Most depressing movies

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

The movie "The Day After" was mine.

The Day After (TV 1983) - IMDb

After watching this made for TV movie, I wanted to end it all. So depressing to watch people slowly die from radiation poisoning.

[Smokey]

Thanks eveybody for great movie listings. Wished movie rental places like Blockbuster would still be around to rent some of films on the list I have not seen.

But tend to stay away from documentary movies like "Inside Job" or like films from Micheal Moore. It not only make one depress watching these documentaries, it also outrage the viewer to the gov. mishaps.

[RGA]

The movie "The Day After" was mine.

The Day After (TV 1983) - IMDb

After watching this made for TV movie, I wanted to end it all. So depressing to watch people slowly die from radiation poisoning.

watch "Threads" - it was a much much better - much much more realistic film on the subject.

[RGA]

Some excellent ones already listed.

I did a history degree because of the movie Schindler's List. Spielberg took some flack in some circles but I discovered that he did a very good job of sifting through the material and keeping largely to accuracy to the history and to the Thomas Keneally novel. It was somewhat bothersome to read that a few critics blasted Spielberg for the girl in the red coat - but she is in the novel - which those critics apparently didn't read. It's a fine novel and an instance where the film betters it.

I saw Schindler's List something like 9 times in the theater during it's long theatrical run. I find it depressing in one sense but also uplifting in another. Spielberg could not bring a movie out about the holocaust that simply showed the atrocities - there is nothing to tie that to as a film - that would be better left to documentaries.

Hanging the movie onto an imperfect drinking, womanizing, greedy industrialist and member of the Nazi party in Oscar Schindler was the stroke of genius. The film is not "about the holocaust" it is about a man who decides that he could take the bags filled with riches and leave the country as massively wealthy or elects to use the money and put himself in great danger to buy people from being certain death. That is what this is about and that's why it's not called "The Holocaust" but "Schindler's List."

Spielberg simply put a matter of fact style to the film and left the commentary out. Fiennes was perfect - a monster with a dose of hypocrisy falling for the Jewish maid and hating himself for it.

I'll add a couple more that have not been mentioned that almost always go under the radar.

[Jack in Wilmington]

I finally came up with 2

Midnight Cowboy
The Champ

Ironic that they both star Jon Voight. You could add Deliverance to the list and make it a Jon Voight hat trick.