Male weepies: Pick the "best," I guess

At least two of the above-listed movies are strong contenders for my least-favorite movie ever. Give me Steel Magnolias!

this is a dud genre for me. If I was going to pick a worst one it would be Good Will Hunting. Not seen Field of Dreams - could imagine it being quite watchable garbage.

Was obsessed with Field of Dreams as a kid, so voted that.

My dad was one of those Shawshank Redemption men who would watch it literally every time he saw it was on, no matter where it was in the movie. I can't attest to his weepiness but I can presume he was highly weepy. My mom referred to it as a "guy thing" because her friend's husband went on a Shawshank Redemption trip where the whole thing was centered around the movie. These are men in their 70s.

has anyone ever cried at Top Gun: Maverick, I mean I'll admit I didn't see it but of all the praise I heard for it - and there was a lot - I never heard anyone say it was particularly emotionally poignant

as a whole this list feels like it's trying for this balance between action movies w/ emotional content and middlebrow dramas, I don't think it scans as a single genre

I think "Movies for guys who like movies" is very much a genre. The worst one.

I cannot get over how basic Shawshank feels, it's like a mainstream action movie director set out to make oscarbait, the plot beats all feel so engineered and mechanical. I wouldn't say it's actively bad, it just feels as insubstantial as popcorn. Why do moviebros think it's the greatest film ever made? It's still #1 on IMDB for example.

Tim Robbins' hair was the best it would ever be.

I'd put Chef and Moneyball on this list.

I think "Movies for guys who like movies" is very much a genre. The worst one.

Ok but this list isn't that? When's the last time a movie bro bored you by going at lenght about Saturday Night Fever or...1942's The Pride Of The Yankees??

The net result of what happens when one's entire lifetime has been spent drilling down on the belief that all forms of artistic expression are suspect (gay) but "hey, this movie says something about what it means to be a man." Get bent and watch Make Way for Tomorrow, jerkwad!

I cannot get over how basic Shawshank feels, it's like a mainstream action movie director set out to make oscarbait, the plot beats all feel so engineered and mechanical. I wouldn't say it's actively bad, it just feels as insubstantial as popcorn. Why do moviebros think it's the greatest film ever made? It's still #1 on IMDB for example.

Because imdb is also as basic as it gets.

(xp not aimed at you D_Rf)

Yeah, this is the first time I'd ever heard Saturday Night Fever referred to as a male weepie. Not sure it tracks tbh

rudy (1993) feels like the ur-text of this genre

lil guy just wanted to play football so bad!!!

where's Brokeback Mountain

seems like there was a resurgence of these in the late 80s and early 90s. jaws and star wars led to a bunch of adventure movies for babies. then a little later hollywood tried drama movies for manbabies.

Yeah, there are a lot more apt selections here: https://letterboxd.com/thatfinalgirl/list/male-weepies/ (The Iron Claw ftw)

her friend's husband went on a Shawshank Redemption trip where the whole thing was centered around the movie.

This sounds like my version of some sort of banal manifestation of hell.

I always get Shawshank mixed up with the other dumb movie where the big guy cures ppl by grabbing their crotch

i.e. the Trump "Access Hollywood" video

I'll always remember the green mile as the film where the first hour is Tom Hanks peeing blood, second hour is him peeing freely, and the third hour is someone saying "Lord The Green Mile is so long"

lol I just realised that despite my pontificating I have not seen a single selection from this list

I have cried a lot tho

I don't really care about Good Will Hunting, but this characterization strikes me as wildly off-base.

There are also few subjects that Good Will Hunting touches on that don’t tick the boxes for a good male weepie: a widower who is still irrevocably damaged by the loss of his wife (female absence often characterizes male weepies; it often lets its male audience members project onto that absence, rather than be troubled by the agency of an actual living woman); a quasi–father-son relationship fraught by complexity; and a bright young man’s sense that his talent and potential is stymied by the world around him. Thwarted male self-belief or ambition is one of the great subjects for the male weepie, too: It is men, after all (particularly of the white, cis, and straight variety) who are told they are future masters of the universe, and seem to suffer more acutely from the sense they may not achieve that mastery.

Isn't Will's problem much more about a lack of self-belief and ambition, if anything?

feel like The Wrestler might fit on this list, not sure i'm enthused about anything enough to click the vote button

Sarris wrote about this too (maybe crediting Durgnat)--didn't he extend it to the Apu Trilogy?

