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Movies are all about emotions and not just the one's we see on screen.

This week we wanna focus on the one's we feel as an audience.

This are the top ten most emotional moments in movies of all time.

[MUSIC]

Kicking us off at number ten, when we think about getting emotional in a movie,

the first thing that comes to mind is the tearjerker.

And we'll admit it, we've been known to tear up once or maybe twice, definitely no

more than three times, in scenes like Brooks's departure in Shawshank.

The opening montage in UP, that one scene from I Am Legend, or Iron Giant or

Pay it forward, or The NeverEnding Story, you know the ones we're talking about.

The ending of a Dancer in the Dark and Big Fish and

pretty much the entirety of Grave of the Fireflies.

However, we're not gonna even try to deny that we were blubbering in goddamn

hysterics by the end of Fruitvale Station for our first pick.

>> Hey, man, what the fuck is this?

What the fuck?

I didn't do shit.

Get off me, man.

>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Roll over.

>> No way, man.

>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Shit.

>> [INAUDIBLE] [SOUND]

Of course,

we're not too proud to admit we cry in movies.

It's actually, an incredibly cathartic experience and it's pretty to see that

looking at Fruitvale in all of our honorable mentions together.

That these out pourings of grief are coupled with loss but

loss over character we've truly come to love and feel for.

And that's where Fruitvale uniquely succeeds,

it just has us hang out with Oscar Grant for a day.

We get to see his victories, his flaws, his most intimate human moments.

And Michael B Jordan so brilliantly, unselfconsciously,

humbly portrays him that we just love him like a family member by the end.

And then it is taken away for no reason at all.

And of course, it's all the more heart-breaking because it's true.

It really happened.

And we don't wanna preach, but

we think if everyone in America sat down and watched Fruitvale Station.

We might all be able to approach the current political discourse about race and

police with a little more kindness and empathy.

Of course loss isn't the only reason we cry in theaters.

Happy tears are a thing too.

They come from moments of loving kindness between humans and

sometimes that warmth makes us cry.

But why?

Well, we feel so immensely happy because we have a biological

tendency to mirror the emotions we see.

And the more invested in the person we're mirroring the more we mirror it.

But the tears?

Well, they're sort of an emotional overload.

Our body gets so

incredibly overwhelmed by positive emotion chemicals that it can't function properly.

So, it turns the thermostat hard left and

dumps in some tear chemicals to balance us out.

For us this happens in scenes like Ego's childhood in Ratatouille.

The comforting in Cries and Whispers, the blind man's crossing in Amelie, and

the reunion in A Knight's Tale.

It's like the ending of Fargo and Million Dollar Baby and Princess Bride, of

Shawshank and Cinema Paradiso and Return of the King and Pursuit of Happiness.

However, if there's one scene that takes the cake, it's gotta be the full strength

warmth extract that is the ending of It's a Wonderful Life.

>> A toast.

>> [LAUGH] >> To my big brother, George.

The richest man in town.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> According to file of Alexandria,

the stoic is to practice negative visualization to premeditate on

evils on the worst possible things that can happen in life.

And as a result,

they will find that in reality of their life is cast into wonderful relief.

Filling them with happiness in warmth and

gratitude where previously there was greed and envy and dissatisfaction.

And it's a wonderful life is in essence the cinematic

embodiment of this stoic principle.

George Bailey is taken through a world in which he is a non-being.

And not only does he learn how important he is to his world but

how important his world is to him.

And he's forced to visualize his own personal worst-case evils along the way.

So, when we get to this scene here, bounding through the door,

excitedly surrendering himself with a zeal for life.

We can't help but to match his excitement.

He is grateful at those things which irritated him,

he is overflowing with love for his children and wife.

And then, as if that weren't nearly enough,

his entire community comes to embrace him.

To support him, to save him, to love him, in a moment of pure belonging and

togetherness, and God, does it just feel so good?

Now, somewhere in between the good crying warmth and sad crying loss sits longing.

There's less of a shock than with grief, less breath stealing sudden loss.

Instead, there's just a quiet sense of what can never be,

a gulf between what we wish could exist and what we know won't.

A film convinces us to root for an outcome and

then shows us that it will never happen.

Take the moments of lost and translation and hurt.

Ava with her dress in Ex Machina.

Jole begging with his memories in Eternal Sunshine.

It is final drive away in Broke Back and in our number eight pick,

Long Carwise ending of In the Mood for Love set up here.

>> [FOREIGN]

>> [FOREIGN]

>> [FOREIGN]

>> In The Mood for

Love is an entire meditation on longing.

Chow and Su have realized that their spouses are cheating with each other.

Having decided quietly that they love each other.

Having decided loudly that they would take the moral high ground and

never consummate that love eventually part.

Their lives go separate ways.

And just like that, their chapter ends.

