Best: I'll go with... Shawshank and Sixth Sense. I'll throw a nod out to Empire Strikes Back though I can't even remember the first time I saw it I was so young. And you know, Il'll give an honorable mention to Finding Forrester, the very final sequence before and during the credits. It packed a nice little emotional touch to cap the movie, very simplistic and nothing truly special, but I remember it to this day. Worst: Hellboy...bad ending to a terrible movie. The Grudge (as compared to Juon). Planet of the Apes (new)....seriously what in the hell were they thinking! And I'm gonna put Halo 2 on here as well cause the cutscenes were of cinematic quality and the game was basically an interactive movie....to go all that way for that ending was a total ripoff. And I actually liked the Contact ending...fit well with the rest of the movie I thought. Plus the part where they discover the 8hrs or so of static on the videotape..that was golden. And Unbreakable had a good ending too...fact I thought the whole movie was good if a little slow.
Best Ending: The Empire Strikes Back Look at the ending of every other Star Wars movie, and 99% of all Sci-fi and then look at the ending of Empire. Wow. I also enjoyed the ending on Fight Club, Pitch Black, and Terminator 3. Worst Ending: The Matrix Revolutions What a total piece of ****. Not only did the ending make the entire movie basically pointless, but an entire trilogy of movies.
I like the endings to AI and Contact. Braveheart was pure cheese. I hate MG. No love for the original Star Wars and the medal ceremony? When Chewie howls walking down the aisle I get chills every time!
that's what i was going to point out. didn't the very ending essentially imply that they were going to end up believing her b/c of the static that lasted exactly as long as she said she was gone. i've never seen the movie all the way through and it's a little long and boring, but the ending didn't seem so bad. same with The Grudge, what was so bad about the ending? a lackluster film to be sure, but the ending didn't particularly stand out as a reason to dislike it. having just watched it on tnt, i have to say i absolutely love the ending to Gladiator. from the time when he kills commodus until that guys says "not yet" is just perfect. him drifting off to elysium and meeting his family in that field, the heretofore bloodthirsty, wild crowd sitting in silence in awe of this great man and sitting in shame that they had just rooted so much for death and now that they had it it didn't seem so great, them carrying him off, and then that beautiful music playing with that woman (apparently lisa gerrard) singing. just perfect. the ending to seven is good, but still pisses me off. i want pitt to just pistol whip spacey to within an inch of his life then boil him alive or something instead of just shooting him. i know that's the whole point, but it still pisses me off. what about the ending to LOTR: ROTK? it had about 4 different endings and hobbits frolicking on a bed, and took forever. the movie up to that point was perfection (as was the whole series) but man i don't know if i'll ever actually put myself through that 30 minutes of it again. i remember the whole theater hesitating after the actual ending b/c we couldn't tell if we were being duped again by a fake ending.
If you've seen both Juon and the Grudge, you'd know why. Neither of them I thought were particular good as a whole..they both had their moments, but in Juon's case, especially the ending, it was a little hard to understand. But, while hard to understand, the ending was still creepy and still kept true to the rest of the story. Now The Grudge's ending was pure Hollywood crap, a total cop-out when compared to Juon. Same here. Such a great ending....always get emotional when I see it. Thought the same thing initially..I was about ready to get up 3 or 4 times thinking the movie had ended. But after watching it a few more times, I think the ending is quite perfect...because it ties everything up nice and neat.
I guess it goes without saying that great movies have great endings. While often a hokey feel good ending can take down a good movie several notches. Kubrik is one of my favorite directors and when he's on his endings really punctuate a movie. Spartacus ending / last part is just incredible, even if it is being parodied in a Pepsi commercial now. If you only know it from the Pepsi commercial rent the movie and you'll understand why that moment is so amazing. 2001 and Full Metal Jacket both have incredible endings because they defy logic. 2001 because it rips apart the carefully constructed logic of the rest of movie and moves it beyond rationality. Full Metal Jacket because it just puts the whole madness of war in perspective. For worst AI is up there because it Speilberg just ends up ruining such a potentially great movie because he can't resist schmaltz. Cameron's been another who often can't resist the schmaltz factor at the end which IMO degraded a two really good movies, The Abyss and Aliens
Just because they were in the book doesn't mean that they need to be in the movie. Books and movies are different animals, and Jackson made other changes in his adaptation in the name of brevity. Personally, I think Jackson's use of the fadeout was the biggest culprit. The slow fadeout automatically makes it seem like an ending shot. If he went with smooth cuts instead, it wouldn't have had the whole "fake ending" feeling to it. And IIRC most of those tie-up ending scenes from the book were just a paragraph or two. Making them more of a footnote, than actual scenes. The movie equivalent of this technique are where they show a picture of the person in question and write down a couple of sentances saying what happened after the events of the movie. Not saying that Jackson should have ended the movie like that, but it would have been a closer approximation of how Tolkein ended the book, in movie terms.
By far, the crappiest ending has gotta be Cast Away (if you could even call it an ending). Sucks, too, 'cause it was actually a decent movie up to the ending. I liked Unbreakable -- droxford
I thought this thread title looked familiar... http://bbs2.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=77437&highlight=best+movie+endings As far as worst goes, one that comes to mind is "Dog Day Afternoon". It was a pretty long build-up, and then one of the bank robbers gets shot so fast that you don't even know what happened.