From the list, Boyz n the Hood easily. For me, Saturday Night Fever is too brutal to fit. "Movies for guys who like movies" has produced lots of terrible films and some truly great ones.

actually Saturday Night Fever would be my easy pick, agree it doesn't really fit tho

(And Bicycle Thieves too, I think, re Sarris.)

Yeah, maybe I shouldn't have said easily: SNF is great.

At least two of the above-listed movies are strong contenders for my least-favorite movie ever. Give me Steel Magnolias!

― Rich E. (Eric H.)

god, what a frustrating... do we still say "listicle"? the idea of the "male weepie" (it's great that Newland gives us Durgnat as the source but god I'd sure love to know _when_ he coined the term) _very_ much warrants a deeper analysis of the way patriarchy polices men's tears. instead we get a bunch of films that i guess are about sports or something and guys like sports? cool, incisive and deep analysis of masculinity there

idk, i liked the first creed film and field of dreams and the shawshank redemption. i hated "good will hunting", oh look this guy is a JANITOR but he's REALLY SMART, blech there's some uh really offensive subtext in there, it does a _really_ good job at perpetuating certain cultural biases but i am probably not the right person to get into that particular can of worms.

i hear "saturday night fever" is a great film but i've never actually seen it.

“ rudy (1993) feels like the ur-text of this genre”

My friend one looked at me dead in the eyes and said “how do you not cry during Rudy”

I've never seen any of these either, except Saturday Night Fever and Boyz in the Hood, which are both good, I don't think I really get the category that the article is trying to define here.

would Eight Men Out count? It's about baseball and male camaraderie and feelings and it has basically no female roles of any significance, I like that fil a lot. If male weepies are films that are emotional and sensitive but still manly then maybe The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp or A Matter of Life and Death - English stiff upper lip weepies?

Creed is the best of the recent films on this list, not sure it qualifies.

Nothing makes me weepier these days than classic Hollywood form, so John Ford it is

Isn't Will's problem much more about a lack of self-belief and ambition, if anything?

― jmm

i mean cool cool, yeah i have a really strong lack of self-belief and ambition and before my transition people got _really really invested_ in my "potential" in a way that's kind of specific to straight cis white men

i still get a _lot_ of that kind of thing but it's more of an _expectation_ than this kind of "i believe in you" stuff that good will hunting comes with

"Movies for guys who like movies" has produced ... some truly great ones

OK, The Parallax View, I'll grant

My picks:

They Were Expendable
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Saturday Night Fever
Boyz in the Hood
Creed

from those lists, i'd say "dead poets society" _definitely_ qualifies, robin williams is the all-time king of the male weepie. "up" definitely qualifies, one of the few movies that made me cry _before_ estrogen. which, to be clear, i started estrogen because i wanted to be able to cry but couldn't.

speaking as an autistic person, "rain man" is a fucking terrible movie.

have seen a fair few from that letterboxd list. it's true that whenever me and my bros feel particularly manly we throw on 2002's Treasure Planet.

where's Brokeback Mountain

Interesting that the Letterboxd list does eventually get into a mini (cis gay white) subgenre for a minute there, with Brokeback, Call Me By Your Name and All of Us Strangers

Laurence Fishburne (playing his dad) looks younger than Cuba Gooding jr and he's only 6 yrs older than him - that was some RONG casting.

Movies that belong on this list and that I'd vote for before any of the ones that were included:

Easy Rider
Two-Lane Blacktop
Miller's Crossing
Sweet Smell of Success
Apocalypse Now
The Wild Bunch (and as an homage to it, Extreme Prejudice)

Dead Poets is maybe too gay for this genre

I love war movies! Bunch of dudes humiliated in basic training, some philosophizing and then their friends die and they return home scarred and impotent. That’s my favourite “male weepie”

I went with “Boyz” (instead of “Shawshank”, which would’ve been my go to)

xp I no-joke really enjoyed the first section of Hacksaw Ridge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6RDDNDu6xs

The end of Warrior gets me pretty good, so that one. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I love you!”

Movies Where James Caan Plays An Angsty Athlete Going Through Some Shit:

Rollerball > Brian's Song

Sansho the Bailiff owns this now i think about it

Surprised films like The Departed don’t qualify, here. All Scorcese’s films seem male weepie coded

Remember the Titans should surely be up there.

