9 Fantastic Movies Too Devastating To Watch More Than Once

9. Blue Valentine

Of all the love stories that have been depicted on the big screen, few come close to representing the depressing realities of so many once-great relationships that eventually fall apart because...well, we're all human. And that, more than anything else, makes Blue Valentine incredibly moving and a ridiculously hard pill to swallow.

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams play a young married couple who are more than on the rocks. They're basically in the rocks. Both actors' performances are so intense and spot-on that each and every fight they have onscreen looks as if it took a real toll out of them as real people.

Their story of a love gone bad is shot beautifully, using frequent flashbacks to their passionate and carefree beginnings to illustrate how far off the map they've gone and create a nagging sense in the viewer that, no matter what, the present can never quite live up to the past.

So...that's fun.

The scenes set in the present tense are emotionally brutal and anyone who's experienced one-twentieth of the grim relationship trauma depicted is going to feel those scars all over again. By the time the couple gives up on even being able to hate f--k each other to get some kind of pleasure out of their relationship, viewers will be hard-pressed to make it to the end of the film, let alone watch it a second time.