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Films Ruined By Their Endings

Started by AsparagusTrevor, October 24, 2010, 12:49:36 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

kidsick5000

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on February 20, 2011, 11:40:22 PM
I just watched Megamind and thought it was fun in a throwaway kind of manner, but the bit
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at the end where they all start dancing to Bad
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left a nasty taste in my mouth.

I only recently saw the very last bit of the credits. Until then, I had been under the impression that they were being very brave by having Megamind actually kill someone.

Glebe

Not that I liked the rest of the film, but the finale to a Life Less Ordinary is possibly one of the most annoying movie endings ever -
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plasticine? Oasis? No thanks.
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Ignatius_S

Quote from: Glebe on April 04, 2011, 09:27:16 PM
Not that I liked the rest of the film, but the finale to a Life Less Ordinary is possibly one of the most annoying movie endings ever -
Spoiler alert
plasticine? Oasis? No thanks.
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For me, it should have been called A Film Less Interesting. 

Jemble Fred

Quote from: Glebe on April 04, 2011, 09:27:16 PM
Not that I liked the rest of the film, but the finale to a Life Less Ordinary is possibly one of the most annoying movie endings ever -
Spoiler alert
plasticine? Oasis? No thanks.
[close]

To be fair, that film does have about half a dozen endings.

I love them all, personally; it's a total mess of a film, but that's its charm. To me it's like a 90s equivalent of movies like The Magic Christian – a total mess, but packed with zeitgeisty charm. It's so 90s it hurts (so good).

sirhenry

One of the reasons for the ending was that Danny Boyle had an ongoing battle with the producers while making the film about kissing. He was told that focus groups had shown that there needed to be a kiss between the stars in the first 15 minutes of the film, but he was having none of it. In fact he went as far as not having them kiss in the film at all; the only time they do is in the animation at the end. But then the whole film seems to be one long 'fuck you' to the focus/demographic system of Hollywood film-making. And all the better for it.

lipsink

They do kiss just after
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the bank robbery
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though don't they?

sirhenry

Yes, but that wasn't the Director's Cut, it was filmed as a sop to the producers with the intention of not including it but they insisted it went in.

As far as I remember.

Hangthebuggers

The ending to 'Pusher' is often debated (for those not in the know it's Denmark's 'first gangster' film). About a week in the life of mid-level drug dealer/pusher in Copenhagen.

Spoiler alert
It's left wide open, with the main character standing in the dark street, staring and breathing almost at the camera.  Brief images of the two separate parties who has managed to piss off throughout the course of the film briefly interrupt his gaze. A quick glimpse of the body builders  (who he had earlier robbed), loading shotguns into a van and of course the main antagonist and his henchman rolling plastic sheeting onto the kitchen floor.
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I think the director Nicolas Winding Refn chose a wise point to end the movie, with a nice reference to it partway through the sequel.


Shoulders?-Stomach!

A Life Less Ordinary is definitely one of those films I'd only watch once. Actually come to think of it, the only Danny Boyle film I've watched more than once is Trainspotting.

The Roofdog

Fritz Lang's last American film 'Beyond A Reasonable Doubt' is a crafty piece of film noir with a brilliant twist near the end... unfortunately it then has another final  twist which is contrived, cowardly bollocks and ruins the whole point of the film.

Our two protagonists are newspaper men who set out to prove a point about the dangers of circumstantial evidence and capital punishment, and humiliate their "hang 'em all" district attorney by planting evidence to suggest that one of them (Dana Andrews' character) is guilty of the recent murder of a nightclub dancer for which the police can find no suspect. Whilst Dana Andrews is being sentenced to the death penalty,
Spoiler alert
his partner dies in a car crash and all the evidence of the plot and his innocence is destroyed. It looks like Andrews is going to fry.
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What a great film it would be if it ended there. Unfortunately, it rolls on:
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he is about to earn an 11th hour pardon by arguing against the validity of the circumstantial evidence when he breaks down and confesses that he did kill the girl, and he agreed to take part in the "frame" to deflect attention away from his crime. The film ends with him being led back to his cell.
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Shite.

