(Save The Water Works) Flicks To Avoid On A First Date

Sometimes it's best to yell at a television or use your dress as a Kleenex on your own time. CAUTION: Spoilers a plenty.

1. The Neverending Story

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This is a fantastic film, filled with magic, whimsy, adventure and tolerable CGI. However, nothing excuses a hero protagonist having to wrestle his faithful horse out of a cursed swamp, as he fights to purposely drown himself.

That's unfair.

2. Up

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So, you're watching this couple grow up, become passionately invested in them (and their story), and then bam, Disney kills the wife. How? Cancer, but only after leaving her barren.

This happens in the first six minutes.

Seriously Pixar?

I'd much prefered to have a Disney representative stab me in the chest, wiggle it around a bit, and pour a bag of spiders on my head, rather than watch this intro again.

3. Night of a Chimera's Cry (Full Metal Alchemist)

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The man in the picture above is Shou Tucker. The girl to the right is Nina, his daughter. This little family has a big white dog, too; his name is Alexander.

Did I mention Shou's an alchemist? A darn good one at that. One of his greatest experiments... fusing Nina and Alexander together.

4. Jurassic Bark (Futurama)

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Arguably one of the most depressing episodes in animation history.

Seymour is a faithful and devoted dog. One day Fry, his master is accidentally cryogenically frozen. Post defrosting 1,000 years later, Seymour is randomly found, fossilised. The discovery leads to the show detailing the life the dog lead, patiently waiting Fry's return.

It's actually based on a true story, one with more trains and less time travel. Back in the 1920s, Hachiko, an akita, waited at Shibuya Station for nine years, unknowing that his master had died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

5. Rent

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There's a lot of fun to be hard when watching a musical. I'm a big fan, which is why people hate watching with me (I don't shut up). Rent is no different, you get swept up quite easily. But then, when a beloved member of the cast is the first of them all, to die of AIDS, there's a breaking point (for them and you).

6. Nobody Knows

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This is a more obscure flick, but terrifyingly I saw it listed on Netflix once, so you might eventually come across it.

It's about a Japanese family, where an absentee mother leaves her young children to fend for themselves. With the death of their youngest sibling, due to accidental negligence, you officially meet the realisation that you'll never know happiness again.

7. I Will Remember You (Angel)

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You can't suffer this episode with perfect intensity unless you've seen some Angel (and Buffy). Summarising, there's this complicated vampire-human relationship, but it can never be, because reasons (gypsy curse, you know the bit).

Battling a beasty, Angel (the vamp) is given back his humanity; a beautiful relationship follows. But then, with pure stupidity, Angel trades his new life for the former super-powered one, fearing for Buffy's (the human) future protection.

The sacrifice: everyone-loses-their-memories-except-him-because-time-paradox-etc-etc. The most crushing aspect: the crying and pleading and promises Buffy tells Angel. Luckily, the heart wrench is at the episode's last two minutes. But I have faith in your ability to close your eyes and shout for 120 seconds, till Netflix changes episodes.

8. Asylum of the Daleks (Doctor Who)

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Doctor Who is a BBC classic, running over 50 years strong. If you haven't seen this campy sci-fi, get on it. Now, the episode:

A total cutie (Clara) believes she'd staved off some of the series's villains, by hiding for years in her dead space craft. It is revealed in the end that she hadn't survived, and was living in a delusional fantasy. In actuality, the baddies had captured her, converted her body in their likeness, and abandoned her in chains.

9. Grave of the Fireflies

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This Studio Ghibli (Japan's Disney) film is about a boy trying to keep himself, and his little sister alive during the end of WWII. If you were indifferent about war before, or were even supportive, watch this and note your newfound pacifism.

The film's entirety is emotionally destructive, but the scene that really gets you is when he finds his sister eating marbles. She was delirious from starvation; she'd mistaken them for lemon drops... I cried so hard, in a classroom granted, that I thought my teeth would fall out. Literally everyone left in noticeable tears.

10. A.I.

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One of the most fantastic films I've ever seen, and I will actively try to never see it, ever again. Kubrick started it and Spielberg finished it; it was destined for greatness.

It's set in a time where the Earth is completely #&%*ed. The ice caps have melted, everything's going the way of Venice, and humans are starving to death. People soon design the perfect A.I. to rely on their services. Of the new breed, there's David, a mecha child. David, sadly, is abandoned by his foster family, for complications resulting from inhumanness. A.I. references Pinocchio heavily. The primary relation being that David spends the whole story seeking out the "blue fairy." He just... he just wants to be a "real boy."

It was already great, but seeing it at eleven took a toll on me.