The Marriage of Maria Braun looks at a woman (Hana Schygulla is ridiculously hot here) making the transition from the ravages of war to a successful corporate career. At the end, she’s killed off when tries to light a cigarette on a gas stove element that was accidentally left on. (hm - wouldn’t she have smelled some quite obvious gas leak, first?) Not to mention bringing an entirely arbitrary, random end to the film. I guess they were trying to convey that she was so driven to distraction from her ceaseless career climbing that a resolution like this (or, say, distractedly walking into the path of an oncoming bus) would have been the natural course of events, but to me it seemed just a little too convenient.
Whenever I see the film title Time Bandits I immediately think of the MST3K film Time Chasers which is a time travel movie with a really dumb ending.
If you haven’t seen it, basically a college physics professor somehow invents time travel using his cessna prop plane and a Commodore 64 computer. However in order to perfect it he needs additional funds for research and development so he goes to a patent buying corporation for funding (which he saw in a late night TV ad). They send a low-level corporate executive to check it out while the professor also invites his childhood friend who’s now a reporter (and later love interest). After the executive reports back to his CEO who personally takes a test ride in the time machine the CEO agrees to fully fund the professor’s R&D. Of course it turns out both the CEO and the Company are cartoonishly evil and wind up literally destroying the future for short-term profits, to the point the CEO orders his goons to immediately shoot the professor on sight the moment the professor shoots some hesitance at them messing with the future on a large scale. One thing to note is the low-level executive continues to pop-up throughout the movie and is only hesitantly evil, he still considers the professor a friend and every time he’s ordered to arrest/shoot the professor he refuses to do it.
So the ending is the standard “Main character goes back in time to warn his past self about the time travel” which happens and the professor manages to destroy his time machine to prevent the future from being destroyed. However in an act of pure selfishness the professor doesn’t destroy his time machine until after the first time travel trip with the executive and the reporter, simply so he can still impress the reporter and get her as his love interest in this timeline. So when the low-level executive returns with his CEO in tow only to find out there’s no longer a time machine, the CEO fires the executive on the spot for wasting his time. There’s no comeuppance for the actual evil CEO, just the reluctant lackey gets fired. So the main character literally ruins a random mans life just so he can fuck his childhood friend.
You’re my kind of people.
Which one?
Contact. The novel is about a woman’s search for evidence of God’s existence (and finds it), the movie ends with her saying “take me on faith”. A complete and total reversal of the point of the novel.
I’m going to be a sadistic bastard and say ‘guess’.
hi-jack - a long-running peeve I had with “Sunshine…” turned out to be completely unfounded, lol way off the mark.
I only now discovered that - three lines later - it’s “to give you my dawn surprise”.
I always thought it was “to give you my dull surprise” and I’d always be like - WTF is Eric going off about this dull surprise shit? How can a surprise be dull? Wouldn’t that be defeating the purpose of a surprise if it was dull? I figured it was just some hippy euphemism for a sleepy morning boner.
Or something.
I’m glad this has been cleared up - I’m ok with whatever a dawn surprise could be - I’ll wager it involves a tiny tab of paper or sugarcube. Or maybe Eric’s standing at the foot of the bed - lording over Patty - fanning out his purple tie-dyed robe thingy into a flying squirrel formation, and saying something, like, really deep, that might have something to do with tripping the light fantastic, but in their minds.
Ending of hi-jack. (couldn’t find mis-heard lyrics thread)
The ending of the movie version of The Mist was too close to a sympathetic view of the Family Annihilator. I much preferred the ambiguity or lack of resolution of the story.
Just a nitpick, because i love the book and the movie, and he’s one of my favorite characters:
His name is Ed Tom, not Jim Ed.
Thanks.
I never read the book and only saw the movie once, years ago.
forgot about this movie. The entire third act of the film annoyed me. I have not read the book, as a fan of Carl Sagan I should probably pick it up.
I quite liked the movie “Signs” the first time I watched it, as I was watching it. I thought it was going somewhere very interesting, and I couldn’t tell what it was.
Then I got to what it was, and was like, what? Isn’t Earth like 73% covered in water? Which would be clearly visible from space, not to mention spectroscopic analysis of Earth possible even from interstellar distances? THIS MAKES NO SENSE!
They knew that. They were more like cattle rustlers. They didn’t come to invade, they came for food.
They feast upon sacks of mostly water? Water that they are allergic too? Nope, it’s stupid. A stupid stupid ending to what, as has been mentioned above, was almost an interesting thriller.
This one took me right out of it. That necklace could have bankrolled her daughter’s education, and her grand kid’s education, great grand kids… not to mention food and housing for all. She shoulda chucked herself overboard and left the rocks.
Humans will drown in water, pretty easily in fact… Humans also routinely spend leisure time IN WATER.
I’ve never understood that as a problem with the movie.
Did you not see the movie? The water reacts like acid on the aliens’ skin, making it scream in agony. Humans are not affected by water in that manner which is why they can spend leisure time in water.
How many times a day are you sprayed with water against your will?
More than you probably realize. What with rain, (well, maybe not here in Socal) persperation, eating food that contains it. Not to mention my job sometimes gets me splashed when dealing with old leaky CRAC (Computer Room Air Conditioner) units and condesation towers. None of these times to I recoil in pain as water eats away at me. This seems like an ultra-important power of water that the aliens *should *be aware of.
Rigged question. The Dope has very few Professional Nosey Cats.
What, you never had beef jerky?
When it rains.