“Lucky Lady” with Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman and Liza Minelli. It was a good solid drama with moments of comedy up to the end and then the good guys had to win and win in a humorous fashion.
It was as if a very good movie became a very medicore movie with the flip of a switch.
Oh yeah, and I disagree with Albert Rose - Chinatown would have been ruined if the father/grandfather character would have lost. The essense of the movie was that the little guy, Jake as played by Nicholson, never had a chance. To have a happy ending would have been like everyone being rescued on the Titanic.
“Explorers”; it was a great film (kids getting messages in their dreams allowing them to build some sort of “anti-gravity” spaceship that whisks them away to meet the aliens sending the data). Up to that point, it was entertaining, but then we learn that the aliens are just kids themselves, and the human children get sent back to Earth when the alien parents show up. It seems like the filmmakers couldn’t figure out how to end the film (or maybe the writer died before finishing) and they tacked on the last 15 minuted just to bring the story to a close.
I had the misfortune of sitting through Lost Souls last night. I’m not a big fan of sleeper movies to begin with, but this one had me reaching for the coffee pot.
At the end, things start picking up, secrets are revealed and decisions are made. Now despite the fact that his transformation was supposed to be at the exact moment of his birth and they were using the clock in his car to go by (sigh), she doesn’t shoot him in time and he transforms. Uh-oh, she’s too late, we’re all doomed. Nope, she pulls the trigger and kills the devil.
What’s all the hoopla about if he could have been killed like any mortal man to begin with?
I may be in the minority, but I liked the ending to American Beauty but perhaps I’m biased, I love Kevin Spacey. I also enjoyed the ending to The Holy Grail. They alluded to the fact that they were all just a bunch of loonies running around in modern times when that knight hacked the historians head off somewhere about the middle of the movie.
Devil’s Advocate. The director couldn’t decide how he wanted the movie to end, so he gave it three endings and ran them sequentially. First, the hero dies, denying “Dad” the devil’s spawn grandson he wanted. Oops, no he didn’t. It was all a daydream. He never left the courthouse restroom. Al Pacino isn’t really the devil. Oops, again. If he isn’t the devil, what’s he doing in the courthouse hallway leering at our hero?
Uh, The Pledge ends perfectly, says me. The hero has screwed up, big time, and to let him redeem himself with a big heroic shoot-out would have made it into a piece of shlock.
On 'tother hand American Beauty has a great ending because they find a reasonable way for the hero to redeem himself.
(Reasonable depends on whether you believe in the virgin announcement - I did).
Other disappointments?
Alien 3.
Monkey Business (Marx B)
And many others I’ll think of as soon as I send this.
By the way, you might beinteresed in a scinece fiction novel called REMAKE by Connie Willis. It takes place in a Hollywood in which computer manipulation has been so perfected that they don’t make movies anymore - just remake them. Put Gary Cooper in THE SEARCHERS instead of John Wayne, etc.
Well, one of the tourist joints on Hollywood Boulevard is called Happy Endings. You tell them how you want a movie to end and they refilm it for you. Most of the tourists want Rick to go off with Ilsa…
Three come to mind, and they all seem to share the same theme:
Thelma & Louise: Enjoy your female solidarity, ladies, right up to the moment you go over the cliff. Mashed into pureed spinach. There’s a happy ending for you.
Baby Boom: In which Diane Keaton, a go-go 80s business shark, gets stabbed in the back and fired, acquires a baby through adoption, moves to a small New England town and rebuilds her life and a small business with the help of the local women. So far, so good. In the end, the big corporation that screwed her over comes to her and offers to buy her out, and SHE DOES IT. You know what will happen after the film ends: corporation closes New England shop, fires the women and moves the operation to Mexico, while Keaton, who had supposedly learned that the 24/7 business life was not for her, not when she has an adorable kid to raise, goes back into business, and presumably dumps the kid onto daycare.
Woman of the Year: Which it wasn’t the ending of this Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn flick that got to me, but the notion that an independent, sexy, feisty woman had to be utterly humiliated before she gets her happy ending. Pretty shocking to see it spelled out so plainly, especially for a movie which gets critical raves.
**Dead Poets Society:**Blech. Guys whacks himself, and the good teacher gets blamed and leaves? Hello? Is this drama or tragedy or what? Fucking sucks. Asshole of a movie.
I had another one, but DPS is on right now, and I hate the movie with a passion.
Agree re Monty Python and the Holy Grail (“WTF? It’s OVER??”)
Bride of the Monster (or whatever Ed Wood film it was where the movie had to end with a big assed mushroom cloud explosion because the financier of the movie insisted that a statement be made about nuclear weaponry)
Star Trek V (I don’t particularly want to hear Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley sing, unless it’s Shatner singing “Tamborine Man”, so I can laugh at it)
[sub]Then again, the whole movie sucked, so the fact that it was OVER was actually a good thing[/sub]
Finally, any movie where it was revealed that the whole thing was a dream.
I’d have to add Arligton Road, the movie seemed pretty good until the end, now I’m all for the bad guy winning but in the last sequence there are just to many things left up to chance for Tim Robbins character to orchestrate it all.
I would also have to add Magnolia, I know this is also mentioned on the best movie ending thread, maybe I just didn’t get it, I know it’s a bible reference but so what. It was just stupid and didn’t resolve anything at least to me, if you think this was a good movie with a good ending can you please explain it to me?
In my humble opinion, the hysterical finger pointing following the death of Neil is perfectly realistic. The faculty wanted him gone, Neil’s father saw Keating as a seditious influence, and this tragedy gave them the opportunity they needed.
Actually, she doesn’t. She considers it, goes to their board meeting, and ends up saying “hey, if you could do this for me, why can’t I do this for me as well?” And turns down their offer. At least, that’s what I recall…
The biggest disappointment I’ve seen in a long time was that of Pay it Forward. Killing the kid off was a horrible mistake. It turned a somewhat uplifting movie into one that left a really bad taste in my mouth. I mean, instead of wanting to “pay it forward”, I left the theater thinking how awful it was that they killed off the kid.
If you count the last half of the movie as an ending that is. It was a fantastic movie, right up to the point that Anthony Michael Hall walked in. (Of course that last sentence probably applies to any movie AMH is in).
If TV movies count: Lonesome Dove
Yes, I know. It’s faithful to the book, but that doesn’t make it okay. We spend several hours getting to know these folks, and caring about them. Then it’s like somebody says “Oh no, we’ve only got a half-hour left, quick let’s wrap this up. Okay, you die, you die, and you die.”
At what point did it indicate that it was all a daydream? And when did the movie say that Al Pacino wasn’t the devil? I think you watched a different movie.
I might be the only person who thinks this, but I’ll say Easy Rider. For a movie that was supposed to “speak to a generation”, I had no idea what it was saying.
And Magnolia’s ending where the different stories don’t get tied together really angered me. But that may have just been my high expectations.
