This list is gonna be a real downer. Bigger bummer than the AI replacement of this Mama Mia actor or the existence of Mel Gibson. Netflix has corned the market on sad movies, and these are the tear jerkiest of all.
The Florida Project
(A24)
From director Sean Baker comes this beautiful downer about a little girl and her single mom living in motel on the outskirts of Disney World. Down and out Florida Men and Women populate the economically depressed down, and the little girl’s fragile world is protected through the efforts of kindhearted motel manager Willem Dafoe. Willem Dafriend, more like. The saddest part? The juxtaposition of bleak adult reality with the innocence of childhood. Watching this little girl normalize a childhood that is anything but will crack even the hardest heart of stone. The poor kid doesn’t know any better, but the viewers at home do.
Your Name Engraved Herein
“Your Name Engraved Herein” is a Taiwanese romantic drama directed by Kuang-Hui Liu. The action takes place in 1987, just after the end of martial law in Taiwan, and follows two high school boys who slowly but surely begin to develop feelings for one another. The pair are faced with societal stigma due to the conservative politics of their nation, and are forced to hide their love from friends, family, and even one another. Unrequited love hurts, but unconfessed love hurts even more. Why can’t love be easy? Because then it would make for pretty boring movies, and who wants to live in that world?
Roma
From Alfonso Cuarón comes Roma, which chronicles a year in the life of a middle-class family’s maid in 1970s Mexico City. Mexico was not a politically pleasant place to live back then, and was rife with protests and upheavals. Despite the struggles of her nation, the maid, Cleo, attempts to make the best of things—to predictably mixed results. If you thought Cuarón’s Y Tu Mama Tambien was a tear-jerker, you ain’t seen nothing yet. But is it just depressing? Not at all. It’s perhaps one of the funniest movies on this list, featuring the quick-witted banter and lust for life present in all of Cuaron’s works.
The Silver Linings Playbook
What do you get when you mix a bipolar Bradley Cooper with a depressed and grieving Jennifer Lawrence? You get a poignant tragicomedy poised to put you in a position for pensive pondering of your own problems. David O. Russell’s The Silver Linings Playbook is a film about broken people attempting to put back together the pieces of themselves, all while trying to peep into the bright side of life.
A Walk To Remember
Adam Shankman’s A Walk to Remember is a coming-of-age drama based on a Nicholas Sparks book. Nicholas Sparks is practically a wizard at making people cry, and this story serves to solidify that fact. It’s about two North Carolina teens who are thrown together after one of them is sentenced to community service. Like many Nicholas Sparks stories, their budding love is ruined by the age-old tragic romance foe: cancer.
All Quiet On The Western Front
(Netflix)
There are downers and there are DOWNERS. Edward Berger’s All Quiet On The Western Front is the latter of the two. Inspired by a novel of the same name, the story concerns a group of young German recruits sent into the trenches of World War One. They were promised adventure. What did they find instead? Artillery shells. Trenchfoot. Tanks. Flamethrowers. Poison gas. And thousands and thousands of bullets. Bright and innocent boys are fed to the meat grinder that is the European war machine and then forgotten by history. And the worst part? It all really happened. Millions of boys who should have had a chance at life were used up by powers greater than themselves in order to serve as cannon fodder in an ultimately pointless conflict.
Tick, Tick… Boom!
(Netflix)
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tick, Tick… Boom! tells the story of Johnathan Larson, the man who penned the enduring Broadway hit Rent. The film is about Larson’s attempt to write his masterwork before his time runs out and is made more tragic by the fact that the real-life Larson died the day before Rent could go into previews. His theatrical legacy however lives on, and he will be forever known as one of Broadway’s leading lights. Tick, Tick… Boom! is an homage to his tragic genius.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
(Netflix)
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a Charlie Kaufman film and survivors of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind know what kind of emotional punch his movies pack. The story is about a young woman who takes a road trip to her boyfriend’s family farm. After she is trapped there due to a snowstorm, she begins to question everything—her relationship, her life, and her place in the world. The most brutal part of the movie? The sheer amount of existential dread that is jam-packed inside of these characters … and their inability to talk to one another about it.
Marriage Story
(Netflix)
A movie so sad that the internet was forced to make memes about it to cope, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is a look into the long, slow, painful disintegration of a marriage between a stage director and his actor wife. It’s a film about the acting, and lord do Adam Driver and Scarlet Johansen act their asses off. Emotional breakdowns pepper the movie as the doomed husband and wife attempt to reconcile their bitterness, regret, and worst of all … enduring love for one another.
All Together Now
Brett Haley’s All Together Now is about a high school girl named Amber and her mother Becky who live in the school bus that the latter drives. Despite their circumstances, Amber remains an intrepid optimist. She stays busy, and volunteers to teach ESL at a retirement home while also running her school’s variety show. With her mother’s love and a little help from her friends, she struggles to turn her life around and pursue her theatrical dreams. While this movie is more sweet than bitter, there are plenty of tear-jerker moments to keep you sad people happy… so to speak.
(Featured Image: Netflix)
