I never cried in Titanic - it just didn't make me sad. So the death scene pisses me off because unless you're invested, it's just dumb.

I cry almost every time at the end when the dead!Rose is walking up the stairs in the Grand Staircase to Jack. It's a reunion of lovers.

One time I cried when Old!Rose said "I have no pictures of him. He only exists in my memory." I bawled at that because I was missing my grandfather who had passed away a few years earlier.

My enemy is obviousness. A subtle hand can win me over, and lose me less, than somebody doing the big magician conjuring swoosh. Actually, speaking of sleight of hand, I think Speilberg could get away with his emotional obviousness if his plotting were tighter/less linear/less predictable. One of the things I've picked up from Atom Egoyan movies is that juxtaposition and unfinished sentences are so evocative as to be a manipulation -- just, a manipulation that the viewer participates in, willingly, rather than something rained down on the viewer's head.

Manipulative storytaking always strikes me as very cynical. All fiction is attempting emotional manipulation; you're tricked into caring about stuff that isn't true. But when I feel like unnecessary elements have been imposed on the story solely to provoke an emotional reaction, it seems to signal that someone involved either doesn't trust the story or doesn't trust the audience.

The "unnecessary" part is key, to me. Is there a reason for the scene? Does the audience learn something, do the characters learn something, does someone or something change as a result? Or could you remove it without anyone even noticing? I think all of the Batman movies refer to or show the death of Bruce Wayne's parents. Doing that may make the audience feel sad, but it keeps coming up because it's kinda essential to the character. Whereas I don't even know how many movies and TV shows have done some version of this: "Oh no, our beloved dog is dead! Poor old Bingo. Wah!" [Pause just long enough for the audience to start sniffling.] [Bingo starts wagging his tail and whines quietly.] "He's alive! Good old Bingo!" Scenes like that don't usually add anything, or develop anything. They don't affect the characters or the story, and aren't supposed to; they're thrown into the last five minutes so that the audience will get a little rush of sympathy.

Horror movies are extremely calculating in their manipulations, but they're supposed to be. They're full of things that are only there to make you jump or scream, and you know that going in. ("Omigod, Bingo's a Zombie Dog! Aaaaa!") I think Spielberg is great at that kind of stuff in Duel and Jaws, but it's like he applies that same style to everything he does. So I don't see his movies anymore. (Although I, too, liked Empire of the Sun. And I, too, have a hard time crediting that to Spielberg.)

"Bingo and the Zombie Dogs" would be an excellent band name.

Manipulative storytaking always strikes me as very cynical. All fiction is attempting emotional manipulation; you're tricked into caring about stuff that isn't true. But when I feel like unnecessary elements have been imposed on the story solely to provoke an emotional reaction, it seems to signal that someone involved either doesn't trust the story or doesn't trust the audience.

I wouldn't even phrase it this way. John Gardner's book on writing fiction makes the distinction between "sentiment" (which writing should evoke) and "sentimental" (which is cheap).

Having an emotional response is (generally - Brecht aside) desirable, and I don't think it's manipulative as long as the writer/filmmaker treats the audience with some respect.

It's just a matter of earning the big moment instead of falsely inflating it. The emotion should happen because you're invested in the characters and the drama, not because you have an outside-the-movie soft spot for puppies or babies or swelling string sections.

"Bingo and the Zombie Dogs"

See, my thought was that there could be a sequel to Old Yeller.

Lilo & Stitch had me crying like a baby

Wrod. We had to sit in the theater for a few minutes after the credits as I was still too misty to be seen in public.

It's just a matter of earning the big moment instead of falsely inflating it. The emotion should happen because you're invested in the characters and the drama, not because you have an outside-the-movie soft spot for puppies or babies or swelling string sections

Righty-ro, and also what's Jessica's been saying. The fiction has to be "true" or authentic, even when it's clearly not. Then I love having my emotions given a shiatsu massage. When it's just somebody hitting the pressure points because they can, I don't enjoy it...or think it's art, really. Craft, maybe.

And "stylized" is almost the opposite reason to make a piece of art. The stylized parts of Suspiria are not the emotionally resonant or horror parts, for me, and the parts that either had me jumping backwards in my seat or feeling sympathy for the alone-ness of the protagonist were not the stylized parts.

I'm probably not explaining this well. So I'll just point at Hec and Jessica and others in that corner.

In real life, there's a difference between someone who wants your empathy and someone who is trying to con you. In one case, the feelings are reciprocal, in the other, the feelings aren't.

We had to sit in the theater for a few minutes after the credits as I was still too misty to be seen in public

Me too. I like a tearjerker and all, but that one really had me worked up to the point where I thought I might have to leave or make a spectacle of myself.

I generally use the term "emotional manipulation" to refer to a moment in a movie/book/whatever where I feel tricked into feeling a certain way.

Stories--books, movies, comics, anything--should make you feel. I'm totally on board with that, and will happily watch movies at which I cry like a wee babe, IF I feel that the emotion is earned. It's when I don't feel that the emotion is earned that I call it manipulation. It's when I don't give a damn about the characters, but suddenly the strings swell in the background and Character X's hand falls limply to the ground as tears run down Character Y's face and then I start crying too, that I get mad; it's when neither the script, nor the acting, nor the story has earned those tears that I call it "emotional manipulation". If the emotion has been earned, then--to me--it's an emotional connection, NOT manipulation.

edit: hugely x-posty, of course.