20 Movies You Weren't Expecting To Make You Cry

There are many, many movies out there that are famed for making people cry. What are some of cinema's greatest emotional powerhouses? Well, The Green Mile, Titanic, Schindler's List, Grave of the Fireflies, Manchester by the Sea, It's a Wonderful Life, The Notebook, and The Fault in Our Stars are some of those that leap to mind.

With those flicks, first-time viewers will come armed with a box of tissues, as with those movies, their reputation precedes them. Or, in other cases, the film's subject matter or marketing will brace viewers for a cry. Having said all of this, not all tear-jerkers come with a warning. Sometimes, a completely unexpected movie makes you weep and thus hits particularly hard, as is the case when the following 20 offerings.  

Ranging from wacky blockbuster sequels to schlocky horror sequels, and even including a Muppet movie, of all things, these features were all far more emotional than pretty much anyone was expecting. In a couple of cases, this was sadly down to real-life tragedy, which meant that the movie then acted as a send-off to a late actor. 

So, if you cried during any of these films, you weren't the only one. 

Men in Black 3 is a so-so threequel that didn't really need to happen, but it does hit you with a tear-jerking moment right when you're least expecting it. The pairing of Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) was always the absolute high point of these movies, and this ending reframes that relationship entirely, giving it an emotional new dimension.

At the end of this time travel adventure, in which J goes back in time to prevent the death of K (played, in this earlier era, by Josh Brolin), a Colonel (Mike Colter) allied with K sacrifices himself to save K's life. As J watches from a distance, he is astonished to see his younger self emerge from a nearby car, and he realizes that the Colonel was his father. 

All along, he'd met K as a child. Earlier in the film, main antagonist Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) had killed the younger K, and the future changed, but J was the only one who remembered his partner, and this early encounter is why. Again, Men in Black 3 isn't that great, but this ending twist is genuinely and sincerely affecting. In fact, British actor and comedian Romesh Ranganathan once revealed years after that he was in tears when he went to see the film, as he'd recently lost his father.