No The Shining??? The sudden cut to “Frozen Jack” was startling enough. But then the long pan in to the picture of the July 4th Ball, 1921, our hero in the middle. Shoulda been there, 38th-ish maybe, but shoulda been there.
What the fudge? No love for Roman Holiday ?
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan isn’t there? It easily displaces at least half this list.
I’d have liked to see David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ on the list
The ending is a brutal twist on the ‘it was all a dream’ cliche; the characters ‘wake up’ to reality, only to find that they not yet ‘awake’, so they ‘wake up’ again, and again, and so on, until you’re never quite sure what is real
North by Northwest has the best ending ever. For those that haven’t seen it, (go and buy it know), it’s an spy movie.
Hitchcock delivers the perfect ending becuase instead of using that horrible line: “Sixth months later” he wraps up everything in 20 second or less.
Just perfect
Yeah, agreed, no coincidence. I had it that Willis had tried and failed, but he brought those from the future one step closer to their goal and that the woman was from the future to try another way of stopping him. His flashback from childhood was a co-incidence though.
I’ve seen other reviews though that make out that Willis was simply there to show us where the eco-terrorist was, which would make the “insurance” remark slightly redundant.
Um, sorry - but I still don’t get the finish of ‘12 monkeys’. :o
Who is the David Morse character?
Who spread the plague and how does the ending suggest it can be stopped?
Why does ‘insurance’ matter?
What about the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark?
From what I have gleaned…
[spoiler]A plague kills of most humans and leaves the planet uninhabitable.
Scientists in the future send prisoners to collect samples of the plague from the infected future or send them back throughout time to see if they can track down those responsible. The prisoners are treated to time off their sentence if they comply.
Willis goes back in time to track down the army of the 12 monkeys, suspected of spreading the disease.
When they are found to be pranksters, Willis is put onto the trail of the real nutcase scientist behind it all. Helped by other time travellers and a dead letter box voicemail to the future, he tracks him to an airport.
Willis is killed trying to kill the scientist as he boards a plane. As he falls, a child watches and we see Willis fall and die through his eyes. The scene that unfolds, a man falling after being shot is a recurring dream for Willis’ character and we realise that the dream is really a flashback from his childhood, he recalls seeing his future self being shot dead.
Meanwhile, the scientist has seated himself on board the plane. Just as we think he’s getting away, we see someone from the future has seated themselves beside them. They remark that they are in insurance and shake hands with him. The idea perhaps is that she either kills him before he can do any damage or shakes hands with him to obtain a sample of the virus and bring it back to the future.[/spoiler]
I took the ending as “Harry figures his career is washed up by hunting the scumbag down, so he tosses his badge”.
I don’t think they were thinking sequel back then.
But to justify sequels, it’s easy to conclude that the SFPD secretly liked his methods and didn’t call for his badge after all.
Dr Peters, who works in the laboratory that designs/works with dangerous viruses (virii?) and such.
We are led to believe early in the film that The Army of the Twelve Monkeys, led by Brad Pitt’s character (can’t remember the name), is responsible for releasing the plague/virus, Cole (Willis) finds out that in fact they are just kids who release all the animals from the local zoo as a prank/animal rights stunt. He tries to inform the future of this.
Cole then discovers that Dr Peters is actually the baddy. IIRC, early on there is a scene where future-Cole is reciting where the virus had broken out and timescales. Later (well, later in the film, but actually in the past) Dr Peters is going through passport control and the airport check-in person makes a reference to the destinations on his itinery (and i think also to the short times spend in each place) which correlates.
The ending has Dr Peters taking his seat on the plane next to a woman we have previously seen giving Cole instructions in the future. As mentioned above, this is too much of coincidence to be her-from-the-past and I took it to mean that they had received Cole’s message and had now identified the corerct person responsible.
I thought it was just a small joke, she was “ensuring” that the end of the world would not happen.
regards,
mtk_
[continuation of Twelve Monkeys hijack]The past cannot be changed. That’s the whole point of the film: “time travel” as understanding the past. The woman sitting next to the disease-spreader can’t stop him - apart from anything else, he released the contagion at the checkpoint - but she can get information, maybe even an uncontaminated sample.
The ending to Life of Brian is shocking and deep.
Especially the wonderfully phallic train-going-into-the-tunnel shot. 
To elaborate, the Future People’s goal in 12 Monkeys was not to stop the plague from happening, but instead to retake the surface by developing a vaccine to the deadly virus. A pure sample was needed to do this. Thus, the time-travelling.
Ah, i see! I didn’t pick up on that when i first watched it, thought it was a ‘stop the bad thing from ever having happened’ scenario.
Cheers
Another vote for Sixth Sense.
And two others:
Ghost. Sam walks off into the light after the touching goodbye scene with Molly and Oda Mae.
Starman. As he is beamed up, the camera is focused down on the incredibly beautiful Karen Allen and the look of love and sorrow on her face just yanks at your heartstrings.
Gallipoli by far
The personal story and Mel Gibson just missing, the bigger story of the British and the Australians, :: weep ::
**Cinema Paradiso ** with all the kisses
On the Waterfront would be one I’d consider adding, but that’s my favorite movie, start, middle and end, so I’m biased.
Fight Club is way too high. Deserves to be on the list, but #2? Ahead of Casablanca and Chinatown?
I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Wait Until Dark and Real Genius. Two more dissimilar movies you’ll have a hard time finding, but both with excellent endings.
Thank you! 
But if the past cannot be changed, are the future people just hoping to disinfect the planet from their time onwards (i.e. most of the world’s population is still going to die?).