Top 5 Movie Endings...
paulnice
924 Posts
1. CINEMA PARADISO (1988):Pitch perfect ending to a near flawless film (stay away from the extended version/director's cut - as in the case of CP, less is truly more).Alfredo's final gift to Salvatore, without giving too much away will easily bring tears to a grown man's eyes - fuck a Brian's Song.2. PLANET OF THE APES (1968):Time might have lessened the impact of the "we were here all the time" shock ending with the radioactive and melted Statue of Liberty cruely staring down at poor ol' Chuck Heston (by the way, ever notice just how many overtly liberal-themed movies Heston played in back then? Soylent Green, Omega Man, etc. Pretty funny actually).But man, as a youth this was the kind of thing that put a WTF look on my grill for the entire day.Rod Serling's crowning achievement along with Requiem For a Heavyweight.3. EVIL DEAD II / DEAD BY DAWN (1987):Besides being one of the hands down, most fun movies you could ever possibly see in a movie theater along with a (hopefully) like-minded and eager crowd (42nd street was where I first saw it and nothing like it comes close sans kung fu flicks), Evil Dead II had one of the most fucked up endings ever.I mean, after all the foul up shit poor Ash ("Rambo" to the folks on the Duece) went through for 90 minutes, he not only doesn't get his happy ending, he winds up continuing his fight with the Deadites in the fucking Middle Ages. Brilliant.(To be continued in the completely dissapointing Army of Darkness. DooDoo on a shotgun.)4. USUAL SUSPECTS (1995):Had to do it. The last couple of minutes always give me the chills.5. SHAOLIN MANTIS (1978):What is otherwise an above average period kung fu flick from Shaw Brothers and maestro Liu Chia Liang takes a very unexpected turn at the film's end when we realize that the hero of the story (David Chiang) turned out to be the villain, a fact when watching the movie a second time reveals, was cleverly hiding in plain sight the entire time.Sifu Liu is genius.
Comments
2. A Simple Plan. Crushing Ending
3.Glengarry Glenn Ross
i could only come up with 3
Somewhat letdown by the ending, although you knew it had to end that way.
NICHOLSON SHREDS
"Life is a state of mind". Chance walks on water. Magritte meets the buddha. It doesn't get any better.
Runaway Train- [/b]
Basically the same ending as above just done as a prison break movie. John Voigt confronts Eric Roberts character with the immortal lines "You're gonna learn, kid. It's all up here. (pointing to his temple)" thus revealing that this well done action is actually a visceral meditation on our own psychological imprisonment. Criminally slept on mid-80s film.
TAXI DRIVER
SCARFACE
ROSEMARY'S BABY
AUDITION
PUSHER III
Memorable endings for me:
The Sixth Sense
Butch Cassidy
Se7en
Cinema Paradiso (concur)
Time Bandits
old boy
se7en
the departed
die hard 2
silence of the lambs
platoon
untouchables
empire strikes back
irreversible
shawshank
blood in blood out
bodysnatchers(sutherland version)
transformers!.......
Stalker
Zabriskie Point
Ms.45
Irma Vep
Sympathy For The Devil
Harakiri (1962)[/b]
The best samurai movie made and also one of my favorite movies ever. The way the plot unwinds at end is just face melting.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)[/b]
Classic.
400 blows has a pretty great ending too.
yes and yes.
Dr Strangelove
Chinatown
Return Of The Living Dead
Escape From New York
Vertigo
It's A Wonderful Life (Yeah I know)
After Hours
Police Story
The only one i can think of right now is night of the living dead & ill also cosign return of the living dead.
"I did my best, but I guess my best wasnt good enough..."
DUDE...
Completely forgot about this!!
I remember I went to see this with what seemed like half of my school one night.
When the credits started to crawl up the screen, NOBODY was expecting that shit!!
Not a moment later and the whole theater was like, "AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!" in unison (with a few "oh shit!"'s and "that's FUCKED up!"'s thrown in for good measure).
What was essentially a silly early 80's teenage sex comedy all of a sudden ended on an very truthful note.
They set the viewer up for it perfectly too.
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
Se7en was pretty wild, too.
While this didn't blow me away personally it did remind me of the kind of resolution you would get from studio films in the sixties where the censorship laws in place insisted that heroes/anti-heroes that had profited from breaking the law through the film must be seen to be brought to justice by the credits in some way.
Which reminds me of a truly
The Graduate
Crying Game
Usual Supects
The Shining
Nice one.
I love the endings to Breathless[/b] and Contempt[/b] Ending to Breathless made me chuckle. Contempt was a grueling movie at times, and the ending totally took me off gaurd. I'm sure there are people that hate the ending to that movie, but I totally love it. And she is so easy on the eyes.
Oh almost forgot, the ending to Bladerunner: The Director's Cut[/b]. One of my all time favorite flicks.