Peru

Quote'Once Upon a Time in America' is long overdue a re-edit, the film's been butchered to buggery. There are some beautiful sequences in it, but it's all over the shop in its current form. Apparently Leone originally envisioned it as a film in two parts, there's about six to ten hours of footage available that could presumably be shunted around into something like the original version that Sergio had in mind. As it is, it's a mess, the ending in particular, one of the great 'What the fuck just happened there?' moments of cinema, but not in a good way.

Are you talking about the bit where
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James Woods appears to throw himself into a bin lorry
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? Because that had me howling with laughter when I last saw it. That and 'Yesterday' on the panpipes. You're right, it's an absolute mess.

AlkyBastard

I watched that Rescue Dawn last night. I never paid it any heed at the time because it looked like one of those big stupid action films Christian Bale does in between his worthy "skinny" films. It wasn't until I realised it was a Herzog film that I checked it out. Turns out it's one of Bale's skinny ones after all (everyone in it is skinny, particularly that annoying wee wussy guy from Lost), and to be honest it's pretty good considering it was Herzog's first bash at an American film with wide appeal.

It's about a German-born US pilot who gets shot down over Vietnam, and is thrown in a POW camp in Laos. The actors look and feel like they've been in captivity for years; absolutely emaciated. You get the feeling that they're really in the middle of nowhere. I liked the point that it's not the flimsy bamboo huts which are the prison, it's the jungle itself. Breaking out of the camp is the least of it. The scenery looks beautiful and terrifying at the same time. It's really well shot, and the atmosphere for the most part is tense and engaging. Bale is reliable, and the supporting cast are interesting.

It's slightly ruined however by the final scenes. After going through the whole terrible ordeal in a refreshingly unsentimental way, with none of the usual jingoistic patriotic guff you tend to get in war films, once
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Bale gets to safety Herzog turns up the sappy music as the jubilant crowd carry him over their heads like a hero. Never mind all the physical and psychological trauma he's gone through; everything's back to normal and they all live happily ever after (apart from everyone else involved in the escape who presumably died alone and starving in the jungle).
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It was all tied up a little too neatly, considering in real life it would be anything but.

jaydee81

Have you seen Little Dieter Needs To Fly?

Old Nehamkin

Quote from: Doomy Dwyer on March 28, 2011, 06:23:31 PM
'Once Upon a Time in America' is long overdue a re-edit, the film's been butchered to buggery. There are some beautiful sequences in it, but it's all over the shop in its current form. Apparently Leone originally envisioned it as a film in two parts, there's about six to ten hours of footage available that could presumably be shunted around into something like the original version that Sergio had in mind. As it is, it's a mess, the ending in particular, one of the great 'What the fuck just happened there?' moments of cinema, but not in a good way. The film sort of works if you look at it as an opium induced reverie, but it could be so much more. It'd be nice to see De Niro in something decent again too. What's this new piece of shit I'm seeing posters for where he looks like your fucking dad? You're Robert De Niro, man, smarten yourself up for fucks sake.

So it's not so much ruined by its ending as ruined by a lot of factors. But the ending is shit, nevertheless.

The 229m version available on dvd now is far, far superior to the version used for the US release, which truly was butchered to buggery. It ran at 140 minutes and rearranged the story into chronological order and cut out so much (especially the childhood segments) that it was near incomprehensible. Even if Leone did originally envision it to be two parts, by the time he cut the film it was his intention to release it in the form that it's in now (more or less-he agreed to cut 40 minutes from his original cut-see below), the film's ending is his ending. Given how heartbroken he was by what happened to the film, and the long history of distributors messing about with his movies and ruining them, I think it would be wrong for anybody but him to put together a cut of the film.

Having said that, I've just seen from wikipedia that  the 40 minutes longer version is being released for the first time- link. So maybe that'll be more to your liking. Personally I love the film as it is and like the ambiguity of the ending, but I'll be interested to see how this compares.

Jobey

The ending to Very Bad Things is so bleak I will usually turn it off in the last ten minutes.
Great film though!