What is up with movie endings?

Errr . . . JFTR, Rocky lost his first fight with Apollo Creed.

I just finished watching “The Nineth Gate” with Johnny Depp. What a freekin’ joke. That has to be the most disjointed, claptrap I’ve seen…ever.

The director and cast seems to have lost interest 3/4’s of the way throughthe flick…I want my hour and a half back.

One word: Brazil

http://us.imdb.com/Trivia?0088846

pcubed, of course you mean Brazil as an example of a great ending?

Sort of.

Spoiler’s Ahead!

It all depends on which version you watch.

The theatrical release and the home video version had the great ending, the one in which the rescue sequence is a dream and the hero dies (for those of you who haven’t seen Brazil, 1st - shame on you, 2nd - the hero dying is a good thing).

This almost didn’t happen as the studio fought to change the ending and Terry Gilliam took out a full page ad in the paper to ask the studio why they were messing with his film which I think had already won the Palm D’Or at Cannes.

However when it went to television syndication, Sid Sheinberg at Universal had the ending changed to make it look like the rescue was real and everybody lives happily ever after (basically just deleting the one scene of the dead hero). That sucked. I happened to watch that version and felt very dirty afterward.

Have any of you ever seen “Fallen” before? It’s about a demon, Azazel, that travels from person to person by touch.

The movie starts with a voice narrating, “Did I ever tell you about the time I almost died?” Through the whole movie you think that the voice telling the story belongs to the hero, a cop played by Denzel Washington. He is trying to track down the demon and kill him. He chases Azazel to a remote mountain cabin, and shoots the demon’s host body, mortally wounding it. (If the body Azazel is possessing dies, and there is no one else around to be possessed, then he dies.) Denzel then drinks poison and throws his car keys off into the woods. The Azazel’s body dies, and he possesses Denzel’s. He races to find the keys, but the poison is killing him too fast. Just before he dies, a cat walks out from under the cabin, providing a body for him. The narrator comes back on, and you realize that it has been the voice of Azazel all along. He says, “Remember, I was telling you about the time I almost died.” As the credits begin to roll you hear the Rolling Stones playing “Sympathy for the Devil”.

I loved this movie.