"? the idea of the "male weepie" (it's great that Newland gives us Durgnat as the source but god I'd sure love to know _when_ he coined the term) _very_ much warrants a deeper analysis of the way patriarchy polices men's tears.

i was thinking a little bit about this the other day, it's wild how strict gender role rule follower guys express sadness. they've never done any work locating or processing their actual emotions but they still feel them and the only allowable way to do so is in the service of the roles they've already bought hook line and sinker. the overall effect is so shallow and dishonest! like you know that well of emotion comes from the fact that they've chopped off their identity in the service of patriarchy, something they will never actually understand or grieve, and instead everything is transplanted into the drama they've been enacting out their whole lives, where they can never be man enough. a never-dry well that the film industry can always return to and a way to coddle and misdirect men who are looking for that, which is of course a lot of them.

i think scorsese and mann go a little further, where machismo starts to disappear into a void.

"Sansho the Bailiff owns this now i think about it"

one of the most weepie, genuinely tear inducing scenes in it is a female character ending her life

Surprised people haven't seen "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot".

I saw when I was a kid and can't remember much about it other than the ending.

I do want to see it some day. Haven't seen a single Cimino.

There could be a sub-genre of male weepie sports movies, which would include several from the list above, but also "Bang the Drum Slowly", "Something for Joey" and "Inside Moves."

Boyz In The Hood is my favourite here

Does "Midnight Cowboy" not count as a male weepie?

I would say definitely, X-rating and all. (Don't get Sweet Smell of Success as a male weepie.) One I'd put one that I actually like a lot: Kramer vs. Kramer.

Feels like Alan Alda should be on that list somewhere.

one = on

I can't remember how good it truly is, nearly 45 years after seeing it last, but the tragedy at the end of "Cooley High" definitely did bring this ten-year old to tears, I hope it's not a forgotten movie. Still, "Boyz n Tha Hood" is my vote

Apocalypse Now

Midnight Cowboy is a good call.

It's a Wonderful Life seems definitive.

dont agree with the concept dont agree with this list but its field of dreams ofc

is this article ai/a joke?

the wrestler

its a wonderful life, sure also

including creed but not rocky? i mean what kind of clown are we dealing with here?

Seems weird if you're going to include Creed not to include any Rocky films. Maybe I'm misreading the criteria but Platoon as well, surely?

xp!

also

is it the one likeliest to get one weepy or is it the best of this random set of picks?

Found an exchange online between Sarris and Molly Haskell (his wife):

Molly: This thing comes in waves, but right now we've got all these so-called "chick flicks," which is like the "weepies," a sort of derogatory term for romantic films, films that would interest women, and then the action movies, which is not a derogatory term.

Andrew: But very often we have what Raymond Durgnat called "male weepies," you know, you have two guys crying. "Let me take the bullet, let me die instead of you!" This is the male equivalent of the female weepies. I'm actually sick of war films. I'm sick of action films generally speaking. I think that one of the things that has happened with mainstream films is that the writing of dialogue no longer has much priority. It's mostly concept, special effects, and whatever, and melodramatic extremes. We mentioned That Hamilton Woman. Well of course I had a thing with Vivien Leigh, that's definitely the case, but it was in other respects an intelligent films. It had some intelligent acting, with Olivier and Alan Mowbray. And Gladys Cooper gave a very good performance. It was a historical film, but it had some blood and guts.

more reliably cry at the ending of that richard gere dog movie than pretty much anything centred around humans tbh

manchester by the sea, obv

Isn't Will's problem much more about a lack of self-belief and ambition, if anything?

― jmm

will's problem is that he was brutalised as a child, im not sure this is subtext tbh

reading through thread lots of ye seem really upset that guys watch movies at all, more crying done at the thought of that than at any of the movies on the list id say

terminator 2

following from both cimino mention and returning from war as a significant theme to plumb in this zone, would have said deer hunter surely merits placement on the list

Deer Hunter definitely--male weepie stuff all over that film, especially the De Niro/Walken conversations.

on the letterboxd list I'd probably vote for Saving Private Ryan - in terms of melodramatic emotional manipulation using the highest stakes known to a late 20th century white American man (standing by your bros, killin' Nazis/saving the world) it's got no competition.

Field of Dreams running second - lower stakes but Burt Lancaster sacrificing his place in baseball heaven to save a little girl with a twinkle in his eye is *chef's kiss*

Do Old Yeller and Where The Red Fern Grows fit in here? More universal than male-oriented but there's an adolescent pattern-setting of what's appropriate for generating tears.