Never to return again to that place that almost was.

And in a moment of absolute poetry, built a top that perfect setup the film

ends on a hauntingly, lonely moment in anger or what.

Carlisle moves slow revealing Chow's intention softly,

allowing us to puzzle out his strange behavior.

Remember what he'd said and then in a moment of devastating revelation realized.

That he's burying his hope for good.

But enough of tears.

Cinema doesn't just make us cry.

Sometimes it makes us leap for joy and giggle giddily with Glee.

Gandalf's explosive arrival in Fellowship is classic Glee,

as is the Willy Wonka role.

As is Brad Pitt's visor flip reveal at the end of Ocean's Eleven.

Or the brilliant Mobi Q that kicks in End of The Bourne Ultimatum and

there's Musical Glee.

Think Big's chopsticks,

School of Rock's final concert, Little Miss Sunshine's dance.

Singing In The Rain's titular song, and

the musical parade's of both 500 days of summer and Ferris Bueller's day off.

They're not exactly humor in the punch line sense, but they are humorous.

In fact, the kind of comedy that best encapsulates this emotion is

slapstick comedy.

And there perhaps no one who's done it more gleefully than Charlie Chaplin.

His made his clever with glee and just about every film he has ever made.

But our favorite moment has to be The Oceana Roll in The Gold Rush.

[MUSIC]

There is perhaps no smile as infectious as his here.

And sure, there is certainly a wistfulness to the scene,

in that it takes place in the prospector's fantasy, and not his reality.

But Chaplin's characters are so unflappably optimistic and

in love with life that even that can not spoil the joy of the fantasy.

Because while a slightly later beat uses the glee of this moment to contrast

the loneliness of reality.

It is not without first letting us fully inhabit and

feel the happiness to it's fullest extent, and what an extent it is.

It speaks volumes to the charisma and lovability of Chaplin that this

moment works so well, but it does, because it has us smiling every time.

Almost as enlivening as the gold rush's glee is the victorious

It's a sense of accomplishment, of value, of being a part of something that is not

only succeeded but proven itself of righteous worth and you're on board.

Think Casablanca' or Ringing of the Bell, or Braveheart's freedom.

It's in every Rocky movie ever.

It's a half dozen battle speeches in Lord of the Rings and

the announcer's title defining proclamation from Miracle.

It's Rudy and Hoosiers and every other sports movie with a happy ending.

And for our pick, it's gotta be the imminently quotable I am Spartacus scene

from Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus.

>> Slaves you were and slaves you remain.

But the terrible penalty of crucifixion has been set aside

on the single condition that you identify the body or

the living person of the slave called Spartacus.

[MUSIC]

>> I'm Spartacus!

>> I'm Spartacus!

>> I'm Spartacus!

>> I'm Spartacus! >> I'm Spartacus!

>> I'm Spartacus!

>> I'm Spartacus!

>> I'm Spartacus!

>> It is gleefully surprising.

It is just.

It is a clever turn and a moral victory all at once.

Not only is Spartacus attempting to sacrifice himself for

the benefit of everyone else, but everyone else then sacrifices themselves for

the benefit of Spartacus.

It is a massive, faith restoring outpouring of support that instills in us

such a wonderful sense of the power of community that all you want to do when

watching it is stand up and declare that you too, are Spartacus.

In the middle of the theater, or in your living room.

[SOUND] Next up, we've got anger and rage.

Sometimes a scene is so infuriating, it just has you yelling at the screen.

And we don't mean this in an Indiana Jones and

the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull kind of way, where you're mad at the filmmakers.

No, we mean more like you're angry inside the scope of the narrative.

You're so invested in what's going to happen

that you're made at the characters for allowing it to happen.

Think about the final fight in Gladiator when fairness is snatched away, or

Mufasa's betrayal in The Lion King, or the harassment of the child from Platoon.

>> There's any scene with Percy from The Green Mile, the lie from Atonement, and

the bullying from Let The Right One In.

Network and Do The Right Thing build us up to a sense of

outrage along with their main characters.

Where Funny Games directs our angers at the rules of the story telling

universe itself.

However for our number five pick, we've gotta go with Upems failure of courage

from Saving Private Ryan.

>> Uphem!

[SOUND]

Uphem,

Uphem!

Uphem, ammo god dammit!

[SOUND] This scene is particularly brilliant because it balances

our anger with sympathy, compassion and hopefulness.

We want so badly for Uphem to overcome his fear and

give us the victorious cathartic moment we know that movies so often deliver.

But this very hope is the thing that betrays us.

The very fact that we believed in Uphem is what makes us so mad at him.

He could've done it, he could have saved them but he didn't.

And in a way it's almost like we're talking to ourselves when we yell

at them on the screen.

Like we're berating the coward inside of us that wants to hide in the corner when

things get scary.

