored and coached by boxing nemesis turned best friend, Apollo Creed, who’d coin the famous line in both film and song — “The eye of the tiger.”
I recently rewatched this scene after all these years, forty-two years to be exact, and started to choke up all over again — imagine that. Something about profound loss and guttural mourning always hits me hard, regardless if it’s real life or in film.
Here’s the link to Mickey’s death: https://youtu.be/REmLV4vMwlgsi=FMUS8LAZyTiA3VxP
Terms of Endearment (Cried My Eyes Out)
The second film I cried my eyes out to was Terms of Endearment, a 1983 tragicomedy starring veteran Hollywood actress Shirley MacLaine as the fierce-spitfire, helicopter mother, Aurora Greenway, of only child, Emma, played by The Officer and The Gentleman’s Debra Winger, the actress with the pretty, breathy-sounding voice. In the film, mother and daughter are often at odds but remain close by telephone after Emma’s philandering husband, Flap Horton, played by Jeff Daniels, moves his young family to Iowa and then to Nebraska to pursue a career as an English professor. The couple have three children, two sons and a little girl, before Emma is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
It’s while Emma is in cancer treatment and then finally in end of life care at the hospital that the film careens into epic, cinematic loss where a strong-willed mother and grandmother must sit and watch her only child pass away in front of her after the young mother prepares to say goodbye to her beloved boys — Teddy, the younger one, is sweet and tender-hearted while Tommy, the eldest, is angry and stoic as her toddler-age daughter, Melanie, is too young to understand the gravity of the situation.
I still lose it whenever I watch the scene of Emma saying goodbye to her sons, telling Tommy that she knows he loves her, and to not feel bad when she’s gone before turning back to adorable Teddy with the most precious, little face ever who’s in a mess of tears that rips my heart out — every time. Emma is bulletproof for her boys until the little one nods his head before shutting the door. Once they’re gone, Emma cries.
And who could forget the epic scene where Aurora runs around the nurses’ station, screaming: GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOT! after having agonizingly waited until after 10 as she was told.
Here’s the link to Emma saying goodbye; have your tissues ready:
https://youtu.be/PuvONUFArdI?si=hEZa2GzuHe7vBc8O
Steel Magnolias (Tears and Sniffles)
Another fierce mother-daughter film that will rip your heart out is Steel Magnolias, starring Sally field, Dolly Parton, Olivia Dukakis, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah and relative newcomer, at the time, Julia Roberts — America’s Sweetheart with the bombastic smile who’d win over the hearts of men and women, alike, in her next film Pretty Woman, playing Vivian Ward, the endearing prostitute with a heart of gold.
This 1989 Southern tragicomedy, which was written by Robert Harling, who based Julia Roberts’ character, Shelby, on his real life sister, Susan Harling Robinson, who’d lost her life, according to Wikipedia, in 1985 due to complications from type 1 diabetes, tells a story about a group of six resilient women, the Steel Magnolias, who often gather and gossip at Truvy Jones’s hair salon, played by the one and only Dolly Parton.
It’s at Truvy’s salon where we watch Shelby have a vicious hypoglycemic attack — destroying her huge, wedding day hairstyle in the process as her protective mother M’Lynn, played by the loveable Sally Field, goes right into confident action in order to nullify the attack by forcibly administering orange juice to Shelby to help stabilize her insulin. Right after this scary episode, M’Lynn tells the ladies that the doctor said children aren’t possible to which Shelby interjects in a shaky voice — “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
After Shelby has a baby against her mother’s rightful concern, she soon develops kidney failure. M’Lynn ends up donating her kidney to Shelby but four months later develops a massive infection from the suppressive therapy — medication that prevents rejection of the new kidney. The infection ends up rendering her comatose.
It’s at this point, her husband signs paperwork to unplug Shelby from life support. And it’s M’Lynn who holds and gently caresses Shelby’s hand to the very end as Shelby’s father and husband leave the room, unable to bear the heavy loss. But it’s M’Lynn’s speech at Shelby’s funeral that made me cry the most:
“I find it amusing. Men are supposed to be made out of steel or something. I just sat there. I just held Shelby’s hand. There was no noise, no tremble, just peace. Oh god. I realize as a woman how lucky I am. I was there when that wonderful creature drifted into my life and I was there when she drifted out. It was the most precious moment of my life.”
Steel Magnolias does an excellent job at spotlighting the healing power of female friendship, especially with our own daughters.
