Sad Romantic Movies On Netflix That Make You Cry
Sad Romantic Movies On Netflix That Make You Cry
Sad Movies on Netflix That'll Make You Cry
Grab the tissue box and let it all out.
'The Lovely Bones' | Paramount Pictures
'The Lovely Bones' | Paramount Pictures
While Netflix may have a reputation as a seemingly infinite repository of rom-coms, sometimes you're in the mood for a good cry. When that feeling hits you, sit down with one of these tearjerking dramas, which range from deadly serious to schmaltzy and uplifting—something for everyone.
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All the Bright Places (2020)
Based on the international bestselling young adult fiction novel by Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places tells the story of high school students, Violet (Elle Fanning) and Theodore, who likes to go by his last name, Finch (Justice Smith), both of whom are suffering from mental illness caused by trauma in their pasts. It's a tender love story, growing from two broken people who, together, begin the process of healing. The film is both gentle and heartbreaking, and a rare entry in the excess of teen Netflix originals that truly tries to handle mental health with care.
Beasts of No Nation (2015)
Cary Fukunaga's (True Detective, Maniac) wartime drama is not a movie you put on in the background. Adapted from Uzodinma Iweala's novel of the same name, this visceral character study tracks a preadolescent after he's recruited to be a child soldier in an African civil war (its specifics are left purposefully ambiguous). Lorded over by a gruff commander (Idris Elba), the movie is loud, tender, and violent—a coming-of-age story in which the characters may not live to come of age.
The Florida Project (2017)
Sean Baker'sThe Florida Project nuzzles into the swirling, sunny, strapped-for-cash populace of a mauve motel just within orbit of Walt Disney World. His eyes are Moonee, a 6-year-old who adventures through abandoned condos, along strip mall-encrusted highway, and across verdant fields of overgrown brush like Max inWhere the Wild Things Are. But as gorgeous as the everything appears—andThe Florida Project looks stunning—the world around here is falling apart, beginning with her mother, an ex-stripper turning to prostitution. The juxtaposition, and down-to-earth style that includes footage shot on an iPhone, reconsiders modern America in the most electrifying way imaginable.
Fruitvale Station (2013)
Fruitvale Station, the directorial debut of Ryan Coogler (who went on to direct Black Panther), pointedly opens with the shocking real-life footage of the killing of Oscar Grant. It's how the drama inevitably ends, as it tackles the events that led to the young, unarmed man's death—but its utter devastation weighs heavy over the entire film, as it imagines his final day and illustrates just how many individuals one person's life touches. Michael B. Jordan is a heart wrenching in what became his movie-star-making role, and his performance and the film as a whole notably give a humanity to just one of the many Black men whose fate unfortunately becomes a headline time and time again.
A Ghost Story (2017)
Director David Lowery (Pete's Dragon, The Green Knight) conceived this dazzling, dreamy meditation on the afterlife during the off-hours on a Disney blockbuster, making the revelations within even more awe-inspiring. After a fatal accident, a musician (Casey Affleck) finds himself as a sheet-draped spirit, wandering the halls of his former home, haunting/longing for his widowed wife (Rooney Mara). With stylistic quirks, enough winks to resist pretension (a scene where Mara devours a pie in one five-minute, uncut take is both tragic and cheeky), and a soundscape culled from the space-time continuum, A Ghost Story connects the dots between romantic love, the places we call home, and time—a ghost's worst enemy.
The Impossible (2012)
Movies about actual disasters run the risk of failing to portray the accuracy of the event, or making something that happened too treacly. The Impossible, though, is not one of those cliches. The film about the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami is instead brilliantly directed by Spanish filmmaker J. A. Bayona with powerful performances from Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor to tell the story of a family separated by mass destruction, and their resilience to survive. It's whitewashing of the incident can't be ignored, focusing on the experience of tourist instead of locals, but it makes a point to portray the Thai people's unparalleled efforts to help strangers. It turns a catastrophe into something of an inspiration, but not without balancing just how much desperation and vulnerability it takes to get there.
Into the Wild (2007)
Jon Krakauer's book about the life and untimely death of Christopher McCandless is all the more poignant when soundtracked by Eddie Vedder. Emile Hirsch's McCandless waxes poetic about philosophy and alienates everyone who loves him, which can grate at times, but it's balanced out by the profound beauty of the wilderness. When McCandless' pride proves to be the ultimate peril, the outcome is no less tragic.
