What could be more of a heartstring-tugger than a love that can never be? That’s the case in David Lean’s tale of two marrieds who randomly meet in the café of a train station and, due to an irresistible attraction, embark on a passionate affair, meeting once a week for over a month. The story is narrated in retrospect by a sentimental Laura (Celia Johnson) as she sits by the fire with her husband and imagines confessing all — once she and Alec (Trevor Howard) have said their final goodbyes.
KLEENEX MOMENT In their final days together, Alec knows Laura is slipping away. ”I shall love you always,” he promises, ”until the end of my life.” And we boohoo through every last word, knowing they are, indeed, among the last between them.
Why has this unassuming romance — about a young Southern girl (Rachel MacAdams) and a young Southern boy (Ryan Gosling) who struggle to be together while society strives to keep them apart — become such a perennial hit in the few years since its release? Simple: its firm statement that love truly never dies.
KLEENEX MOMENT Forget about choking up at all the kids’ stuff — the real tears flow when elderly Allie (Gena Rowlands) realizes that the story her old friend Duke (James Garner) has been telling her…is about them.
Who could forget that titillating pottery scene set to the Righteous Brothers’ ”Unchained Melody,” or Whoopi Goldberg’s Oscar-winning performance as a medium who finally meets a spirit she can talk to? The fun ends, however, when the movie tackles one of our biggest fears: losing a loved one in a senseless act of violence. Every mournful scene — Demi Moore holding a dying Patrick Swayze in her arms, Swayze seeing Moore vulnerable to the man responsible for his death — is made all the more wrenching with the aid of Maurice Jarre’s touching score.
KLEENEX MOMENT As Swayze is about to be taken to the next world, he and Moore exchange a bittersweet kiss and the killer line: ”See ya.” This tearjerker clip is shown below.
Yes, it was made for TV. But, really, there’s no way to omit Buzz Kulik’s ultimate straight-male love story, the Emmy-winning true-life drama of Chicago Bears teammates Brian Piccolo (James Caan) and Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams). Mirroring the less refined and even-more-dated Bang the Drum Slowly, this brief tale of two utter opposites whose on-field bond is only strengthened when one develops cancer has always been the tough guy’s best excuse to get misty — and to say ”I love you.”
KLEENEX MOMENT Sayers accepts a courage award by dedicating it to his stricken friend: ”I love Brian Piccolo. And I’d like all of you to love him, too. And tonight when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him.” Touchdown.
The misty awwws for Frank Capra’s crisp holiday classic start as soon as the film opens with prayers for George Bailey (James Stewart). Bewildered angel-in-training Clarence will get his wings if he can save a distraught salt-of-the-earth Everyman faced with losing his good name, his family, and everything for which he’s sacrificed his own dreams. Clarence shows Bailey how different tiny Bedford Falls — and the lives of its citizens — would be without him, and when Bailey joyously returns home, embraces his family, and witnesses the love of his friends, tears start to swell in all of us on the other side of the screen.
KLEENEX MOMENT One by one, the townsfolk chip in to help pay Bailey’s bank debt. Then, war-hero brother Harry gives the emotional summation: ”To my big brother George, the richest man in town.”
Almost from the instant you meet Sophie (Meryl Streep, who earned, along with an Oscar, her Queen of the Accents crown here, with mastery of three different dialects), you understand that she’s a damaged, haunted heroine who’s not likely to live happily ever after. But the real poignancy lies in Sophie’s tremulously maintained illusion of hope. Hers is a brave but fragile front that conceals the depth of her guilt and sorrow as a Holocaust survivor. You don’t cry for Sophie because she dies so young, but because she has suffered so long.
KLEENEX MOMENT In flashback, Sophie relives the dark night that a Nazi officer forced her to choose: Which of her two young children would she get to save, and which would be sent to a death camp?
Blame it all on Huckleberry Fox. The towheaded tyke was only 8 years old when Terms of Endearment was filmed, but Fox, who played Debra Winger’s younger son, Teddy, in the cancer-in-the-heartland comedy-drama, delivered perhaps the most sob-worthy performance in screen history. Of course, he was beautifully guided by James L. Brooks, who won three Oscars for the film (for adapting Larry McMurtry’s novel, directing, and producing).
One-third of the way into the movie, when Mom comes up a few dollars short on the supermarket checkout line, young Huckleberry brings on the throat lumps by relinquishing his prized Clark bar, saying, ”I don’t need it.”
RELATED: Look Back At Family Photos Of Kirk Douglas Over The Years Celebrating His Life
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