Here’s a link to M’Lynn’s speech at Shelby’s funeral:
https://youtu.be/mNfMnm6mz9w?si=aj30d8Ibv8yl4PfE
The Passion of the Christ (The Gut-Punch)
As a Christian, I already know how this story ends, and what a glorious and hopeful ending in which our faith and salvation rests assured. But it was the love of a mother in tandem with our Lord’s brutal, tortuous killing that caused me to sob in my seat while watching the 2004 film, The Passion of the Christ.
There’s a part in the film when Jesus falls to his knees right in front of a narrow alleyway while carrying His heavy, wooden cross toward the site of His crucifixion. Just inside of that shadowed alleyway is His blessed mother, Mary, and out of sheer maternal instinct, she takes off running towards her beloved son and His cross — “I’m here,” she said back then, when Jesus was a little boy as she says it again to The Son of Man on His way to the cross — “I’m here.”
Right then, there’s a flashback to the time when Jesus had fallen down as a small boy only a few feet away from His mother. Mary has the same intense look of love and pain for Jesus back then as she does for Him now, running with open arms towards her young son before she scoops Him up into her loving arms to comfort Him.
The twisted grimace on Mary’s face is palpable here — every sting of the Roman whip, every hammer blow that rains down on a thick, rusty squared-peg nail — every mocking, blasphemous word, Mary feels it all as a mother, even though she knew from the moment of her miraculous conception that this is her Son’s divine destiny. It’s absolutely visceral and heartbreaking. This scene still gives me chills to this day.
There’s another powerful scene in the same vein where Jesus is being kept in a dungeon-like room with His hands bound by chains that are hanging from the ceiling, just prior to His crucifixion. Mary, who intuitively knows the exact spot where her Son is located, puts her ear to the ground right above Jesus as He looks up from the underground in full acknowledgement of her presence.
Here’s a link of Mary running to Jesus scene — brace yourself:
https://youtu.be/1J7tY_7t7QY?si=BWXgzNjiUV5-PRnu
The Help (The Ugly-Cry)
The ending of The Help, hands down, breaks my heart every single time I watch it. This film has become like Forrest Gump, meaning every time it pops up on TV, I have to sit down and watch it no matter what I’m doing at the moment.
The Help is considered a period drama film released in theaters in 2011, based on Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel of the same name. Like Steel Magnolias, The Help is an all female assembled cast who help tell the story of the arising tensions during the 1963 Civil Rights movement in Jackson, Mississippi, where the women live and work side by side but not afforded the same rights, privileges, and respect. I couldn’t help but fall in love with Aibileen Clark, played by Academy Award winner Viola Davis, and Aibileen’s best friend Minerva “Minny” Jackson, played by Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer. These women are the absolute heart and soul of this film and the civil rights movement in Mississippi.
The archnemesis of The Help is a monster named Hilly Walters Holbrook, played perfectly by Bryce Dallas Howard. She is unredeemable as a character, just a walking breathing nightmare. She makes life a living hell for Minny, and later on in the film, for Aibileen. So it’s no wonder Minny spiked her famous chocolate pie with a disgusting secret ingredient so she can watch Hilly dive into it with a satisfaction that could only be derived from comeuppance. From that moment on, it’s game-on for Hilly.
Aibileen grows very close to her charge — a very sweet little girl named Mae Mobley. Mae is neglected and unloved by her actual mother, one of Hilly’s mean girl followers. Aibileen teaches Mae a mantra to counteract the emotional and psychological damage being done by her mother, and it goes like this: “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”
At the end of the film, Hilly is a hot mess who shows up at Aibileen’s employer’s house to stir up trouble for revenge for Minny’s pie as word has begun to leak around town. As a direct result of Hilly’s influence, Aibileen is fired while being falsely accused of stealing the silver. But it’s what she says to Hilly that solidifies her self-confidence:
“I know something about you. Don’t you forget that. No matter what you say there’s a lot of time to write letters in jail. Plenty of time to write the truth about you. And the paper’s free.”
And when Hilly quips back — “No one will believe what you wrote.” Aibileen quips back even harder, “I don’t know. I’ve been told that I’m a pretty good writer, already sold a lot of books.”
And when Hilly tells her friend to call the police as a last ditch scramble to keep her reign in check, Aibileen steps up in her face triumphantly:
“All you do is scam and lie to try and get what you want. You’re a Godless woman. Ain’t you tired, Ms Hilly? Ain’t you tired?”
After the short satisfaction of Hilly’s comeuppance, Aibileen is fired. It’s now time for her to say goodbye to Mae Mobley, her last baby girl. She reminds the adorable child of their mantra, which she recites back in the cutest, little voice as tears stream down Aibileen’s face. She gives Mae a big hug and a kiss before turning around to face her cruel mother — “You give my sweet girl a chance.”
