Growing up sure is hard to do, as post-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin discovers in this adolescent drama about a girl (Anna Chlumsky) who is obsessed with death, owing to her mother's death and her dad's funeral parlour business. She finds a friend in the form of allergy-riddled Culkin. Sadly, the pair don't get beyond a first kiss before Culkin is stung to death by bees. It's a tough old world out there.

If you build it, he will come. Weepy baseball fable with supernatural overtones starring Kevin Costner (who else?) as a farmer who builds a baseball pitch out in his corn fields to help the ghosts of the disgraced 1919 White Sox team find peace. Field Of Dreams is that rare thing, a poignant movie, which manages to drain the tear ducts, without ever resorting to cheap manipulation or clichéd sentiment. So genuine, you can't help but be moved when Costner's dead father emerges from the corn for an impromptu game of catch.

John Voight is an ageing boxer whose young son calls him 'The Champ' in one of the saddest of all sports movies. When his ex-wife, fashion designer Faye Dunaway, comes to claim the boy, Voight takes on a fight to justify the boy's confidence in him. The crushing dignity of the film's final scenes ensures there isn't a dry eye in the house when The Champ reaches the final round.

It's hard to believe that The Shawshank Redemption was ignored by both audiences and the Oscars on its cinema release, when you consider how popular it has now become. Much like Tim Robbins' character Andy Dufresne, the inspirational movie's warmth shines out. His touching relationship with fellow inmate Morgan Freeman only increases its emotional punch. Scenes like the one in which Robbins plays classical music to the rest of the prison, and when he is reunited with Freeman outside the prison, are some of the most moving in cinema.

Disney's iconic fable about a year in the life of a fawn may have been made for kids, but that doesn't mean it pulls any punches in telling children how life is. Birth, death and man's inhumanity to animals are all present on screen as the young deer tries to survive in the forest. The moment that has traumatised millions of children, and adults, around the world comes after a forest fire, when Bambi realises his mummy isn't coming back.

Heaven can wait for Patrick Swayze in this supernatural love story starring Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg. When Swayze is murdered in a street robbery, his spirit is unable to rest and he returns to find out who was responsible for his untimely death. A perfect balance of laughter and tears, Ghost's most moving moment comes when Demi Moore finally says goodbye to her true love and he ascends to heaven. Another reason to cry about Ghost is that pants pop song 'Unchained Melody'.

A perennial Christmas favourite, Frank Capra's classic heart-warmer is actually much darker than many people fondly remember. James Stewart's Everyman character may eventually realise that life is wonderful, but he reaches the brink of suicide to do so. The magic of Bedford Falls, a throwback to small-town Americana that probably never existed, is revealed in all its uplifting glory in the final scene when George is reunited with his family, and showered with the much-needed money from his friends.

The ultimate blockbuster weepy, James Cameron's disaster movie focuses on the unsinkable love between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, but it's the ship that steals the show. Such is the power of Cameron's special effects-driven recreation of the fate of the Titanic and its passengers that you can't help but get swept away by it. The Academy and millions of teenage girls around the world wept as Leo finally sank beneath the waves into the freezing ocean.

Following The Shawshank Redemption, director Frank Darabont hooked up with writer Stephen King for another spiritual prison drama. Michael Clarke Duncan is the prisoner convicted of child murder, yet apparently capable of performing miracles, awaiting execution on the so-called Green Mile. Tom Hanks plays the prison guard who forms a bond with the gentle giant, and amongst the many moments that tug on the heartstrings, it's the inexorable ending, as Duncan is strapped into the chair, which really opens the floodgates.

Before the likes of Independence Day and Evolution, there was a time when movie aliens were cute and only wanted to be our friends. Steven Spielberg brings all of his magic to this wondrous tale of a young boy called Elliot, who befriends an alien stranded on Earth. It's up to Elliot to get E.T. home and keep him away from the government. The film's central relationship is so touching, that you won't be able to hold back the tears when the little guy finally returns to his spaceship.