Shouting him in to compliance because we all have that part and

we all want to believe that we've sufficiently conquered our Uphem.

But in an all out urban assault where we're facing near certain death.

Who knows?

Maybe our hope is for not.

Maybe our belief in courage will be our downfall.

And the fact that this scene invites such a turbulent inner conflict is exactly why

it's so brilliant.

[SOUND] In a similar vein to the anger response where you're just shouting please

do anything else, just not that at the screen is embarrassment.

Where you more groan it,

peeking out from one closed eye through your fingers hiding under your seat.

It's the experience of cringe or second hand embarrassment.

A vicarious experience of shame at the social miscues performed

by those you care about.

And in real life, this might be you as teenager cringing at how lame your dad is.

But in movies it's got more to do with you realizing your hero is

walking himself into a social failure of epic proportions before they do.

Think moments like Fargo's Mike Yanagita.

It's social train wrecks, like Bridesmaids' engagement party speeches,

Young Adult's baby shower, and Taxi Driver's dirty movie.

There's Carrie's period, Vertigo's forced makeover, and

The Graduate's hotel booking.

However, for our number four pick, we think it's pretty uncontroversial to

crown Swingers' answering machine scene the king of cringe.

>> Hi, Nikki.

This is Mike.

I met you at the Dresden tonight.

I just called to say that I had a great time and you should call me tomorrow

or in a two days, whatever.

Anyway, my number is 213-555-4679.

[SOUND] >> God, it's a train wreck in slow motion.

He doesn't stop, he keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper.

It's a social catastrophe even though Favreau is so lovably,

vulnerably pathetic while doing it.

And the scene works because it just doesn't let up, it lingers there,

and it lets us stew in it.

It seems to revel and

even find joy in extending Mike's humiliation to it's utmost extent.

Every time he goes back to clarify himself,

he kind of sort of has a good reason or at least a believable one.

If the film just had him dialing time after time for the sake of humor and

schadenfreude, that probably wouldn't work.

But his repeated failed attempts to recover his sinking ship are entirely

embedded in his character in that moment and for that reason, it is brilliant.

[MUSIC]

A step down from embarrassment is the more serious discomfort.

It's not just a harmless social mishap.

This is a significant moral transgression that we, an audience,

are powerless to stop.

This is dinner from 10 Cloverfield Lane, the dentist's appointment from

hell from Marathon Man, the three minutes of near-hanging from 12 Years A Slave.

It's sociopathy like almost anything from We Need to Talk About Kevin,

the about face from Anomalisa, and Goodfellas funny guy.

It's Nightcrawler's twisted dinner negotiation to a tee.

But for our discomfort pick, we don't think there's anything harder to

watch than Happiness's honest conversation between father and

son about the father's pedophilia.

>> Dad, did you, with Johnny Grasso, and Ronald Farber?

>> Yes.

>> What did you do?

>> I fucked them.

>> What was it like?

>> It was, It was great.

>> Happiness is a film that pretty much spends its entire run time belonging in

either this category or the one before.

Either cringe-worth or incredibly grotesquecally discomforting.

Filled with suicide and pedophilia and rape and sexual hang up and

pretty much everything but its titular emotion.

But it's also simultaneously astonishingly human.

It shocks us with the depravity of its characters,

particularly Bill, all the while worming its way deep under our skin by deciding

not to be simplistic in black and white.

We're invited and positioned to understand and emphatize and

even identify with a pedophile.

Asking us to look deeply at the parts of ourselves that hopefully

don't abuse children, but almost kind of relate.

Again, not to the pedophilic impulse but to the emotion in abstract,

to overwhelming desire.

And in an everyday well adjusted human is deeply repressed and

probably not directed towards minors.

But there's craving and

urges that threatened to overwhelm us if not Properly attended to and sublimated.

And that what Happiness does that is brilliant, and bold, and very challenging.

It doesn't present the sex offender as an outsider of the human experience, but

simply a boundary specimen, an extreme case of what exists In us all.

It operates on the premise that we are all made up of the same psychological stuff,

only in greater or lesser quantities.

So sure, Bill's got a much higher dose of rapiness than you or I but

the building blocks, they're the same, and that is deeply disquieting.

[NOISE] Stick with us here, our number two is one last stop on the bad

feeling portion of our emotional journey together.

But in a far less icky way, in fact it's our favorite way to feel bad.

And hard as that is to understand it's just as hard to describe.

It's a combination of awe and emptiness,

of smallness in the face of the vastness of the universe.

Call it existential angst or dread, or

the unbearable heaviness of being in nothingness.

It is the feeling of conviction that our life is terrifyingly,

isolating meaningless.

And if our clumsy attempts to describe the emotion aren't helping,

maybe the best thing to do would be to show you some examples.

It's like the ending of Memento,

recalling happy memories of a dead wife who he accidentally killed.

