Movies that really move you...

[Tom Hendricks]

I was thinking about this yesterday. About movies that really hit you emotionally. I think it comes down to great script, well acted and incredible music.

So I guess my question is, what one or two movies that have really touched you and lingered with you a long time and why.

Please just don't list movies, please give an explanation why these movies move you.

First for me:

The Fountain, just thinking about the movie gets me going. I think its the perfect combo of script, acting and music. This movie really tares at me and I think of it often. I personally think Hugh Jackman deserved best actor for this movie. Not only playing multiple characters but also the anguish his character bears trying to save his wife. While trying to save her, he also ignores her and the last few minutes he could have with her in this life. This movie was the very first Blu-Ray I bought and I watch it every few months. What also haunts is the sound track for this movie. The track "Death is the road to awe" is simply one of the most amazing pieces of music ever recorded. You can find all the emotions of the movie in this one piece of music. I also love "Tree of Life" another stirring piece of music, in fact I use it as my ring tone on my iphone. This movie really makes you re-examine your life. To find out what your real priorities are.

 

[Sheliak]

Chocolat

&

Babette's Feast

 

[crouteru]

Schindler's List, becuase it's a factual film depicting events that really happened. Very shocking and sad at times. The most emotional part is the ending where Schindler's Jews visit his grave.

Contact with it's struggle between faith and science sends a strong message, and when Jodie Foster's character (I forget her name at the moment) meets an alien in the form of her deceased father is moving.

Based on musical score, I have to say Starman is emotional when the alien leaves, it has that very 80's epic theme.

 

[Timby]

Spaceman Spiff's wedding video.

 

[mr.peany]

Elephant.

I felt numb for hours after seeing it.

 

[Rabittooth]

Forest Gump gets me.
And...has anyone seen a weird litte movie called Creator ?

-Rabittooth

 

[auntiehill]

Cinema Paradiso--the original version, not the extended cut (which ruins the film, frankly).

I love this film. It's charming, innocent and bittersweet. The score reflects this--it's simple yet memorable and moving. It's the type of movie that makes you laugh while you tear up at the same time. The plot seems very down to earth at first, but it develops into a much grander and more sophisticated theme. It's about Love--love of art, love of friends, love of a woman--and regret--regret for love unfulfilled, that our art never really captures our soul and for friends lost forever. But in the end there is the simple beauty of love, and the love of life itself.

The final scene, where the director finds the film of all the cuts the old projectionist had kept, makes me tear up and smile every single time.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

Forest Gump gets me.
And...has anyone seen a weird litte movie called Creator ?

-Rabittooth

I love Creator. Peter O'Toole was awesome in it.

Another movie I really like that not many seem to know about is Stealing Home with Mark Harmon and Jodie Foster. Harmon plays a washed-up baseball player who is called back home to handle the ashes of his childhood sweetheart/ first love who had committed suicide.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

Silly but Lilo and Stitch about family...I don't know why but I love the meaning about the non-traditional family. A lot of people thought it was overly sappy or preachy but to me, it was great.

 

[General Kang]

Shawshank Redemption - particularly the scene where Andy escapes prison, and the thunder is rolling, and he is standing in the rain with the music soaring - terrific movie moment.

 

[Harvey]

Tarnation (a documentary film). That film is powerful. Not so much in a way that picks you up aftre you've seen it, but in a way that leaves you physically affected, physically shaken afterwards.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Two films - both of them about the Vietnam War, really get to me every time I watch them: Platoon and Apocalypse Now. Each time I watch either of those films, their effects stay with me for days as I think about what an utterly horrible situation those soldiers were in.

Frankly, I can't even imagine it. And yet, Vietnam vets will tell you that those films are the two that most closely reflect how it really was over there.

I can't even imagine it. Living in constant fear, not knowing who were your friends and who were your enemies, jungle guerrilla warfare. being put in such terrifying situations where there was such a breakdown in command that soldiers were simply losing it in the field. It was just hell on earth. And frankly, I don't wonder in the slightest why so many of the veterans from that war have so many difficulties.

