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Most Depressing movies you've seen?

Like Blade Runner, Soylent Green gives such a bleak view of the future. It's always amazed me how few people I meet have seen Soylent Green. I used to use Charlton Heston's line at work..."Soylent Green is ------!" (Don't want to spoil the film.) Got more blank looks than I can remember. Anyway, Edward G Robinson was great in that film.

The film is set only ten years into the future too. :p Time to start diging up some soylent green. :p
 

Gin&Tonics

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Like Blade Runner, Soylent Green gives such a bleak view of the future. It's always amazed me how few people I meet have seen Soylent Green. I used to use Charlton Heston's line at work..."Soylent Green is ------!" (Don't want to spoil the film.) Got more blank looks than I can remember. Anyway, Edward G Robinson was great in that film.

I haven't seen the film, but after reading about in on wikipedia, the cover art seems like a giveaway to me.
 
I haven't seen the film, but after reading about in on wikipedia, the cover art seems like a giveaway to me.

Here, Have some:
soylent-green-20110222-123658.jpg
 

Edward

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I don't mind bleak. Actually, I like it. It's Hollywood Romcoms, anything with Jennifer Aniston, and unrealistic, shoe-horned in happy endings that depress me.
 

Flicka

One Too Many
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I don't mind bleak. Actually, I like it. It's Hollywood Romcoms, anything with Jennifer Aniston, and unrealistic, shoe-horned in happy endings that depress me.

Oh, I agree, but then I also listen to The Downward Spiral to pick myself up when I'm down... Hurt for example cheers me up no end! Play me some peppy pop and you make me lose all faith in humanity.
 

MisterCairo

I'll Lock Up
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We watched Threads in economics class in high school. I remember one girl in our class coming in the next day to say she'd been up half the night having had terrible nightmares about it. It was chilling to be sure...
 

Edward

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Oh, I agree, but then I also listen to The Downward Spiral to pick myself up when I'm down... Hurt for example cheers me up no end! Play me some peppy pop and you make me lose all faith in humanity.

I like how you think. I read I'm a believer (which I love) as a song of despair about doomed, unrequited love. I have a gothic soul.
 

Chase

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The most depressing movie I've ever seen was The Champ – specifically when Ricky Schroder cries out to Jon Voight to allow him to live with him, he says: "Please let me stay with you, I won't eat that much!" A lump in my throat...
 

Edward

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We watched Threads in economics class in high school. I remember one girl in our class coming in the next day to say she'd been up half the night having had terrible nightmares about it. It was chilling to be sure...

I saw it on television on original transmission - I was eight or nine. I remember being creeped out by it... and outraged they'd burned a real teddy just to make part of a TV show (I heavily anthropomorphised my teddies....). The whole thing stuck with me for a long time. I plan to buy the DVD soon.
 

Undertow

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Oh, I agree, but then I also listen to The Downward Spiral to pick myself up when I'm down... Hurt for example cheers me up no end! Play me some peppy pop and you make me lose all faith in humanity.

Haha, really? That's great. I love that album, but I think I like the "downward" feeling it gives. Maybe we're in the same boat? (btw, love that song AND its remake by Senor Cash)
 

BigFitz

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"Mulholland Drive"- I loved this movie but it was a movie that made me sad for Betty/Diane at the end. "Silencio".

"Planet of the Apes" The first time I watched it as a kid in the '70's, the final scene when Taylor realises where he is and we see the destroyed Statue of Liberty really left me feeling a sense of dread.
 

Flicka

One Too Many
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Haha, really? That's great. I love that album, but I think I like the "downward" feeling it gives. Maybe we're in the same boat? (btw, love that song AND its remake by Senor Cash)

I think I like the 'downward' feeling too - I suppose it's a bit of katharsis for me to listen to. I walk away feeling cleansed... But I do think Hurt ends on a sort of hopeful note with that 'if I could start again /.../ I would find a way'. And Johnny Cash's version is beautiful; very different from the original and very personal.
 

Bluebird Marsha

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...they'd burned a real teddy just to make part of a TV show (I heavily anthropomorphised my teddies....)...

BURNED A TEDDY?

Monsters!

Personally, AI gloomed me out. In fact, the whole audience seemed depressed when the lights came up. We're survived by glittery androids?

Note: the Teddy made it through that one, so no moral event horizon was crossed. :)

Soylent Green had moments, but even as a kid ali I could think of was "is there no cholera, dysentery or smallpox?" But the suicide scene was uber-sad.
 
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LizzieMaine

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I see a lot of movies at work I wouldn't ordinarily see of my own choice, and a lot of these tend to be depressing -- but the all time cake-taker has to be "Shame." Michael Fassbinder and Carey Mulligan are both fine performers, but there was absolutely nothing in this film that I could identify with or relate to in any aspect of my existance -- and there was a dark, bleak corruption at its heart that made me want to drag the projector into the street and spray disinfectant on it when the film was over. If this picture is in any way an accurate depiction of Modern Life, include me out.
 

DNO

One Too Many
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Figured I should list this one: "Hank Williams: The Concert He Never Gave." Set in New Years Eve, 1952, it has Hank Williams being driven to what would have been his last concert but he's thinking about the concert that he'd like to give rather than the auditorium he is heading toward. To some extent it's a celebration of his music but it's also an examination of William's alcoholism and decline. Definitely a depressing film.
 
I think I like the 'downward' feeling too - I suppose it's a bit of katharsis for me to listen to. I walk away feeling cleansed... But I do think Hurt ends on a sort of hopeful note with that 'if I could start again /.../ I would find a way'. And Johnny Cash's version is beautiful; very different from the original and very personal.

Cash's version was 100 times better. Even the original artist had to admit it. lol lol You can understand every single word. That is where the power is.
[video=youtube_share;J36CRZzm9vg]http://youtu.be/J36CRZzm9vg[/video]
 

Flicka

One Too Many
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Cash's version was 100 times better.

I must, respectfully, disagree. I like Cash's version, but I prefer the original. There's just a raw power in that version (which I think partly comes from it being sung my the man who wrote the words) that is outstanding to me.
 

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