Seemed okay to me. Not wonderful, but I don’t think wonderful was an option. The set-up is amusing, but either the Gardener continues to elevate forever by amazing coincidences or else the unbelieveable coincidences end and everyone smacks their forehead.
Instead the film ended with a slow fade. It was a decent slow fade --the Gardener does one last naively logically thing and the image is sorta almost iconic.
It did resolve itself I guess, just seemed to have kind of ended. I’ll spoiler the Chekhov’s Gun part though.
The abortionist leaves his identification card at the front desk. When the woman leaves the front desk clerk tells her he left the card. When she comes back she gets told yet again. Since the ID card was so important at the time I would have thought something would have come from it, but it just got dropped.
IMHO, the ending proved that Gardener was an elevated being - that we were just as mistaken about him as the people around him, only backwards. I don’t think the film could have made that clearer without sledgehammers.
And I thought we were seeing him through their eyes–he’d taken on otherworldly overtones and abilities as they saw him–so obviously multiple interpretations are possible–
Well, this one was WTF to me because it’s one of the few movies where I was wrong about the ending. But the ending of Memento I had to rewind to make sure I actually saw it right.
One of the two or three greatest closing lines in cinema, IMVHO.
There’s a mumbled line in the closing conversational dialogue, as Gardner walks away - is it “Being is a state of mind”? That’s another viewpoint.
I bought the DVD and it sat on the shelf because I had heard a bit about it and thought for sure that it was going to be some hokey trick ending. I just didn’t have time to watch it for awhile.
I was pleasantly surprised at the film as a whole. Well done and can still be watched again even if you know how it turns out.
American Psycho. Did he or didn’t he? Or is he … dum-dum-dum PSYCHO?
Shutter Island.
A good movie deliberately left open on purpose, but so convincing both ways I watched it a couple more times and ended up feeling jerked around either way. Still a good movie.
Lawn Dogs
On the verge of surreal, and very good, at the end I still wanted to know what happened to everyone. I watch this one off and on over again, because it’s complex and it’s nice to examine separate little angles and themes and of course it’s visually stunning.
I forgot about this one: Basic Instinct. The final shot essentially undoes the entire film.
Second or third only to Caddyshack.
That ending reminded me a lot of the ending to The Nasty Girl, a German movie released about a year earlier.
I felt this way about Gravity. Stellar reviews; it was supposed to be amazing. I kept waiting and waiting for it to get interesting… and then it was over. WTF. Everyone in the whole theater was pissed off, not just me. There were rumblings of “that’s it?” throughout the room. I do get the ending, but on-screen it was just so obvious and unsatisfying.
I really thought the movie made it painfully obvious that he didn’t do it. But I might be alone in that.
I did too, Justin, but in reading about it online, I found that apparently the filmmakers have stated explicitly that all murders depicted on screen did happen. 
BULL. SHIT.
I guess Ridley Scott isn’t the only director who doesn’t understand his own movie.
*Gravity *is a movie unusual in that it was not carefully constructed to have one element from each column, so as to please the widest possible demographic - “…and a bit with a dog.” Since most movies are bent that way in between concept and screen - explosions, kids, love stories, surprise twists and stock characters shoehorned in - the rare one that doesn’t leaves some part of modern audiences feeling angry and cheated. The even rarer ones that hit huge box office and glowing reviews, even more so. I think we’ve grown a sense of entitlement - “If it’s a hugely popular movie it MUST have the elements to appeal to me.”
Me? I call it to sweep the majors - Best Picture, Director, Actress, Cinematography, Visual Effects.
This is a particularly annoying and objectionable statement. “Unusual in that it was not carefully constructed to have [all the crowd pleasing elements]” While not denying that there certainly are many movies designed to push all the buttons, movies that don’t are by no means rare or unusual. Your implied suggestion that people don’t like or understand the film because it’s not a pandering crowd-pleaser is absurd and insulting.
FWIW, I’ve heard the film is (except for scientific errors) excellent. I haven’t seen it yet.