These movies just break my heart, pure and simple.

I've been to Vietnam, and have stood in some of the bunkers which still exist there...imagining what it might have been like. I've been in the underground tunnels used by the Viet Cong....so tiny and dark. I've been to the museums in Vietnam which commemorate the "American War" and have seen some of the atrocities that we committed, and I've been to Pol Pot's prisons and the Killing Fields in Cambodia and saw how horrible they were.

The whole thing was just ghastly. Terrifying and utterly ghastly.

And for days after watching one of these films, I have this horrified feeling in the pit of my stomach - this feeling that tells me quite clearly that I have no idea just what sort of dark horror human beings are capable of inflicting on each other. There is seemingly no depths to the potential depravity there, and it's terrifying.

I have this feeling that I am only seeing a glimpse of just how horrible people can be to each other...and that I really have no idea of the full picture. And that if I did see the full picture, it would cause me to lose all faith in the human race.

 

[Trekker4747]

Forest Gump gets me.
And...has anyone seen a weird litte movie called Creator ?

-Rabittooth

Forrest Gump still gets me, Stranger than Fiction moves me, Titanic still can move me, The Family Man moves me, and there's others that I can't think of that can still stir emotions in me.

The endiong of TWK.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

This is still my #1 gut-punch scene in all of movies: the final image in Glory. Bitter irony and deeper truth all wrapped up together. Wow.

 

[JacksonArcher]

United 93. "The End" gets me every time.

 

[mr.peany]

United 93. "The End" gets me every time.

I forgot about that. It was really quite uncomfortable watching it. How much truth there was to it we may never no. But theres no denying its portrayal of what could have happened packed quite a punch.

 

[Rabittooth]

Forest Gump gets me.
And...has anyone seen a weird litte movie called Creator ?

-Rabittooth

I love Creator. Peter O'Toole was awesome in it.

That's awesome. It's hard enough to find folks who've even seen that film, much less dig it.

-Rabittooth

 

[kitkat]

It's a Wonderful Life gets me every time. I don't think anyone could ever be as perfect as Jimmy Stewart. Or Donna Reed for that matter.

Across the Universe for several reasons; I love The Beatles so having their music used in such a creative way is awesome. All of the actors in the movie are great, the majority of them are practically unknown and they were all amazing. And it has such a beautiful, simple, romantic ending.... "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah."

The Princess Bride. I've loved this movie since I was a kid. I can watch it over and over again.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is one I watch every time I see that it's on. All of the characters have such great chemistry together. I love Sidney Poitier's talk with his father as well as the final speech that Spencer Tracy gives. It's such a beautiful movie and the message holds up even after all these years.

 

[Timewalker]

Contact with it's struggle between faith and science sends a strong message, and when Jodie Foster's character (I forget her name at the moment) meets an alien in the form of her deceased father is moving.

Her character's name is Ellie Arroway.

Contact is my favorite movie, both for the above-cited reason and because it's a synthesis of everything Carl Sagan wanted people to try to understand from his writings and his Cosmos series. I don't mean the scientific data -- I mean what it means to each of us to be human, and what we feel about our place in the Universe.

This movie came out right after my grandmother's death. She raised me, and I lived most of my life with her. She understood my love of science, and encouraged me when I wanted to learn about it -- pushing me to taking computer classes at the local college, and even trying to coax me into phoning into a radio show when Carl Sagan was the guest (I'd gotten the most horrible case of shyness ever in my life -- what do you say to the person who helped change your whole fundamental outlook on your own existence?). So Ellie's personal journey in this movie at times was a close parallel with my own, and there were times when I sat in the theatre (I saw the movie 5 times there) and just let the music and Ellie's journey wash over me while I cried and mourned my grandmother. Jodie Foster's performance was quietly brilliant in that movie, and she captured Carl Sagan's passion and enthusiasm perfectly. I just wish he could have lived long enough to see the final film.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Titanic and The Shawshank Redemption would be two of the big ones.