Completely agree about There Will Be Blood. I'd been slowly losing patience with the film, but still enjoying it, until it just got silly at the end.

The Firm, it was just a bit limp after all of the exciting chasing around.

It wasn't exactly great before this but I really hated the ending of 'Signs'. It seemed to be saying that all the bad things that had happened to Mel Gibson's ex-priest (wife dying, daughter being weird, son being asthmatic, brother being a sports has-been) were all part of God's great faith-restoring plan, enabling Mel to ...erm, throw water over an alien and hit it with a baseball bat.

J1s,

I'm with you on Signs. As I think I mentioned in the thread about "The Happening", I actually had a decent amount of patience for the movie until the two-pronged God's plan/water ending.

Another entry, though it's hardly a great movie, is "Return of the Jedi" with that ridiculous Ewok party.

You're right about My Fair Lady, Ibn. In the original play, Pygmalion, Eliza goes off and marries Freddie (and presumambly ending her days living above a florist's shop.)

I think audiences railed against this ending, preferring to think that Higgins and Eliza could be reconciled and that this would be the more romantic ending.

Shaw died before My Fair Lady was written, so Lerner and Loewe could change the ending to the preferred Higgins and Eliza ending.

You're right though, if still alive Shaw would have railed against the changed ending. In fact he wrote an essay about why the ending should not be changed:

"The rest of the story need not be shown in action, and indeed,
would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so
enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-makes and
reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of
"happy endings" to misfit all stories. Now, the history of Eliza
Doolittle, though called a romance because of the transfiguration
it records seems exceedingly improbable, is common enough. Such
transfigurations have been achieved by hundreds of resolutely
ambitious young women since Nell Gwynne set them the example by
playing queens and fascinating kings in the theatre in which she
began by selling oranges. Nevertheless, people in all directions
have assumed, for no other reason than that she became the
heroine of a romance, that she must have married the hero of it.
This is unbearable, not only because her little drama, if acted
on such a thoughtless assumption, must be spoiled, but because
the true sequel is patent to anyone with a sense of human nature
in general, and of feminine instinct in particular."

Eloquent and forceful his argument may be, but I must admit to a fondness to the musical's ending myself. 'Where devil are my slippers?' being one of the all-time great last lines of a film of any genre.

The ending of The Passion Of The Christ was ridiculous. In the novel, the Jesus character goes off to France with Mary Magdalene and has a daughter.

I'll second the psychiatrist scene in Psycho.

The ending to Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers has always rankled. Great paranoid film, until the end where the hero finds an FBI man who basically says: "This is a bit of a rum do with these alien pods, but don't worry, we'll sort it out."

According to Wikipedia, however, there is an alternate version, with the original intended ending as pessimistic as the Donald Sutherland one (now there's a great film ending!).

The Abyss. Probably the best 2-hour movie James Cameron ever made. Sadly, it lasts 2 hours twenty minutes.

'Orphanage' has a very stiff and unconvincing 'wrap up' ending, but the worst offender I've seen in recent years is that film last year about Stasi surveillance that everyone except me seemed to think was amazing. The last half hour is complete 'look, it all turned out OK' shite. If it had ended when his wife was knocked down by the bus it would have been oodles better. Wish I could remember what it was called. 'In Days Long Past' or something like that, I think.

I recall a version of Body Snatchers (think it was the 70s one) which ends with him running frantically through traffic, which is very good.

Oh yes, the last hour of 'Fight Club' is just silly and boring IMO. 'Videodrome' is another one that self destructs, fortunately only about 15 minutes from the end.

"The Lives Of Others" is your stasi film.

I think you're wrong about the ending though. I wanted to know what happened afterwards; especially as it's a true story.

Once Upon A Time In America.

I recall a version of Body Snatchers (think it was the 70s one) which ends with him running frantically through traffic, which is very good.

That'll be Phil Kaufman's remake. Kevin McCarthy arrives about ten minutes after the beginning, actually, and the whole shebang has a good, scary ending. It's a fucking brilliant remake.

Tim Burton's Planet Of The Apes. Tries for a knockout 'wow!', I-Didn't-See-That-Coming ending and, in the process, creates a huge, shoulder-shrug of a fuck-up.

robw wrote:

QUOTE:
Once Upon A Time In America.

Oh yes. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

Robert De Niro lying on his back in an opium den with a stupid grin on his face -- that's no way to end a movie.

.

QUOTE:
I recall a version of Body Snatchers (think it was the 70s one) which ends with him running frantically through traffic, which is very good.

That'll be Phil Kaufman's remake. Kevin McCarthy arrives about ten minutes after the beginning, actually, and the whole shebang has a good, scary ending. It's a fucking brilliant remake.
Please note, although no boardcode buttons are shown, they are still useable

Isn't that a bit of an in-joke? That sequence is an echo of the original.


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