(I don't remember crying at either but the mother cougar getting shot in Benji The Hunted, the box of unwanted kittens in Oliver & Company and basically all of The Bear fucked me up pretty good)

yeah i was getting at that with the hachi reference above tbh

of a few tearjerker moments in field of dreams, the "hey doc, you were good" and Lancaster's reaction is underrated

Re: that Sarris/Haskell exchange, I think there's been an increase in good writing about both "women's pictures" as a genre and stars/directors working in this field (used to be you'd only hear about Sirk and no one else). Still not to an extent where you ever see the genre given a retrospective or even some boutique box sets - I wonder how much of that is due to none of the terms for it having been fully reclaimed (weepie, women's picture - even melodrama has a derogatory ring to it)

Sarris isn't my favourite critic (and who might that be?), but I will credit him with being very attentive to those films and directors when few were. Not just Sirk, but also Cukor, John M. Stahl, and others.

Scarface

I did a thread ages ago, Classic Hollywood Weepies, beyond Sirk

Ophuls and Von Sternberg, too--Sarris had them in his pantheon for the genre.

I will not be watching any 40 minute Youtube video essays but there's this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4maNSmRPGEE

are we at that point where we are just naming all movies with men in them?

Anyway, movie scenes that made me, a cis het white german-american protestant cry:

--The cleaners scene in Zone of Interest the second time I saw it (first time too stunned)
--The bell making scene climax in Andrei Rublev, and when the movie transitions to color at the end.

Also bawled like a baby at the end of a 70 minute live performance of Feminine by new music group Wild Up, at the National Gallery of Art in 2019 or so.

Julius Eastman's composition

are we just at the point where we're naming any time we've cried?

😚

CTRL+F "La Bamba"

When I was born

the crowds reaction when george introduces elton

The Shining

I love war movies! Bunch of dudes humiliated in basic training, some philosophizing and then their friends die and they return home scarred and impotent. That’s my favourite “male weepie”

― frociaggine e figaggine (flamboyant goon tie included)

One of the videos I always come back to is the video for King Kobra's "Iron Eagle (Never Say Die)". The plot of the video is that the members of the band are being put through training by Louis Gossett, Jr. With his tough, hardass no-nonsense manner, he takes these glammed out rockers, makes them cut their hair, and pushes them hard so that they can become Real Men.

So yeah it turns out the lead singer of King Kobra is a trans woman. Sometimes the tough-guy hardass routine just isn't gonna _work_.

What about A River Runs Through It

Good one

Andrew: But very often we have what Raymond Durgnat called "male weepies," you know, you have two guys crying. "Let me take the bullet, let me die instead of you!" This is the male equivalent of the female weepies.

sigh always with the "male equivalent" thing. like some of these movies are good movies. i've seen them, liked them, had emotions, and i've been able to do that despite me being a woman and the movies being about men. this idea that guys can only watch movies where somebody gets shot or is a pro athlete is like... it's like if women could only watch movies about horses. like horses are great but i'm just trying to imagine a list of "women's weepies" and they're all, like, national velvet and seabiscuit and shit. like what?

Stand By Me

Like it begins and ends with weeping!

If we're going to name all of the male weepie films in this thread, I would pick In the Mood for Love

i voted Saturday Night Fever mostly bc I have seen it the most & it is good imo

as the thread goes on i have less and less of an idea of wtf we are supposed to be talking about

sports movies well represented but there’s a distinct lack of westerns on here. shane is absolutely a male weepie. i have also reared up during the “my rifle, my pony, and me” scene from rio bravo

*teared

either way i guess

The former only when on horseback though.

my rifle, my pony, and me (on the ground, writhing)

Tombstone is close to a male weepie (Wyatt is mah friend/Hell I got lots of friends/I don't) but not sad enough.

male weepie checklist IMO
- actively performing maleness (just being a dude doesn't count)
- sacrifice
- camaraderie

yes?

“Of Mice and Men” seems to me to be one missing on this list.

