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Best Endings

Started by BJBMK2, September 27, 2021, 09:12:51 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

FredNurke

Miracle on 34th Street - the real one, that is, rather than the remake which doesn't exist.

pigamus

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for me Clive


Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Bennett Brauer on September 29, 2021, 04:37:40 PM
Silent Running.

I keep putting off a re-watch because I know what it'll do to me.

Oh if we're going down that road then Land and Freedom as well.

badaids


"Good shot! OK, he's dead; let's go get 'im. That's another one for the fire."


QDRPHNC

Quote from: Ron Maels Moustache on September 27, 2021, 11:05:35 PM
Raising Arizona, Hi imagining his future with all his children and grandchildren. Gets me every time. "And it seemed real...it seemed like us..."

And Tommy Lee Jones' monologue at the end of No Country.

Both fantastic. Raising Arizona especially, I find it odd that most people I've watched it with seem to find the ending comical and silly, whereas it's one of the few things in any film almost guaranteed to get to me emotionally. Same thing with the first Small dream.

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: badaids on September 29, 2021, 08:27:30 PM
"Good shot! OK, he's dead; let's go get 'im. That's another one for the fire."
That reminds me I love the ending of Dawn too, when the heroic music starts up and Peter kicks his way through a bunch of zombies to get to the helicopter.

The last few minutes of Head, where they're running away from the rest of the cast until the film comes full circle and Dolenz jumps off the bridge, this time followed by the rest of the group, we get 'Porpoise Song' again and Victor Mature drives them away in an aquarium tank.

Altman was great at endings: the end credits of M*A*S*H where the cast list is reeled off dispassionately over the tannoy, the cast of Brewster McCloud
Spoiler alert
dressed as circus people parading around the corpse of Bud Cort
[close]
, the poignant climax of McCabe and Mrs Miller, Philip Marlowe doing something extremely out of character then walking away playing "Hooray for Hollywood" on his harmonica in The Long Goodbye, "It Don't Worry Me" in Nashville etc.

mothman

I ponder often the weird symmetry that sees two of my absolute favourite ever films both being The Long Good... as in ...Friday and ...bye. Both have great endings.

Regarding the former, it bothered me for a while that there was at one point going to be a sequel, after he survives
Spoiler alert
when the police, on high alert after the recent mayhem in the capital, set up a roadblock which stops the IRA men's car; while they're acting all innocent Harold just casually hops out of the car and walks away
[close]
. But I'm over it now.

Dusty Substance


Breaking The Waves - The
Spoiler alert
bells in the sky....
[close]
oh fucking hell, 20 years after I first saw it and I still get chills thinking about it.

Custard

Saint Maud. The last split second is haunting

paddy72

Quote from: Shameless Custard on September 29, 2021, 10:53:27 PM
Saint Maud. The last split second is haunting

Definitely one of the best endings I've seen for a while.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: Dusty Substance on September 29, 2021, 09:21:16 PM
Breaking The Waves - The
Spoiler alert
bells in the sky....
[close]
oh fucking hell, 20 years after I first saw it and I still get chills thinking about it.

I'm not sure if you're joking (only because that's widely been described as one of the worst endings to an otherwise good film), but I think I'd like the film ten times better if they'd left it with them on the boat vaguely hearing the sound of bells rather than jumping full-on into dodgy CG bell-ringing magical realism. It's such a shame that I almost want to make my own edit of it before I show it to anyone else for the first time.

(See also Take Shelter - the perfect ending was 5 minutes before the actual one!)

13 schoolyards

I never used to rate the ending of King of New York that highly, but on a recent rewatch it's absolutely perfect - just the way
Spoiler alert
the cops shut down Times Square and keep on sending in more guys until there's a hundred officers weaving their way through stalled traffic and they're all clearly shitting themselves because Frank White is the most dangerous man alive
[close]
and Christoper Walken is like "eh, fuck it".

Twit 2

Days of Heaven

Linda Manz walking down the train tracks with a friend. Really accentuates how the whole film is just a memory seen through her eyes. And she just strolls off, this anonymous working class girl, and you feel  the weight of the souls of all the millions of people like her who have lived their lives with their hopes and dreams as valid and real as anyone else's. It's full of pathos and bittersweetness and melancholy.

Waking Life

For me, it's The Good, the Bad and The Ugly, but that is probably more the climax itself rather than the last few couple of minutes (which are also fitting). Once Upon A Time In America is one of my favourite films, but by contrast, I don't like the final end point (i.e. the opium shot). There's a lot of theories on the ambiguity of it, but I'm not convinced Leone meant it to be particularly deep (I haven't read any comments he's made on it directly if he has) - feels a bit superfluous.

The Usual Suspects did it well, although has now been heavily parodied. But the combination of flashback choices and the soundtrack gives it a very good send off.

Quote from: Shameless Custard on September 29, 2021, 10:53:27 PM
Saint Maud. The last split second is haunting

Hmmm, I just remember rolling my eyes at the cheap gimmick.
Saint Maud could have been so much more, but it felt like it was paddling in the shallow end when there were far greater depths there to explore. It was a fun enough watch but just felt disappointingly thin.