Or many of the futile scenes from Du La Vonde with characters staring directly

into the camera begging to connect, yet failing to do so.

It's the whispered goodbye at the end of Room,

the wailing transition that concludes Waltz with Bashir.

The frustrating lack of closure at the end of Inside Llewyn Davis, and

A Serious Man, and Blowup.

It's the wind blowing through the reeds in The Mirror.

It's how we imagine Bill Murray feels pretty much 95% of the time.

But for our number two pick, it's gotta go to a wonderful movie we mention

far too little, Synecdoche, New York.

Now much like In the Mood for

Love is longing in a bottle, Synecdoche is, whatever this is, incarnate.

So there's lots to choose from, and while the preacher speech is an oft

praised scene, that's almost a little too feel good for this slot.

The ending is brutally this, holy [BLEEP], it's utter existential devastation.

However, for our slot we're going to go out on a limb here and give it to the very

bizarre, very beautiful memory where Caden and his daughter pretend they're fairies.

[NOISE] >> Dear diary, I'm afraid I'm gravely ill.

It is perhaps times like these that one reflects on things past.

An article of clothing from when I was young.

A green jacket, a walk with my father, a game we once played.

Pretend we're fairies, I'm a girl fairy and my name is Lauralee, and

you're a boy fairy and your name is Teeteree.

Pretend when we're fairies we fight each other, and

I say stop hitting me or I'll die.

And you hit me again, and I say now I have to die.

And you say but I'll miss you.

And I say I have to.

And you'll have to wait a million years to see me again, and I'll be put in a box.

And all I'll need is a tiny glass of water, and lots of tiny pieces of pizza.

And the box will have wings like an airplane.

And you ask where will it take you?

Home, I say.

[MUSIC]

>> I'm going to be honest.

This scene is so bizarre and inscrutably beautiful and strangely specific in a sad

childlike sort of way that somehow renders it all the more believable and affecting.

That it's really hard to unpack how it works.

Charlie Kaufman, the writer behind such complicated emotional pieces as

Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,

made this his directorial debut.

And the man is just, he's an absolute genius.

And this scene works in so many different ways, on so

many different levels that speak almost to a purely emotional logic.

And this film has been argued over, and praised, and decried to no end.

And we won't pretend we understand it or its genius, because we don't.

All I'll say is this, to us it started making a lot more sense, if perhaps at

the expense of some of the magic, when we learn what drove Kaufman to write it.

He sent out to write an existential horror,

a film that preys on all of our fears not viscerally but philosophically.

And so perhaps it is just Charlie Kaufman pushing our most primaly emotional

buttons.

But we choose to keep believing what we did when we first saw it.

That it's him whispering the sad secrets of the universe from

just far enough away that we'll hear.

[SOUND] And finally, because we wouldn't want to leave you feeling too emotionally

broken, we wanna to look at another feeling that's difficult to describe.

We think the best world here is frisson,

a feeling of chills at the overwhelmingness of beauty.

The oceanic feeling of being a part of something whole.

Catharsis where our number two pick was emptiness.

It is our welcome to Jurassic Park.

It is Jim singing with the pilots in Empire of the Sun.

It is the endings of Gattaca, The Fountain, and Stalker.

It is Adonis getting up for his final round in Creed.

It is the overwhelming feeling we get from Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring.

And for our number one pick, it's gotta be the ceasefire from Children of Men.

>> [SOUND] [NOISE] >> [FOREIGN]

>> Stop, cease fire!

Cease firing!

>> Cease firing!

>> Cease firing!

>> Cease firing!

[SOUND] [SOUND]

[MUSIC]

>> Coming through.

>> [SOUND] [MUSIC]

There is something intrinsic and

primal to all humans,

about the uniting,

reconciliatory power of childbirth.

Along with survival,

successful reproduction is the strongest of all evolutionary motivators.

Above all else, we are programmed to respond to babies.

And there is nothing greater than the biological imperative of the child.

And Children of Men basically dials this concept up to 11.

Suddenly this very singular, uniting purpose and

necessity of humankind is stripped away.

And we are left with the bleak nihilistic reality of extinction in its place.

And then, in the middle of it, a ray of hope.

An infant that is, in essence, the child of all men and women.

The only one there is, it is a moment of meaning amidst other desolation.

It is the power of hope incarnate.

An impeachable, universally lovable thing, a baby.

And to see a host of grown man floored and humbled and

silenced by the healthy cries of the newborn is moving like nothing else.

We are left with our spine tingling, our eyes glistening, and

the hairs on the back of our neck on end.

Which is why we think it just might be the most emotional movie moment of all time.

So what do you think?

There's so many we left out and room for so many more categories.

What are your picks?

Do you want a part two?

Let us know in the comments below and

be sure to subscribe for more Cineflex movie lists.

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