I have a tough time with any animal movies in general – Lassie, The Yearling, Black Beauty, Harry and Tonto, there was one with a Siamese cat and two dogs – The Incredible Journey? Even cartoons like Bambi or Dumbo make me cry. Animal movies usually seem to involve loss or separation of the people from the animal.
I heard Marley and Me is very sad and I won’t watch it, although I heard it’s a good movie, because I don’t feel like crying my eyes out. Harry and Tonto was from the early 70’s, Art Carney played an old man who had an orange cat that he would take on walks on a leash, the cat was his companion. He took a road trip with his son and he took the cat with him, and the cat ended up dying. It was so hard to watch, and I had a cat who looked very much like Tonto and two weeks later my cat died, which was equally traumatizing because I had seen the movie and could not imagine it happening to me and then it did.
As far as torture scenes, there was one a few years ago with George Clooney where he was captive and they taped his hand to a desk and pulled his fingernails out.
The electroshock therapy scene in One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest was pretty upsetting.
The scene in Monster where she was raped and then the guy poured bleach onto her private parts almost made me pass out.
Anything involving torture or people getting beat up is hard to watch.