There are countless little moments throughout 2018’s Love, Simon that will tug at your heartstrings, but the biggest emotional payoff comes in the final act, as the titular Simon boards a Ferris wheel—and in doing so, gives the viewer a quiet moment to reflect on the fact that an unabashedly queer teen movie like this exists in the first place, with the weight of a major production company and worldwide release behind it. The film’s critical and commercial success only heightens the emotional impact upon rewatch. —Mick Rouse
Invisible Life
Invisible Life, the Brazilian entry to this year’s Academy Awards, now streaming on Amazon, manages the feat of being as vivid and gorgeous as it is relentlessly bleak. Set in lush 1950s Rio de Janeiro, it follows two sisters—played by the endlessly magnetic Julia Stockler and Carol Duarte—who are separated by their father and forced to unknowingly live parallel existences in the same sprawling city, each grappling with their own miseries. Cut to me and a friend watching it in the movie theater, having parallel cries for the last 30 minutes straight. —Gabriella Paiella
Good Will Hunting
I know, I know: it’s not my fault. But golly does it make me cry. —Sam Schube
Titanic
Titanic might be better known as a meme-generator these days (the hand on a steaming window, the door that could’ve fit two people etc.), but there’s a reason why James Cameron’s modern classic was at one point the highest grossing film of all time. It’s a sweeping epic of, well, Titanic proportions—full of melodrama, tragedy, and heartbreak that was capable of making packed theaters sob hysterically—this writer included. If nothing else, Titanic is a film that strangely resonates no matter when you revisit it. In 2020, for example, I feel like a violinist serenading passengers on a sinking ship. —Iana Murray