Have we had "zoom back camera" yet? :D So good Monty Python nicked it.

Bad Ambassador

Quote from: paddy72 on September 29, 2021, 05:49:45 PM
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The 'no eulogies' voice-over and final freeze-frame are just perfect.

Incredible that narrator Hugh Ross, who has the perfect storytelling voice and delivery, was an editorial assistant on the film and was just acting as a placeholder.

Dusty Substance

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on September 30, 2021, 03:22:28 AM
I'm not sure if you're joking (only because that's widely been described as one of the worst endings to an otherwise good film), but I think I'd like the film ten times better if they'd left it with them on the boat vaguely hearing the sound of bells rather than jumping full-on into dodgy CG bell-ringing magical realism. It's such a shame that I almost want to make my own edit of it before I show it to anyone else for the first time

Not joking, I totally mean it! I think the magical realism adds so much to the ending of Breaking The Waves, and I'm certainly not bothered in the slightest by the "dodgy CG"- It was an indie movie from 1996.  Never seen or read it described as one of the worst endings to a film - Even if I had, it wouldn't change my opinion. The only time any criticism of the film changed my mind was when I found out how much Mark Kermode hated the film and it only made me love it even more.

dead-ced-dead

I love the final act and ending of Batman Returns and can totally understand why it left a bad taste in the mouth of movie goers back in 1992 and has since become an alternative Christmas movie.

Spoiler alert
Catwoman murdering Shreck and moving away from Batman's advances is totally in keeping with the character. I also love Penguin's death and the penguin pallbearers is something that should be silly but works for me. I feel such pity for the murdering fish monster.

The final scene in the car when Bruce Wayne finds the black cat is the bittersweet icing on the cake.
[close]

Pete23


Bernice

Plenty that have already been said here. I'd throw in Cinema Paradiso. Only saw it for the first time recently, spent the first half an hour thinking 'not really into this', slowly got what it was and then, come the
Spoiler alert
kissing montage
[close]
at the very end, I was crying my little eyes out. An absolutely perfect ending that elevates the whole film to a masterpiece.

Rizla

#51
The little-seen Billy Connolly/Ken Stott revenge flick The Debt Collector has a good one,
Spoiler alert
Annette Crosbie, mother of disgraced cop Stott who promised her a house with a huge garden earlier in the film, sat smiling, senile and confused in the sprawling grounds of the old folks home, aware or unaware of her situation, or that her laddie has been knifed into the next world by the big yin at the edinburgh tattoo.
[close]

neveragain

There's a Croatian drama called The Death of Mr Lazarescu. It's a grim real-time film following an old man with stomach pains as he is ambulanced from one hospital to the next, each hospital refusing admission for various reasons (from callousness - he stinks of drink - to bureaucratic or practical concerns) which paints a picture of a crumbling, underfunded medical service where those who care are beaten down until they are disheartened.

Anyway, the film ends with
Spoiler alert
the discovery of a malignant tumour, which they won't be able to do anything about but the surgeons decide to operate anyway as practice.
[close]
As Mr Lazarescu is prepared for surgery, a nurse who has just given him a full body shave looks down and says "Hello handsome." It's a sudden display of humanity (and somewhat childish, something a mother would say) and always gets to me.

pigamus

Quote from: Bernice on September 30, 2021, 05:08:52 PM
Plenty that have already been said here. I'd throw in Cinema Paradiso. Only saw it for the first time recently, spent the first half an hour thinking 'not really into this', slowly got what it was and then, come the
Spoiler alert
kissing montage
[close]
at the very end, I was crying my little eyes out. An absolutely perfect ending that elevates the whole film to a masterpiece.

I was really confused at this post because I thought you meant Guest House Paradiso

phantom_power

Glinner at the British Comedy Awards 2022

Brundle-Fly

The Purple Rose Of Cairo (1985). I remember having a massive bust up with an ex-gf over this
Spoiler alert
because she was pissed off with the miserable ending not understanding the entire point of the film. The hard cold reality of life compared to the fantasy of movies prevails.
[close]

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Bernice on September 30, 2021, 05:08:52 PM
Plenty that have already been said here. I'd throw in Cinema Paradiso. Only saw it for the first time recently, spent the first half an hour thinking 'not really into this', slowly got what it was and then, come the
Spoiler alert
kissing montage
[close]
at the very end, I was crying my little eyes out. An absolutely perfect ending that elevates the whole film to a masterpiece.

Even this post is filling me up. Christ, I love that film.

Brundle-Fly

The Borderlands (2013). "Quick as you like." Chilling.

Twit 2

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on September 30, 2021, 07:01:25 PM
Even this post is filling me up. Christ, I love that film.

Agreed. Sobbed when I first saw that.

Here's a beautiful version of the tune[nb]fans of hat fucking will note the love theme is not by Ennio Morricone, but his son.[/nb]:

https://youtu.be/RdyQ66JQWyM

Famous Mortimer

Night Moves, the Gene Hackman private eye movie. Such a perfect ending for what came before.