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

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.