30 Emotionally Powerful Movies To Watch When You Need A Good Cry

The year has been overwhelmed with action movies filled with justice-driven superheroes and wronged villains. Avengers: Endgame was an epic and emotional conclusion to the decade long series while Joker had recently sparked controversy over if it's simply a violence-trigger or a great biography about a certain fictional character.

But the genre isn't for everyone and to be frank, can be quite tiring to watch. If you're down for some emotional movies instead where human beings strive to survive, be happy and be loved in a world without flying humans and titans, Brighthumanity has got a good list of them. Sit down and prepare some tissues to prepare yourself for these beautiful films.

#1 The Notebook

A pair of lovers, Allie and Noah Calhoun played by Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling, were not approve with the girl's parents. They had to separate when Noah had to fulfill his call to serve during the WWII. But when he comes back, things were no more the same between him and her.

#2 The Fault in Our Stars

You've probably heard of this being a movie you can't finish without shedding some tears. Starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, the movie was based by author John Green's book on the same title. Hazel, 16, had a terminal cancer while Augustus who was declared cancer free and the two met at a support group. They fell in love, but we all know no movie ends well when cancer is mentioned.

#3 The Terminal

It was funny, emotional, but still enjoyable and that's what Steven Spielberg aimed with this movie. Tom Hanks played an Eastern European tourist, Viktor, who was trapped at JFK airport in NY. A civil that broke out caused his passport to become invalid. It's a movie based on the 18-year stay of Mehran Karimi Nasseri who had the rights bought by Spielberg.

#4 Marley & Me

Dogs are men's best friends and loving creatures. A couple who just moved to Florida and looking for jobs adopted a puppy named Marley. He is adorable, lively and sometimes, naughty, but he teaches the new family a lot of lessons.

#5 Titanic

Who doesn't know the bittersweet story of Titanic? A 17-year-old aristocrat who had her life laid out before her, set sail with her fiance on the biggest cruise ship then. She met a poor artist, became his model and eventually, his muse. But as history sets it, the ship sank and along with it hope and lives.

#6 12 Years a Slave

If you're not into romantic genre, this won't go wrong. 12 Years a Slave was a powerful movie from 2013, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor who voiced Scar in recently remade 'The Lion King'. Based on a real memoir of a slave from 1853, Solomon Northup, the free blackman was kidnapped by conmen and sold into slavery. There he meets friends, adapt to the sudden new harsh life and lives to tell his story.

#7 A Star is Born

Who doesn't know Lady Gaga is a star. But in this movie, it was Jackson, played by Bradley Cooper, that pulled lovely Ally up from her struggling singing career. The movie features the song Shallow sung by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. It won several awards, definitely a track you can't stop looping after the movie.

#8 Schindler’s List

Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, arrives in Krakow during WWII for business. He was part of the Nazi and employed many unpaid Jews, but conscience began knocking at his heart, realizing that his factory is preventing those Jews from getting sent to the concentration camp.

#9 Life is Beautiful

Another Holocaust movie that focuses on a father who tries to entertain his son as they live through the harsh environment of the concentration camp.

#10 Brokeback Mountain

A cowboy-gay movie about two cowboys, Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar who were played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger that fell in love hard. The two had to face fear of repercussions, getting married themselves, and a lot of regrets.

#11 Lion

Australian couple stumbled upon a lost 5-year-old Indian boy who was in a train that took him far away. He embarks on a journey to search his lost family as he reached 30 years old.

#12 P.S. I Love You

Hillary Swank plays as Holly Kennedy who lost the love of her life, Gerry, played by Gerard Butler to brain tumor. But on her 30th birthday, Gerry had prepared letters to help her move on to a new life.

#13 The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

It's a story about the son of a German commandant forging friendship with 'the boy in the striped pajamas', a Jewish kid, separated by sharp fences.

#14 The Color Purple

Abusive family breaks our heart. The movie, based on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title, won 11 Oscars and focuses on African-American woman, Celie, who grew up with an abusive father and was married off with a worse man. She grew stronger, was inspired and become an inspiration herself to others as she searches for her sister.

#15 The Theory of Everything

Eddie Redmayne is Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts. But he is also a man of many talents, including his acts as physicist Stephen Hawking. It's about a passionate man who found love and made use of whatever short time is left of him.

#16 Irreplaceable You

Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays across actor Michiel Huisman as both good childhood friends and engaged couple. Gugu, played Abbie, a woman with cancer, who seeks out a fitting partner for Sam, played by Michiel, as she knows her time is short.

#17 Room

5-year-old Jack has known nothing but his own room. Both have been entrapped for so long and once they got out, it was a whole new world for Jack. It's a movie about the boundless love between a mom and her child.

#18 Blue Valentine

Not everyone is the same and will remain so forever. Cindy, played by Michelle Williams, is full of dreams and hopes, but her husband, Dean, played by Ryan Gosling, has always been the same - in love with her. But life is not as simple that love can solve everything.

#19 Philadelphia

Homosexual and HIV-positive lawyer fears that his diagnose will go out, so Andrew Beckett tries hard to hide his symptoms, but in the midst of all that, he met a homophobic who ended up as the only man that fought not just for his rights, but also the discrimination against HIV-AIDS patients.

#20 The Pianist

Acclaimed Polish musician Wladyslaw, played by Adrien Brody, loses contact from family and hides in the ruins of Warsaw during WWII. As he fights back the oppression, the composes seeks to find his family and survives the ordeal.

#21 Call Me By Your Name

Another emotional gay movie about a 17-year-old boy, Elio Perlman, who fell for his father's assistant, Oliver, 24, in Italy. Set in summer of 1983, While the two began by saying they each have a girl they liked, something changed.

#22 The Green Mile

Tom Hanks is the head guard Paul Edgecomb of Green Mile and he met inmate John Coffey, played by Michael Clarke Duncan. John was convicted with two murders, but appears to be a man with kind heart Did he really kill those women?

#23 My Girl

Anna Chlumsky acts as Vada who had her world turned upside down when her father remarried. The tomboy girl spends a lot of time with her best friend, but fears that she may be sick.

#24 Interstellar

They say love spans through time indefinite. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Michael Caine who worked hard to find a new planet because Earth was dying and along with it, everyone else. But their journey through space were not as simple as it seemed to be.

#25 The Pursuit of Happyness

A single father, played by Will Smith, with his son had to leave their apartment and jumped between shelters as the father worked hard to give his son a better future.

#26 Law Abiding Citizen

Is being a law abiding citizen means saying quiet as you watch your family's murderer walks free? Gerard Butler plays a father who lost his family as they were murdered by a robber. A decade later, he was ready to exact revenge against even when he's sitting behind the prison bars.

#27 Gladiator

During times of war, life can easily change. A Roman general's family was murdered by the corrupt emperor while he became a slave himself. He was forced to become a gladiator afterwards.

#28 Braveheart

Mel Gibson is William Walace in this patriotic movie. He witnessed his love slaughtered after fighting back an English soldier that tried to rape her.

#29 Stepmom

Two mothers had to work together and set aside their differences as they raise their children through a family crisis. Ed Harris is Luke Harrison and Susan Sarandon is ex-wife Jackie.

#30 The Hate U Give

A young black girl was the witness to the shooting incident that killed her childhood best friend by a police. She grew up and learned to balance her school life that is mostly white and her neighborhood that is mostly black.