Les Misérables (2012)
Tom Hooper's adaptation of Les Misérables is a glorious spectacle in bringing stage to screen—one that's earnestly flooded with emotion. Set against the anti-monarchist June Rebellion of 1832, the epic follows the redemption story of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) who was imprisoned for stealing bread and, once freed, volunteers to look after the daughter of a factory worker (Anne Hathaway) as he continues to run from the ruthless officer Javert (Russell Crowe) after breaking parole. Even those who roll their eyes at musical, particularly sung-through ones, will be impressed by this explosive period piece and each member of its scene-stealing ensemble. It's a blockbuster through and through.
The Lovely Bones (2009)
Peter Jackson's film adaptation of the 2002 novel of the same name stars Saoirse Ronan as a murdered 14-year-old girl who watches life on Earth continue to go on without her while she adjusts to life in heaven. Ronan gives a dazzling performance as she spends a good portion of the film navigating the heaven that she illustrates all on her own while struggling to keep an eye on her grief-stricken family and her murderer (Stanley Tucci), who has yet to be caught.
Loving (2016)
Loving brings one of the most pivotal love stories in history to the screen. The biographical drama from Jeff Nichols tells the story of Mildred and Richard Loving, the couple who challenged state laws banning interracial marriage all the way to the supreme court with the landmark case Loving v. Virginia. For being such a sweeping romance with so many groundbreaking implications, it's the gentle, muted way it's told in this historical film nestles into your heart. From Joel Edgerton's hushed performance as the distant but caring Richard and Ruth Negga's thoughtful simplicity to Mildred to Nichols' warm direction, it finds a quiet profoundness that makes it all the more beautiful.
Marriage Story(2019)
Like his 2005 filmThe Squid and the Whale, writer/director Noah Baumbach again finds laughter and pain in the often excruciating personal details of ending a relationship. This time, the bickering couple—a Brooklyn-dwelling actress and a theater director played with tenderness and anger by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver—takes center stage. Instead of watching the two fall in and out of love, the story opens with the separation already in motion, allowing Baumbach to focus on the soul-sucking, money-draining legal shitstorm that follows. While Driver and Johansson are both excellent in tricky, emotionally demanding roles, some of the sharpest moments come courtesy of their attorneys, collaborators, and extended families. (Laura Dern and Alan Alda rightfully earned praise for their parts, but Ray Liotta's gruff divorce expert deserves his own spin-off.) In showing how divorce ripples outward,Marriage Story complicates its own simple premise as it progresses.
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)
When Danny (Adam Sandler), Matthew (Ben Stiller) and Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), three half-siblings from three different mothers, gather at their family brownstone in New York to tend to their ailing father (Dustin Hoffman), a lifetime of familial politics explode out of every minute of conversation. Their narcissistic sculptor dad didn't have time for Danny. Matthew was the golden child. Jean was weird... or maybe disturbed by memories no one ever knew. Expertly sketched by writer-director Noah Baumbach, this memoir-like portrait of lives half-lived is the kind of bittersweet, dimensional character comedy we're now used to seeing told in three seasons of prestige television. Baumbach gives us the whole package in two hours.
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Maggie Fitzgerald is determined to become a successful boxer. And despite her broken home life and low-income background, she knows that as long as she has the right trainer, she can make it. In Million Dollar Baby, one woman's rise and eventual fall in the boxing ring is dynamically illustrated, seeing incredible performances from Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, and Clint Eastwood (who also directed the film), garnering it a Best Picture win. The gritty film never holds back, while showing the humanity and perseverance of two hardened individuals, despite all odds.
My Girl (1991)
It's been 30 years sinceMy Girl, and if you don't already know what happens: Our sincerest apologies, your heart is about to be destroyed. The movie about a girl (Anna Chlumsky) growing up in a funeral home with her widowed father (Dan Aykroyd) is as sweet as a popsicle on a hot summer day, and a compelling story about the throes of adolescence. Chlumsky and a teeny, tiny Macaulay Culkin are adorable as Vada Sultenfuss and Thomas J., and their chemistry as best friends from down the block only makes the inevitable tragedy that much more painful. (Unless you're heartless, it's impossible not to cry when Vada shouts, "He can't see without his glasses!") My Girl will bring you back to those raw, 12-year-old feelings.