What’s “male weepie” in Dutch I want to invite the De Subjectivisten over here

this poll reminds me of the Dirty Dozen scene in Sleepless In Seattle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vCYHpKJZd4

Thinking of Oliver! but maybe I’m way off here

I wanted to find the Durgnat reference. Got lots of airy 'term first coined by Raymond Durgnat' hits on Google, most of them obviously following the Sarris/Haskell exchange, but it wasn't until I found a PDF of an essay by the film theorist Janet Staiger that I learned it comes from Durgnat's Films and Feelings from 1967, in a chapter entitled 'The road to profundity and seriousness leads through superficiality and irresponsibility' (!):

... intellectuals can bear musicals and Westerns and gangster pictures, but not soap-operas, which are felt to imply a surrender to middle-class Mom (actually crying at Imitation of Life would make one feel a helpless child in Momma's lap again). In fact many educated people weep at soap-operas but hate themselves for doing so - whence their tone of contempt or superior irony. Nor do they usually comment on the continuing, quiet, popularity of the male weepie, a favourite motif of Victorian melodrama, and at its most unobtrusively unabashed in John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Sun Shines Bright (1953). De Sica's [/I]Umberto D[/I] (1952) and Germi's Man of Iron (1955), can, like many Italian films, be assimilated to the genre. Actually the surrender to weepies, male or female, might be the beginning of maturity, if embraced whole-heartedly enough.

If we're going to name all of the male weepie films in this thread, I would pick In the Mood for Love

― Dan S, Saturday, June 15, 2024 7:40 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Lol, no.

I think a component is that the movie provides a "safe space" for a man that would not normally express certain emotions to express those emotions.

The views expressed in this post are those of society and do not necessarily express the views of PBKR.

we live in the coliseum of opinion pbkr whence the one truth shall emerge in time victorious

i wonder on that note if gladiator and/or Spartacus aim for weepiness enough to get in the gate here

if i had to even try to pick a western from memory that seems to be trying for it (and i think personally thats key) then shane or maybe....pale rider?

but tombstone has moments, tho tonally i think it bounces between pulp western novel and almost comic book (if theres a tonal difference between the two at all when discussing westerns even) so even tho the central male relationship hits hard and well (harder than dead brothers!) i think its doing so with a manly moustachioed twinkle of "ah well so it goes" and not trying to tearjerky

nb let it not be thought for a moment these are criticisms of tombstone ofc

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" maybe? Jack Nicholson has to have appeared in at least one of these.

About Schmidt.

xp

Unforgiven, maybe. The death of the gunfighter's one friend, the gunfighter willingly lays down his guns having avenged the killing, then that weepy epilogue. Idk, maybe it's a little too lone wolf for all that.

I hear this thread title in the voice of don felder meeting that senator

John Woo w/The Killer, Bullet in the Head, and A Better Tomorrow.

John Woo w/The Killer, Bullet in the Head, and A Better Tomorrow.

Absolutely. Lotta bros catching bullets for one another, dying in each other's arms (and completely ignoring the women in their lives - BitH particularly egregious in this regard).

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid always felt more maudlin than The Wild Bunch to me - it seems like whenever characters aren't shooting each other they're lamenting about how times are changing (and sometimes doing both in the same scene) - but every (male) character also seems like a sociopath so it mitigates the weepie aspect.

I thought I read someone referring to Scarecrow as being one of the more sentimental 70s buddy road-movies, but all I remember about it now is Gene Hackman repeatedly banging a shoe on a desk in the final scene.

I don’t know how many dudes get weepy at westerns, but if we’re going that direction you gotta go with Lonesome Dove. Because it was a TV production it looks a little shoddy now, but aging cowboy hauling his dead best friend back home was pretty moving for a generation of stoic dads.

i need to finish it!

unforgiven has far too much a gimlet eye tbh

The Apostle...guessing there are other Duvall ones that qualify.

idk I remember The Apostle as rather critical of the title character.

The Great Santini a better pick.

schindlers list

or is the contention that it has to be particularly male-coded for sympathy?

The weepiest Duvall movie is Tender Mercies. Pauline Kael:

She lets him stay at her motel and gas station on the desolate Texas prairie, and he does handyman jobs to pay for his keep, but they haven’t actually exchanged much more than a few yups and nopes when, about half an hour into the picture, he says, “I guess it’s no secret how I feel about you. A blind man could see that.” Which is quite a surprise, because nobody could see it.

I don’t know how many dudes get weepy at westerns, but if we’re going that direction you gotta go with Lonesome Dove. Because it was a TV production it looks a little shoddy now, but aging cowboy hauling his dead best friend back home was pretty moving for a generation of stoic dads.

