Topic Question
Added 2021-10-12 20:45:31 +0000 UTCWhat is your favorite movie ending and why? Topic video to follow.
Comments
For a more subtle one: In The Mood for Love. For me that final sequence at Angkor Wat is just breathtaking; the ancient setting, the significance of the act (set up earlier in the film), the cello weeping through it all; just a perfect way to end a film that's point is lack of catharsis. Another two, more recent, with kinda semi-twists that are not gimmicky: Pain & Glory and 45 Years (love the way that Moddy Blue song kicks in right as the credits roll).
Ian
2021-10-13 15:13:20 +0000 UTCI know that this is a strange and obscure movie, but the movie I've seen with the most impactful, brilliant ending is "Where Are My Children?", a 1916 feature length film starring Tyrone Power Sr and directed by Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley. Power's character is an anti-choice district attorney who desperately wants to have children. His wife is a socialite who has been getting secret abortions so that she can continue her carefree life. As the attorney prosecutes an abortionist, he finds out that his wife has had several abortions, which leaves her sterile and him decimated. The movie ends with a series of iris shots of him imagining himself playing with the children that he will never have as he sits on the porch staring into the distance. Personally, I'm strongly pro-choice, but this movie ends like a gut-punch.
Edward Eiffler
2021-10-13 02:23:44 +0000 UTCMy Fair Lady. When Henry Higgins realizes he does care about Eliza after he thinks she left him for good. When she returns and shuts off the old records of her then speaks in her old accent, Rex Harrison knocks it out of the park with a little smile as he says "Eliza?" then slips the platonic mask back on with one of the best final lines ever: "What the devil have you done with my slippers?". Perfect. Just perfect.
Wolfman Brandon
2021-10-13 00:05:48 +0000 UTCJulia Ducournau absolutely NAILED the endings of both Raw and Titane. Both were so devastating that I was thinking about the films for days after the first viewing.
Jared Angcanan
2021-10-12 23:43:46 +0000 UTCThe showdown between Pacino and De Niro on the airport runway in Michael Mann’s Heat. A thrillingly staged cat-and-mouse gunfight, you’re never sure, given the film’s evenhanded treatment of the two leads, how it’s all going to play out. When Pacino gets the upper hand and guns down De Niro, it’s not a moment of triumph— as in a more conventional action film—but of melancholy. As Pacino holds De Niro’s hand as he dies and Moby’s “God Moving Over the Face of the Water” rises on the soundtrack, we realize that, in a film about isolation and failed relationships, theirs was the deepest, most poignant connection, even though at the same time it was adversarial. They understood and respected each other better than anyone else. Heat has a great ending that does what it’s supposed to do: keep you guessing how it will turn out, and when it arrives, you realize, with sadness, that it couldn’t have ended any other way. It’s a beautiful moment.
Bennett Oliver
2021-10-12 23:27:01 +0000 UTCAgreed. Also, it's earned unlike most rom-com happy endings. It was properly built up even though it differs from the book.
Wolfman Brandon
2021-10-12 23:16:30 +0000 UTCRight on! La La Land is cinematic perfection!
Wolfman Brandon
2021-10-12 23:13:03 +0000 UTCVon Trier's Melancholia, all the way. Edit: Oh, and A Boy and his Dog! That twist is just amazing. May not work with all crowds, though. I need to rewatch that one, been way too long.
Kristian Vessman
2021-10-12 22:43:30 +0000 UTCYou're gonna hate this, but Breakfast at Tiffany's. It's cheesy, but I love the swelling of Moon River as Holly and Paul embrace and kiss in the rain. It just makes me feel good every time I rewatch that scene. I haven't read the novella, but I'm aware that in it Holly doesn't find the cat. I like the optimism of Holly finding it in the film and thus, symbolically, finding her identity. I can get why it might not work in a dark character study, but as a rom-com, feel-good ending, I find it wonderful.
Jay Yay
2021-10-12 21:23:56 +0000 UTCTerminator 2 still has one of the best and most tear-jerking endings I've ever seen! Cameron is very underrated as a storyteller and really developing characters. What he has done so masterfully, for a film about robots fighting each other, his themes about family and the fear of the apocalypse, and how he developed a robot character was all defined so well in that ending when Arnold's character hugs John, learns the value pf humanity, and eventually lowers himself into the molten lava, always manages to bring tears to my eyes.
Tony Moro
2021-10-12 21:20:52 +0000 UTCInglourious Basterds was the last movie I can think of where its ending really astounded me. For one, it's a World War II film and in the back of your mind is "well, this isn't what happened in World War II so let's see how this falls apart" and when you discover the movie doesn't really care about what actually happened — that's a fantastic moment in cinematic history. I saw that movie at midnight at the theater erupted at that reveal. Additionally, I was very impressed the movie managed to have a satisfying ending that quenched the audience's desire for justice for Nazis... but also acknowledging the likability of the central villain. Separate answer: both of Garland's movies have endings I did not expect. Not because they were "twists" or anything, but because the movies are very dedicated to the cerebral ideas and not our expectations of how stories should end. Ex Machina very much about the distinction between human and artificial intelligence. Annihilation about the self-destructive disposition of humanity and the inescapable impact of trauma — granted, expressed through a pretty wild metaphor based in science fiction.
Arthur Augustyn
2021-10-12 21:07:32 +0000 UTCThis is a great answer. La La Land also has a great ending. Chazelle knows how to stick a landing.
Arthur Augustyn
2021-10-12 20:57:48 +0000 UTCBrazil The ending on its own chills me to the core. The fakeout, how small Sam is in the frame of this cavernous backdrop. How that mirrors the oppressiveness of meritocracy. the bittersweetness of it. But it’s the studio forcing Gilliam’a hand to have a happy ending for the u.s. theatrical release to me that really adds another layer to it.
jared Clarke
2021-10-12 20:56:50 +0000 UTCAnother Chazelle ending I love is the final "what could have been" montages at the end of La La Land. But thats also my favorite movie so it felt like cheating to say that.
Tyler Shobe
2021-10-12 20:52:20 +0000 UTCAs clichéd of an answer as it is, I have to go with Whiplash. That entire performance at the end of the movie is absolutely exhilarating and to end it beat perfect at the end of that heart thumping sequence, you need the credits just to catch your breath. It's deeply gratifying and ends quite literally on the perfect note.
Tyler Shobe
2021-10-12 20:50:22 +0000 UTC