Mudbound (2017)
The South's post-slavery existence is, for Hollywood, mostly uncharted territory. Director Dee Rees rectifies the overlooked stretch of history with this novelistic drama about two Mississippi families working a rain-drenched farm in 1941. The white McAllans settle on a muddy patch of land to realize their dreams. The Jacksons, a family of black sharecroppers working the land, have their own hopes, which their neighbors manage to nurture and curtail. To capture a multitude of perspectives, Mudbound weaves together specific scenes of daily life, vivid and memory-like, with family member reflections, recorded in whispered voice-over. The epic patchwork stretches from the Jackson family dinner table, where the youngest daughter dreams of becoming a stenographer, to the vistas of Mississippi, where incoming storms threaten an essential batch of crops, to the battlefields of World War II Germany, a harrowing scene that will affect both families. Confronting race, class, war, and the possibility of unity, Mudbound spellbinding drama reckons with the past to understand the present.
The Pianist (2002)
In 2003, Adrien Brody became the youngest person ever to take home the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayalof Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jewish pianist fighting for survival in Warsaw at the dawn of World War II, in The Pianist. The autobiographical film directed by Roman Polanski (who also took home the prize for Best Director) documents the true life story of Szpilman who grew up in a privileged family and refused to believe the Nazi occupation would grow big enough to affect him and his loved ones, until the threat proves to be all too real. With precision, Brody nails this challenging role that sees an unavoidable travesty unfold before his eyes, and the granular, though extensive, effects it had on one individual.
Other People (2016)
Other People was a deeply personal film for screenwriter/director Chris Kelly (SNL, The Other Two) to make. Resembling his own experience dealing with the death of a parent, the dramedy examines the relationship between a struggling comedy writer named David (Jesse Plemons) and his mother Joane (Molly Shannon) as he moves back home to be closer to his family while she's dying of cancer. With David's down-on-his-luck situation and having to face strained relations with his homophobic father on top of Joane's terminal fate, the film is meant to tear your heart out—and that's exactly what Shannon does in her sublime, moving performance. Its funny moments and intimacy of the leads' relationship, as well as the personal experience its derived from, make this film all the more authentic and a lovely piece about loving the family we've got.
Rain Man (1988)
Barry Levinson's Oscar-winning classic follows a young hustler (Tom Cruise) who vies for the trust and custody of his older brother (Dustin Hoffman), an autistic savant, after the latter inherits their father's multimillion dollar estate. As the unlikely duo hits the road across the Western US, they (spoiler!) learn as much about themselves as they do each other. It's a must (re-)watch, the kind of potent dramedy that'll still split your sides and empty your tear ducts within the same scene.
Roma (2018)
Alfonso Cuarón's black-and-white passion project seeks to stun. A technical craftsman of the highest order, theChildren of MenandGravity director has an aesthetic that aims to overwhelm—with the amount of extras, the sense of despair, and the constant whir of exhilaration—and this autobiographical portrait of kind-hearted maid Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) caring for a family in the early 1970s has been staged on a staggering, mind-boggling scale. Cuarón's artful pans aren't just layered for the sake of complexity: He's often placing different emotions, historical concepts, and class distinctions in conversation with each other. What are these different components in the painstakingly composed shots actually saying to each other? That remains harder to parse. Still, there's an image of Cleo and the family eating ice cream together after a devastating dinner in the foreground while a wedding takes place in the background that you won't be able to shake. The movie is filled with compositions like that, tinged with careful ambiguity and unresolvable tensions.
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and David O. Russell's first collaboration—and the film that turned J-Law into a bona fide golden girl—is a romantic comedy/dramedy/dance-flick that bounces across its tonal shifts. A love story between Pat (Cooper), a man struggling with bipolar disease and a history of violent outbursts, and Tiffany (Lawrence), a widow grappling with depression, who come together while rehearsing for an amateur dance competition, Silver Linings balances an emotionally realistic depiction of mental illness with some of the best twirls and dips this side of Step Up. Even if you're allergic to rom-coms, Lawrence and Cooper's winning chemistry will win you over, as will this sweet little gem of a film: a feel-good, affecting love story that doesn't feel contrived or treacly.