Broken Trail (also with Robert Duvall) is another good one in this vein. It was filmed as a two-part miniseries but it's only about 3 hours long.

i'd probably take any number of Pixar films over what's on this list.

it seems like whenever characters aren't shooting each other they're lamenting about how times are changing (and sometimes doing both in the same scene)

This made me think of one -- Ride the High Country

Ride the High Country, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid — this was what 2/3 of Peckinpah's movies were about, it seems. I mean, I put The Wild Bunch on my list at the top of the thread.

the Henriad (or slightly less trollishly, Chimes at Midnight)

Seconding Iron Claw.

feel like a lot of the male weepies suggested here are actually girl weepies bc they're so gay

(the killer set off my alarm bells)

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada slots in for a western weepie - Tommy Lee Jones at his Tommy Lee Jonesest going to the ends of the world to bury his friend and punish the cop who killed him.

One of the best westerns of the last 20 years imo

If we're going to name all of the male weepie films in this thread, I would pick In the Mood for Love

― Dan S, Saturday, June 15, 2024

Lol, no.

I think a component is that the movie provides a "safe space" for a man that would not normally express certain emotions to express those emotions.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Sunday, June 16, 2024

ok so this is just a thread about macho men who cannot express their feelings, noted.

Speaking of expressing feelings, Jackie Cooper as a 9 year old really overacted and over-emoted in The Champ, especially at the end, but I liked him and liked the film and am voting for it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqbGiwi1rNI

Withnail and I - closing scene.

male weepie checklist IMO
- actively performing maleness (just being a dude doesn't count)
- sacrifice
- camaraderie

― papal hotwife (milo z), Saturday, June 15, 2024 8:30 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

See Wings (Wellman, 1927). Especially when David is dying from a WWI airplane crackup and his buddy Jack kisses him goodbye.

Asked four of my high school dude friends to list their favorite tearjerkers (we are always asking each other to come up with top five lists of random things so this wasn't an odd ask):

Rudy
Iron Giant
Saving Private Ryan
Brian's Song
Shawshank Redemption
Gladiator
Braveheart
Donnie Darko
Stand By Me
Old Yeller

^^^
Someone gets it.

Braveheart such a perfect, demented choice.

the Batman movies

xp yeah, that list is pretty note-perfect (Iron Giant deserves way better company)

Recentish film I’ve seen like 5 times is vinterberg’s ANOTHER ROUND which is a sad-dad classic & surely qualifies. It’s practically a judd apatow premise: ageing bros trying to get their mojo back with a hairbrained scheme. I love it, he is so skilful with actors imo & I’m reliably tearing up at what is basically a version of the “men will literally ____ instead of going to therapy” meme (and knows it)

i remember Cooley High making me weepy when i was a kid. the ending. they played it a lot on t.v. in the old days.

i voted for The Champ though because i love Wallace Beery and he reminds me of my grandfather.

i loved Red Dawn and Taps when i was a kid in the 80s. which makes sense because my favorite movie is Over The Edge. my favorite movie that means something to me personally. i don't think its the BEST movie ever made. but it speaks to me the most about how i felt when i was a kid. all the things i feared and was confused by. everything i was angry at. that film definitely has my childhood in it. its just makes it more epic and not as pitiful. but the boredom and frustration and anger is all there. that movie always makes me want to cry.

Any kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid.

https://i.imgur.com/HF1pxr4.jpg

I haven't seen a single mention of the Toy Story movies here. For some reason even the most hard S.O.B.s openly admit to crying during Pixar movies.

E.T. could still probably turn on the waterworks, and I'm curious now as an adult if Close Encounters would.

Can't believe The Straight Story isn't here. Not just a weepie for men, a weepie for BROTHERS.

My favourite entry in this genre, if bros are nominating Saving Private Ryan and Braveheart, is of course The Thin Red Line

You Can Count on Me

technically it's a brother-sister weepie, but Ruffalo's character is also exiled after becoming a father figure to the boy

See Wings (Wellman, 1927). Especially when David is dying from a WWI airplane crackup and his buddy Jack kisses him goodbye.

― Infanta Terrible (j.lu)

Haha I literally thought about posting this. Two men in love with the same woman but are way more openly affectionate towards each other than either of them are towards the woman! Of course nowadays it's easy to look at and say "gay", and I'm not saying it _can't_ be, but why does that _need_ to be gay? It's only gay if there's tongue. I think that should be the standard.

Can't believe The Straight Story isn't here. Not just a weepie for men, a weepie for BROTHERS.

Two men in love with the same woman but are way more openly affectionate towards each other than either of them are towards the woman!

