Lost Highway, yes. It doesn’t have an ending. It loops.
“Sliver” wins, hands down.
Voyeur runs a building, there’s a murderer we’re not quite sure is him, Sharon finds out about his CCTV fetish, points a remote control to the camera (his perspective) and says “Get a life”. Roll credits.
I was never more embarrassed for a director. The soundtrack was wicked, though.
Later on, Joe Esterhas the screenwriter explained that the original ending was she finds out the voyeur is the killer but she doesn’t care, she loves him anyway. Sharon Stone apparently added the “Get a life” line.
This is a really devastating argument. Because as we all know, there no physical way for footage shot later to be inserted at an earlier point in the film. Someday, perhaps, the technology might exist to allow us to shoot a film out of order, and then assemble it so that scenes shot *late *in the production might show up *early *in the film. Of course, most people dismiss that as a pipe dream, but with sufficient technological progress, who knows what we might achieve?
Not seem many films, have you?
The Tourist with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie - actually quite a beautiful film, and up to the ending, entertaining enough.
But seriously, what a stupid, bogus, bullshit, unbelievable ending!
The audience at the screening I was at groaned out loud at how lame it was - some even laughing at the ridiculousness.
When I heard that this was a re-make of a French film, and that the reviewers of the original French film all hated that dumbass ending, I thought, “And they decided to re-make this film and keep the same exact ending people loathed the first time around?!”
Yeah, but JK Simmons’ scene at the end almost made it all worthwhile.
JK Simmons is awesome.
In a thread like this, I think a big part of the criteria depends on whether the movie is more or less realistic or not, which is why a movie like Holy Grail should get a pass, (clearly Monty Python wasn’t going for an accurate historical drama) when films like The Pelican Brief (featuring one of the most eye-rolling endings I can ever remember) should not.
I recently saw a thriller called The Lookout, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt that was actually quite good, right all the way up until the laughably, insultingly ridiculous ending had me looking for something to throw thru the TV screen.
JGL played a rich kid who suffered a traumatic brain injury due to a car accident. He gets a job as a janitor in a small town bank, but he is bitter that he can’t rise above his menial position. He is befriended by a group of criminals who persuade him to help them rob his bank, which he reluctantly agrees to participate in. Of course the robbery goes bad, several people are killed (including a cop) but apparently when all is said and done, he is let off scot free to continue his life, instead of being locked up for the rest of his life on accessory to murder charges…:rolleyes:
I have obviously glossed over a ton of stuff, but overall it was a pretty tight little movie up until the VERY end, at which point it made me feel like I had been roundly told to “Fuck Off, Sucker!” by the entire cast & crew.
Requiem For A Dream was a dark and depressing drama until the last 10 minutes or so when it went so over the top with its punishment of the main characters that it morphed into a Ren & Stimpy cartoon.
Regarding Monty Python and the Holy Grail: I saw the movie in the theatre when it first came out, along with a bunch of other rabid Monty Python fans. The ending was pretty much what we expected and completely fit with the kind of endings to their skits on the TV series. We all loved it.
I can see that if you didn’t grow up watching the series, and weren’t used to their particular form of editing, the ending might have been annoying.
But it made sense in a Monte Python kind of way. And back then I didn’t hear anyone complain about the movie ending. It was Monty Python after all!
Should I drop in the Planet of the Apes remake here?
Lost in Translation. Of course it had a crappy beginning and middle as well.
Monty Python couldn’t have ended any other way. What, did you want a huge battle scene and then they actually find the Holy Grail? The Holy Grail doesn’t exist! It never existed. The quest to find something that doesn’t exist is going to be unfulfilled. (unless you’re Indiana Jones and even he didn’t get to keep it.)
The recent alien invasion movie Skyline. I don’t have to spoiler anything because it has no ending. The movie just stops. And yes, I am still bitter about that $8.50 I spent on that turd.
How about that low-budget 1965 Bad Science Fiction Film Monster a Go-Go – a film so bad that even Herschell Gordon Lewis ( Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs) didn’t want his name on it.
After the Authorities spend the entire movie tracking down the astronaur-turned-monster, they suddenly turn a corner and the Narrator says…
Yeah. Right. You couldn’t figure out how to end it, so we fall back on the Ambiguous Non-Ending.
This was an MST3K favorite.
The ending wasn’t funny the second time I saw if but I loved it the first time.
I prefer the novella’s end and found this re-edited ending for the movie that matches it. When I think about the film, this is the ending I play in my mind.
Hottius Maximus, I was also “left hanging” by the ending for No Country until someone explained that Tommy Lee Jones’ character is the protagonist, not Chigurh or Llewelyn, making the story about Sheriff Bell’s decision to engage in the ultra-violent contemporary world, or to retire and live in the past for the rest of his days. In that light, his dream story about his father makes an appropriate ending (as does his narrative story at the beginning), but it sure wasn’t what I was expecting based on the cat and mouse between Moss and Chigurh.
Nobody’s going to mention 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Yeah WTF was THAT?
I was going to add “Raising Arizona.”
They REMADE a perfect flick? :smack:
Zabriskie Point. The less said about this film, the better.
To avoid a bunch of quotes, my responses are to the above:
Hollow Man: Shue was annoying in that because she exercised the stupid horror movie trope “let’s whack the bad guy once and then run away without checking his breathing.”
Burn After Reading was such a great inspiration to me that I know nothing about the plot other then that one scene. And I think I remember the main characters being colossally stupid.
Requiem for a Dream: if you’re planning on watching this movie, this link summarizes everything you need to know about the plot (absolutely no spoilers in video).
Now:
Scream 4. The very beginning part was decently funny, with the cameos and such. But the ending, even knowing that the other films weren’t terribly believable:
Old main character Neve Campbell comes into town. She meets up with old characters, as well as Emma Roberts, her teenage cousin or something. It turns out that she is the killer with her secret boyfriend. She is ruthless enough to kill him because she’s been using him. The motivation that makes two teenagers who seemed well adjusted before mass murder? They wanted to be famous as the only survivors. Serial killers out of the woodwork. Cabot Cove, ME, you have a rival.
Disagree about **Magnolia **-- very cathartic. I may or may not have giggled in joy during the sequence.
Also disagree on Blazing Saddles – very fun, clever!
I do agree about Holy Grail. I’ve heard plenty of different explanation for the ending, including that they ran out of money, that it was always thus in the script, and that the idea to end it the way they did was accepted (for the original script) because they didn’t have enough money to film a proper battle scene (i.e., both are true).
In any event, it leaves me cold. At best I might smile to myself and think, “Heh, that’s cute.”