A Single Man(2009)
Is life worth living after the sudden death of your partner? That's the question Colin Firth's forlorn George faces in this drama, based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood and directed by fashion designer Tom Ford. You'll see Ford's eye in every gorgeous scene, as if the movie is one long, breathtaking couture commercial. Set in 1960s LA, A Single Man will simultaneously break your heart and give you hope as George interacts with colleagues, visits an old friend (Julianne Moore), and has a romantic tryst with a student at the university where he teaches—all as he decides whether this will be the day he ends his life.
6 Years (2015)
Breaking up is hard to do. It's the subject of Hannah Fidell's understated 6 Years, which closely examines a relationship falling apart, focusing on a couple played by Taissa Farmiga and Ben Rosenfield, who have been together the entirety of their young adult lives. As a character study of the two together and apart, the film is extremely mundane, but their powerful performances make the slice-of-life concept something fierce and worth watching. It starts by breathing the freshness of a first love, but comes to exhale nothing but a volatile violence that will leave you feeling suffocated.
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
No movie captures the prolonged pain of divorce quite like Noah Baumbach's brutal Brooklyn-based comedy The Squid and the Whale. While the performances from Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney as bitter writers going through a separation are top-notch, the film truly belongs to the kids, played by Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline, who you watch struggle in the face of their parents' mounting immaturity and pettiness. That Baumbach is able to wring big, cathartic laughs from such emotionally raw material is a testament to his gifts as a writer—and an observer of human cruelty.
The Theory of Everything (2014)
In his Oscar-winning performance, Eddie Redmayne portrays famed physicist Stephen Hawking—thoughThe Theory of Everything is less of a biopic than it is a beautiful, sweet film about his lifelong relationship with his wife, Jane (Felicity Jones). Covering his days as a young cosmology student ahead of his diagnosis of ALS at 21, through his struggle with the illness and rise as a theoretical scientist, this film illustrates the trying romance through it all. While it may be written in the cosmos, this James Marsh-directed film that weaves in and out of love will have you experience everything there is to feel.
The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
This film is predicated on that notion that when you love someone—like probably-predestined-by-the-stars love somebody—it can feel as if you've known them your entire life, and quite literally so: It's based on Audrey Niffenegger's novel of the same name that chronicles the relationship between a man (Eric Bana) who has an inexplicable condition that makes him time travel and the woman (Rachel McAdams) he's been visiting in his travels since her childhood. If you allow yourself to completely suspend any logic, there's no denying you'll get swept up in the operatic romance that is Henry and Claire. But remember: Even the most experienced time travelers can't prevent everything bad from happening, so it's probably best to keep the tissue box within reach.
We the Animals (2018)
We the Animals sees the world from a child's perspective: absolute and mystical, and terrifying at the same time. Adapted from Justin Torres' novel, the coming-of-age indie follows three young brothers growing up in a working class, mixed race family in Upstate New York—their days spent wildly outdoors, and the complex relationship with their parents inside their humble home. The child actors will pull on your heartstrings like no other, and Jeremiah Zagar's expressive, dreamy direction captures the scope of the young protagonists' world to illustrate the inner turmoil that comes with processing identity all the more.
What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993)
This low-budget indie flick was the first of Leonardo DiCaprio's many Oscar snubs, and one that relied heavily on the immense sincerity of the young actor to make the film as potent as it is. Here he plays Arnie, the mentally disabled kid brother to Johnny Depp's titular Gilbert Grape, and the film follows the two leaning on one another while living in poverty with their morbidly obese mother after their father's death. It's a story about the bond and burden of family, and these two deliver performances that make you so deeply believe in their brotherhood and the sentimentality that lives in their world.
Wildlife (2018)
As a child, it's terrifying to watch your parents' marriage fall apart right before your eyes. First-time director Paul Dano adapted Richard Ford's novel of the same name along with his wife Zoe Kazan and made the story of two parents' midlife crises unfolding in front of their teenaged son into a blaze of emotion. Carey Mulligan gives a career best performance as a housewife filling her boredom with an affair, and Jake Gyllenhaal is heartbreaking as a father who feels lost and abandons his family to fight the Montana forest fires. It's a slow, humble film, but a mighty drama that manages to burn you.
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