Challengers to thread

Does something like The Lost Weekend fit into this? Paris, Texas?
I admit upfront I'm unfamiliar with a lot of the movies referenced in the original post.

something always stops me from watching the shawshank redemption. i remember reading the story in 1982! i was a big fan of that stephen king novella collection. i liked Apt Pupil. i didn't know they would all end up movies. with Apt Pupil and Rage and Carrie Stephen King really got into that dark suburban teen thing pretty deeply. and in The Body too! he was good at it. like a good horror movie. or a good punk band.

The part of Paris Texas that was making me cry was with the mother and child.

I'm not being too careful with the rules but I seen The Sisters Brothers recently and it seems really underrated, such a nice/harsh film

Riz Ahmed is the lovliest man ever in it

I remember liking the Shawshank Redemption a lot the one time I saw it. It should normally just be a fond and vague VHS memory but it's somehow become this weird cult movie over time that has completely distorted my impression of it.

Perfect Days, Paris, Texas...weepies about loner men.

silverfish otm re shawshank

well i have never seen Shawshank but i have seen The Great Escape, like, 50 times. speaking of dad movies. Shawshank might be number one prison dad movie but The Great Escape should be up there. along with Papillon. and The Bridge on the River Kwai. and Midnight Express. sad epic Dad movies are all about deprivation. Its why The Way Back starring dad heartthrob Ed Harris is always streaming on at least 10 different channels.
i've never seen The Green Mile. Tom Hanks has multiple epic sad dad classics to his credit, but my favorite might actually be Road to Perdition. plus, it has the whole tortured father/son thing in it and sad dads apparently love that shit. but i enjoyed that movie anyway. and it definitely pains me to say that about someone who directed the hateful American Beauty. Sam Mendes went on to direct out and out dad rock classics Jarhead, 1917, and whatever those Bond movies were called. he is obviously trying to win father of the year or something. AND he is making FOUR movies about The Beatles. the dude is legit dad insane!

sad menmes morelike

Clint is king of the dads and he has tried as hard as anyone to make men cry - *Flags of our Macho Sniper Fathers* being a favorite - but it took a little lady by the name of Swillary Hanks to help him make the king of all ringside boxing queen male dad weepers. Da Million Dollah Baybuh.

no big fish no credibility?

idk i mean yes theres the uss Indianapolis monologue but other than that....?

Speaking of Clint - Gran Torino surely ticks all the boxes here

Not a movie, but this is an all time male weepie scene

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS5MLK8eWdsC0YLpiGUUTE6eP35kaq8K_cUtl6ODuAdFbCuBuD_5KFSlnReM6OVOiyVBkIz2a1jthX97OOxlBRA1bSMb7K5is-teai5IgnnYsd0-JhQb3_SCQ_RxfoM8g5VmCe9g/s1600/Mash-Goodbye_l.jpg

"Speaking of Clint - Gran Torino surely ticks all the boxes here"

and Unforgiven and A Perfect World and Mystic River and Flags of our Fathers/Letters From Iwo Jima and The Mule and Cry Macho.

and probably others. dude loves to pull some heartstrings. i never saw Hereafter but i'm guessing there were heartstrings involved.

Shane and Old Yeller though. they are kinda what i think of when i think of male weepies.

As I understand this poll, it's "movies that make men [who feel that they should hide their emotions when they feel sad] feel sad (but only if they are movies about other, so-called manly men)", which feels like a shitty way to talk about gender in 2024, but, you know, clickbait.

But that aside, I'd add "Return of the King" (the bit with Sam carrying Frodo obviously) and "Band of Brothers" and "Stand by Me" and the end card "Sam Beckett never returned home".

And when Knuckles gets splurged in Bugsy Malone.

and when that guy had the bullets that time.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/A6IfoeQVLaU/maxresdefault.jpg

which feels like a shitty way to talk about gender in 2024, but, you know, clickbait

Could it be that the genre itself is at fault?

i hear that knuckles splurges in sonic the restaurant 2

(but only if they are movies about other, so-called manly men)

this is your own addition i think tbh

stuff like E.T. and Up are weepies but they make everyone cry, this is more like masculine-coded tearjerkers, no? one of my friends from yesterday wanted to add Lonesome Dove and (lol) Field of Dreams

which feels like a shitty way to talk about gender in 2024, but, you know, clickbait

Could it be that the genre itself is at fault?

― Rich E. (Eric H.), Tuesday, June 18, 2024 1:02 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Let's say both the genre AND the clickbait model of journalism?

