[QUOTE=spoke-]
Requiem for a Dream (Jennifer Connelly seems to be drawn to downbeat scripts.)
[/QUOTE]
Are you supposed to sympathize with the characters in this flick? It seemed like an incredibly cartoonish ‘brain on drugs’ commercial and all the characters are horrible horrible drug addicts who get their eggs fried.
Once upon a time in america
[QUOTE=Knorf]
I nominate The Sand Pebbles.
[/QUOTE]
I second that, Sir. What the hell happened?
The Wild Bunch
[QUOTE=bigbabysweets2000]
Pi.
Self inflicted trepanation does not equal happy ending.
[/QUOTE]
Not sure- he was happier. The ending IS bittersweet.
Oh! I almost forgot! The one movie that I completely thought I hallucinated all the craziness of–and this is after I saw Requiem for a Dream…
All About Lily Chou-Chou
I don’t think I’ll ever watch it again, but man, it was intense.
[QUOTE=I’m Ron Burgundy?]
Are you supposed to sympathize with the characters in this flick? It seemed like an incredibly cartoonish ‘brain on drugs’ commercial and all the characters are horrible horrible drug addicts who get their eggs fried.
[/QUOTE]
Well, the mother is absolutely supposed to be sympathetic. She loves her son (even though he steals from her), the high point of her life is the chance of “being on television”, and she essentially stumbles into drug addiction by accident (and at the instruction of her quack doctor). Hard not to feel sorry for her. In fact, on the director’s commentary he mentions that the cameraman started crying during the mother’s monologue on aging.
As for the others - well, they’re clearly flawed and deeply selfish people, but there are signs that they could have been better than they are. Like the flashback of Marlon Wayan’s character to life with his mother.
[QUOTE=Engineer Dude]
Dr. Strangelove
[/QUOTE]
Ah, come on. They’re going to end up living in mineshafts where the female to male ratio is 10:1, “necessitating the abandonemnt of the so-called monogomous lifestyle,” they’ll have nuclear reactors to provide power and sunlight to grow crops, and animals that can be “bred and slaughtered”; what could be better? Just don’t let those Ruskies see The Big Board.
Stranger
A pair of bleak endings from Spain:
Darkness
The Uninvited Guest (El Habitante Incierto) I’ll warn you though, this is the Spanish equivalent of a David Lynch movie.
Well not much of a happy ending in The Last American Virgin IIRC.
[QUOTE=Engineer Dude]
Dr. Strangelove
[/QUOTE]
And its dramatic cousin, Fail-Safe.
In the second Invasion of the Body Snatchers, everyone gets snatched.
Living to Die
Burnt by the Sun
1984
Betty Blue
Breaking the Waves. In this unrelentingly anti-religious film, I don’t buy the miracle at the end.
In the Blob, the original one, the blob is put in a crate and dropped off in the artic because cold stops it. Then it closes with THE END? Well, now that we have global warming I see a sequel coming. Considering how fat everyone is nowadays, that blob is gonna get huge.
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan]
House of Sand and Fog. Fantastic movie. I’ll never watch it again.
[/QUOTE]
I came to mention this movie, as well as Leaving Las Vegas and Reservoir Dogs.
[QUOTE=cookeze]
In the second Invasion of the Body Snatchers, everyone gets snatched.
[/QUOTE]
Heck, at the end of the first one, we see pods being sent all around the country. Yes, Our Hero manages to get the warning out, but it seems doubtful that an effective response can be mounted in time. Those are a LOT of pods, even though one truck crashed. And all it takes is one night to get a whole lot of pod-people, some of whom will be in positions to stymie containment measures.
You fools, you’re in danger!
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Norma Desmond may have gotten her closeup but I don’t think butler/director/former ex-husband is going to be able to keep her isolated from reality in prison.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think prison was a forgone conclusion. She could’ve just as well ended up being committed to an insane asylum where she could continue to shelter herself from reality.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
John Frankenheimer’s better films (The Manchurian Candidate, Seconds, Seven Days In May, Ronin) all end on sour notes of paranoia and deceit, even when the heros nominally succeed.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=boytyperanma]
Arlington road
I love movies where the bad guys win.
[/QUOTE]
Which reminds me, no one’s brought up The Parallax View yet.
A few more:
–Bonnie and Clyde (at least in the context of the movie)
–Easy Rider
–The Last Picture Show
–Vanishing Point
–Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
–They Shoot Horses Don’t They?
–McCabe and Mrs. Miller
–Mean Streets
[QUOTE=John DiFool]
One thing which bugged me: you see several law enforcement types approaching the cabin where you’ve just spent the entire previous night fighting off the living dead. Instead of jumping up and down and shouting, “Oh thank God you’re here-you won’t believe what happened to me!”, he just aimlessly wanders around inside the house, where one of the cops mistakes him for a zombie and pops him. Could never figure that one out.
[/QUOTE]
He’s just had a really, really bad night. Might be in a bit of shock.
[QUOTE=Mr. Excellent]
He’s just had a really, really bad night. Might be in a bit of shock.
[/QUOTE]
Just a late application of the “Black Guy Always Dies” rule in horror and Science Fiction movies.
Se7en
Angel Heart. Private detective Harry Angel is hired by a mysterious stranger to find a man who vanished during WW2. Along the way, virtually everyone Angel seeks out for clues dies in a variety of bizzare accidents/ suicides. Angel finally discovers that:The man he’s searching for, Johnny Favorite, was a Satan worshiper, who had hit upon a scheme to escape having to forfeit his soul. By slaying an innocent in a black magic ritual, he could assume that person’s identity not only in this world but the next. That innocent was the real Harry Angel, and the detective is really an amnesiatic Johnny Favorite. The mysterious stranger, “Louis Cypher” is really the Devil himself, who set Angel/Favorite on the trail of his own past to break through his amnesia. The improbable deaths will be blamed on Angel/Favorite trying to eliminate witnesses, he’ll go to the electric chair, and Satan will claim his soul at last.The only way the ending can be considered “happy” is that a bunch of not very nice people will go to the damnation they deserve.
[QUOTE=Lumpy]
Angel Heart. Private detective Harry Angel is hired by a mysterious stranger to find a man who vanished during WW2. Along the way, virtually everyone Angel seeks out for clues dies in a variety of bizzare accidents/ suicides. Angel finally discovers that:The man he’s searching for, Johnny Favorite, was a Satan worshiper, who had hit upon a scheme to escape having to forfeit his soul. By slaying an innocent in a black magic ritual, he could assume that person’s identity not only in this world but the next. That innocent was the real Harry Angel, and the detective is really an amnesiatic Johnny Favorite. The mysterious stranger, “Louis Cypher” is really the Devil himself, who set Angel/Favorite on the trail of his own past to break through his amnesia. The improbable deaths will be blamed on Angel/Favorite trying to eliminate witnesses, he’ll go to the electric chair, and Satan will claim his soul at last.The only way the ending can be considered “happy” is that a bunch of not very nice people will go to the damnation they deserve.
[/QUOTE]
I know this is taking the thread OT but there’s one thing about that movie I was not clear about. Were the souls of Angel and Favorite sharing the same body? Was it similar to some type of dual-personality “Jekyll & Hyde” arrangement where after Angel would question a witness, Favorite’s soul would resurface, take control of his body, and murder the witness?