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The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas (2008)
The Crying Scene: Elsa (Vera Farmiga) discovers some familiar-looking clothes outside the concentration camp and breaks down.
Why It's Unwatchable: We're sort of howling along with Farmiga here, the horror of what's happened hitting seriously hard.
Farmiga Says: "What you do in any role to understand the character, and particularly a role like this, is to put a magnifying glass up to yourself and see how you are alike and how you are different."
My Girl (1991)
The Crying Scene: It's TJ's (Macaulay Culkin) funeral, and Vada (Anna Chlumsky) is so overwhelmed with grief that she ends up clambering up to his coffin and sobbing.
Why It's Unwatchable: Kids crying over other dead kids? It's just too much.
And while Chlumsky's performance is phenomenal, it was also responsible for scarring an entire generation of impressionable young movie fans - us included.
Chlumsky Says: "It's a good movie and it really meant a lot to a lot of people - some just because they liked the movie, and others because they could really identify with it.
"There are a lot worse things to have your childhood connected to than a good film that resonates with people."
A Streetcare Named Desire (1951)
The Crying Scene: "Hey Stellaaaaa!" A torn-shirted Stanley (Marlon Brando) comes looking for Stella (Kim Hunter), then begs her never to leave him.
Why It's Unwatchable: It's all just a bit awkward. Though Brando's fantastic, his character's a total mess, wearing rags and sweating like a pig.
There's no denying the scene's awesome, but it's that special kind of intimate that feels like you shouldn't be watching - we feel like a curtain twitcher.
Brando Says: "Movies do have the greatest potential. You can say important things to a lot of people."
Legends Of The Fall (1994)
The Crying Scene : Tristan (Brad Pitt) visits his brother's grave, which prompts an epic display of waterworks as Susannah (Julia Ormond) attempts to console him.
Why It's Unwatchable: Clutching his face in his hands, making weird throat noises, pulling funny faces…
Pitt just sort of gurns his way through this one, meaning you're more likely to get the giggles than shed a tear.
Pitt Says: "Sinking below, rising above, going off, giving up, taking charge, taking control. This man’s journey seemed very accurate to me and very true.”
Se7en (1995)
The Crying Scene: John Doe (Kevin Spacey) completes his evil plan by having a box delivered to detective David Mills (Brad Pitt). What's in the box? You really don't want to know…
Why It's Unwatchable: It's harrowing, to say the least. We know exactly what's in that box, and David's got a gun in his hand pointed right at the guy who orchestrated the whole horrible thing.
Will he pull the trigger? The tension's almost unbearable.
Pitt Says: "With Se7en , I said, 'I will do it on one condition - the head stays in the box. Put in the contract that the head stays in the box.'
"Actually, there was a second thing, too: 'He’s got to shoot the killer in the end. He doesn’t do the ‘right’ thing, he does the thing of passion.'”
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
The Crying Scene: Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) is dead and his lover Ennis (Heath Ledger) has just found the shirt he thought he lost on Brokeback Mountain - Jack kept it as a memento.
Why It's Unwatchable: Ledger plays it to spine-tingling perfection. We know this is a tragedy, so we don't need any fist-chewing or screaming grief tantrums.
Delivering watery-eyed, stoic heartbreak, Ledger's performance is enough to have you sobbing yourself to sleep for weeks.
Ledger Says: "I personally enjoyed the complexity of Ennis, the lack of words he had to express himself, his inability to love. I liked how masculine he was going to be. I liked that he was a homophobic guy that falls in love with another man."
Captain Phillips (2013)
The Crying Scene: At the end of Paul Greengrass' true-lifer, Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks) has been rescued and his pirate captors killed. As he sits being treated, the enormity of what's happened finally hits him.
Why It's Unwatchable: Hanks nails the shock and exhaustion perfectly.
Phillips doesn't seem to understand why he's crying, but it seems to be for the injustice of it all, and we can't help blubbing into a tissue with him.
Hanks Says: "That in particular I found amazing. That a man who suffered such a wrenching, terrifying ordeal, could bring himself to go right back to sea.
"I knew that understanding Phillips’ strength – that particular kind of personal fortitude and connection to the sea, despite what happened – would be essential to understanding the sort of man Richard is."
Lethal Weapon (1987)
The Crying Scene: Riggs (Mel Gibson) sits in his camper watching Bugs Bunny. Oh, and he tries to commit suicide by putting a bullet through his skull.
Why It's Unwatchable: It's one of action cinema's most distressing and believably bleak moments.
By now, we care about Riggs, and we definitely don't want to see him crying, let alone shooting himself.
Gibson Says: "I get pretty dark sometimes, pretty bleak. But that passes. I rarely lose my temper anymore."
E.T - The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
The Crying Scene: ET is going home and there's nothing Elliot (Henry Thomas) can do about it except cry and watch his little alien buddy leave.
Why It's Unwatchable: Steven Spielberg doesn't spare a single tear as ET makes his departure.
And for his part, Thomas stops short of overblown kiddie acting for something that still has the power to break hearts today.
Thomas Says: [Of his audition ] "I made everyone cry, and then I got the job."
The Green Mile (1999)
The Crying Scene: "May God have mercy on your soul," intones police warden Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) as John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) is put in the electric chair.
Why It's Unwatchable: The injustice of it all is like a sledgehammer to the heart in this scene, and as even the hardiest of prison guards start weeping, you'll either have to turn the telly off or succumb to your own body-wracking sobs.
Either way you're screwed.
Hanks Says : "That was pretty hairy. The trick of all this is protecting the moment when you're there. In order to manufacture [ an emotion ], you can't lie. It was an emotionally charged day.
"You were working at a fever pitch for three hours, and then you'd wait and then work it up again after two-plus hours. We did that in about 72 hours."