What the original article seems to be pointing towards - middlebrow dramas, war films, westerns - is what I often hear referred to in other corners of the internet as "dad movies" and while still reductive this would feel less like shaming men for crying. Yes I understand that the critique is of men only crying at specific, masculinity obsessed films, but still, flippant shit like "why should men get to feel sorry for themselves, given all the turmoil they tend to cause in the world?" is a bit gross and trivializes the points Haskell and Rosenbaum were making.

Should note I usually enjoy Christina Newland's writing and do find it endearing that she threw in The Champ, Pride Of The Yankees and They Were Expendable solely because she's an old Hollywood geek and would clearly rather write about that than Rocky or whatever.

Not one mention of “The Sandlot” is crazy imo

Being a shitty way to talk about gender is the entire point innit?

If they're not 'male weepies' giving the manly men permission to feel then they're just... sad movies.

It implies The Notebook et al are just "ladies' weepies."

Yeah, I think it's important to remember that the term is a riff on the very long-established notion of "women's weepies."

So long established that it's now anachronistic, don't think I've ever heard anyone refer to a "weepie" unironically in my life.

male talkies

melodrama for dudes

Maleodrama

clint's got you covered with the women's weepies as well. thanks to some little old bridges in madison county and a little old italian war bride with the name of...meryl streep.

Yeah, I think it's important to remember that the term is a riff on the very long-established notion of "women's weepies."

― Rich E. (Eric H.), Tuesday, 18 June 2024 18:27 (one hour)

can i just clarify whether you have added in "women's" here because ive never heard them described like this in my life?

have you heard of women's pictures? A common term during the studio system

whether i have or haven't isn't really the question there tho alfred!

(i dont think I have tbh?)

Often starring Norma Shearer, Helen Hayes, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Greer Garson (among many others), these pictures focus on home, hearth, employment, marriage, the threat of adultery.

Cukor and Leisen got tagged as directors of women's pictures, a tag doubling as a homophobic slur.

Chick flicks, subsection ‘downers’

yes yes yes look

"women's weepies" the actual phrase used as if it were an actual phrase

nobody is afaict denying that generally there have been self-styled or sold-as or dismissed-as "womens/mens/kids movies"

maybe it is tho and ive just not heard it!

nb no more on this from me im bogging thread down

The term "woman's pictures" potentially embraces all films—made anywhere in the world, and throughout the history of cinema—that are about, or are made by, or consumed by, women. In practice, however, in its most common usage, the meaning of the term is much narrower than this, referencing a subtype of the film melodrama whose plot is organized around the perspective of a female character and which addresses a female spectator through thematic concerns socially and culturally coded as "feminine." A considerable and influential body of film history, theory, and criticism has grown up around a highly distinctive manifestation of this genre: a group of pictures produced in Hollywood during its "classical" era, the heyday of the studio system between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s. In their time, these films were dubbed "women's weepies" and "three-handkerchief movies," a not-very-subtle derogation of their tearjerking qualities and of the gender of their audiences.

i think one of the inherent components required as floated up above being heroic sacrifice was good, i think even more specifically heroic sacrifice that goes improperly recognised or thanked, or as salvation or in contrition, might be important components here

cant say why i think the eastwood movies dont ring true for me, save that i dont think clint is seeking tears and mayne a part of that is very few of his protagonists are looking for contrition or salvation, and all are p much recognised

xp ty eric, a gap in my knowledge definitely so

Gran Turino protagonist is seeking redemption for his racism

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Surprised that Verhoeven’s Soldier of Orange isn’t there, and neither is Das Boot. Possibly some Kurosawa, especially Dodesukaden or Ikiru. The Killing Fields and Blood In, Blood Out (the official film of Los Angeles at this point), too

As an aside, my late father was college roommates with Field of Dreams director Phil Alden Robinson. They were both English majors, but my father elected to pursue medicine. I believe they kept in touch at least through the 80’s

https://i.imgur.com/GuLAtEz.jpeg

I don’t know if any of Walter Hill’s works really constitute weepies. Maybe Wild Bill (1995)

if you poll it, they will vote

So long established that it's now anachronistic, don't think I've ever heard anyone refer to a "weepie" unironically in my life.

― Daniel_Rf

just makes me think of the lyrics to the eno song "the great pretender". "i could help you weep more cheaply" would _absolutely_ work on me as a pick-up line, but i'm really into crying.