Top 5 Weeper Movies

Girls like to cry at movies. So it would be in your best interests, gentlemen, to occasionally indulge your sweetie in her pursuit of tear-jerkers, and rent the following movies (listed here in no particular order) for your next stay-home date night. Pass the popcorn! And the box of tissues!

The Notebook. (New Line Cinema, 2004). Starring: Ryan Gosling, James Garner, Gena Rowlands, Joan Allen, and Sam Shepard. An older man makes the time to read a story to an older woman in a nursing home. Through the course of the movie, the audience discovers that the older woman wrote the story - that it's her story - and she did it so she'd remember the love of her life every time dementia took him away from her. This movie made me sob hysterically in a crowded theater and it was not because I was nearly four months pregnant at the time. If you plan to grow old with someone, or hope to grow old with someone, this movie is for you.

Shakespeare in Love. (Miramax, 1998) Starring Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck, Dame Judi Dench, and Geoffrey Rush. For the most part, this movie is hilarious, pretty historically accurate, filled with enough swordplay to keep the guys in the audience amused - and has a goodbye scene that ripped my heart out, probably because it was so unexpected, at least to me. If you haven't seen this movie yet, or haven't seen it in a while, rent it now!

Schindler's List. (Universal Pictures, 1993). Starring Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley. I haven't actually ever managed to see this movie; my husband Alex won't let me because he knows how hard I cry at sad films. Someday I hope to, and if my father's review is any indication, I know I need to have at least one box of tissues handy. He says the very end, when the cast and crew honor the real Oskar Schindler, is a killer scene. I remember crying at the Academy Awards that year when one of the consultants pulled up the sleeve of his tuxedo, showed off his concentration camp number tattoo, and said, "In Auschwitz, my number was (I can't remember). It's a long way from there to this stage."

The Color Purple. (Warner Brothers, 1984). Starring: Whoopie Goldberg, Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey. If the double reunion at the end of the movie doesn't rip your heart out and make you sob out loud with joy, you must have ice water in your veins. Also, watch for the post-prison visit home, and when Whoopie Goldberg's character, Celie, finds the letters.

Philadelphia. (Tri-Star Pictures, 1993). Starring Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Jason Robards, Joanne Woodward, and Antonio Banderas. Tom Hanks plays a gay man who is suing his law firm for discrimination after the firm finds out he has AIDS. What makes the film a tear-jerker is that he dies in the end. I remember my boyfriend at the time practically had to carry me out of the theater when the movie was over, I was so hysterical - partly because I think I knew some of the "extras" in the film personally, and they'd died of AIDS between the time the movie was filmed and the time it was released. And now that I'm a parent, the scene where Hanks' mother (played brilliantly by Joanne Woodward) tucks him in for the very last time just might kill me.