As Aibileen walks out the front door, little Mae begins banging on the front window, screaming for “Aibi,” the only real mother she has ever known and loved. Aibileen, in tears, continues to walk along the driveway, bending over once in grief before she stands upright again and continues to walk away as her voice-over begins:
“God says we need to love our enemies. It hard to do. But it can start by telling the truth. No one had ever asked me what it felt like to be me. Once I told the truth about that, I felt free.”
Here’s a link to the last scene in The Help, an absolute gut-punch:
https://youtu.be/FuyAt68pj3I?si=5CxcvTMbX7eMFuKM
The Whale (Sobbed in the Last Row)
The Whale is based on a screenplay by Samuel D. Hunter, an adaptation of his 2012 play of the same name. In it, Fraser plays the remorseful protagonist, Charlie, an estranged, morbidly obese father who is trying to reconnect with his belligerent seventeen-year-old daughter, Ellie, played by Stranger Things alum, Sadie Sink. To make ends meet, Charlie works as an online English professor, teaching college students the fundamentals of essay writing from the confines of his couch. He lies to his students when he tells them that his camera is broken as a way to avoid them having to see his true state of being.
Charlie is gay, and left Ellie’s mother after falling in love with a man, who was a former adult night student of his. Out of spite, and maybe even a little paranoia, his ex-wife, Mary, played by Samantha Morton, keeps Ellie away from Charlie for eight long years, only for her to return when she is a few months shy of graduating high school. When he sees his daughter again, she is no longer that sweet, happy young girl he fondly remembers. He loves Ellie deeply, but he finds that trying to rebuild a relationship with her may be too little too late.
Ellie reminds me of Riley, the central character in the 2015 Disney film Inside Out, whose mind houses emotions represented by Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger based on her core memories. According to Wikipedia, “The aspects of five most important “core memories” within Riley’s personality incorporate the form of five floating islands.” We watch, over time, each floating island of core memory grow dark and angry within Riley. Ellie’s floating islands of core memory, particularly the ones that involve her father, grow dark and angry as well. It’s important for Charlie that his daughter knows that people care about her, and that maybe, deep down, she cares about others, too.
I think what makes The Whale so relatable is the domino-like fall-out from the human condition to which none of us can truly escape. Life has a way of throwing devastating curve balls, and Charlie, Ellie, Liz and Thomas are not immune. For Charlie, the human condition manifests within his obese physical state due to his chronic, and at times, epic binge-eating episodes to the point of almost choking to death. His binge-eating is a symptom of a larger problem, namely emotions such as shame, guilt, grief, and remorse — emotions that are literally swallowing him whole in the same way that the Biblical whale swallowed Jonah. There’s also a nod to Melville’s beloved novel Moby Dick, which metaphysically parallels the story of Jonah and the Whale, particularly the faith, or lack of faith, of the two protagonists.
The antagonist of the film is a character named Thomas, played by Insidious trilogy actor Ty Simpkins. Thomas is a young Christian missionary who knocks on Charlie’s door at his exact moment in need, calling it “a divine intervention.” Thomas is from New Life Church, a local Christian outreach that has caused detrimental harm to Liz, played powerfully by Hong Chau, Charlie’s friend and caregiver, by way of her family’s close association to the church, and their subsequent fall-out. Liz orders Thomas to leave Charlie alone yet Thomas only returns again and again.
Personally, Thomas was hard to watch as I grew up in a similar church as New Life, and attended Christian private school for most of my life, including University. And even though I still hold onto my saving faith in Jesus Christ, some days by a thread, I’m less inclined to belong to an organized religion for similar reasons as Liz.
Charlie later challenges his students, along with Ellie, to “Write something honest”: “These assignments don’t matter. This course doesn’t matter. College doesn’t matter. The amazing, honest things that you wrote, they matter.” Charlie sees brutal honesty as the way to redemption, even if that brutal honesty entails utter disgust and rejection.
By the last scene, I was sobbing out loud in the last row of the theater. I haven’t cried like that since I saw Rocky III when I was eight years old, in particular the scene when Rocky mourns the death of Mickey Goldmill, his boxing trainer as well as his wise father-figure. Be warned, The Whale will indeed evoke tears, but it reminds us that there is no escaping the human condition. We are all connected like dominoes. When one falls, we all fall in our own strange way.
*This last one was directly lifted from my film review entitled “Aronofsky’s Devastating Whale,” first published by Across the Margin, a Brooklyn arts & culture webzine, on January 9, 2023.
Here’s a link to The Whale’s most emotional moments (some spoilers):
https://youtu.be/DAvVyT8pOrk?si=ebiHTdd-T4T7E7O3
