Mr. Hobbes

Michael Clayton is a movie that keeps building until the climatic ending. The final scene was unexpected, and it's brilliance is missed out by almost all first-time viewers. It's hard to describe it without spoiling it, so I'll put it this way- the entire final speech by Michael was a gambit. It was based on his building suspicions. The way it all came together - the speech, the walk (perfect cinematography here), and the cab ride (character study, and deliberately left ambiguous) - a perfect ending to this unique thriller.

If I Am Legend kept the alternate ending, the movie could have been considered a modern classic. Not only does that ending carry similar themes to the book, it puts an entire different twist to the title. The key here is when the Fresh Prince discovers humanity in the 'monsters', and then the camera pans to his wall of 'subjects'. The entire point of the movie/book is the role reversal of the doctor and the monsters, and the theatrical ending just butchered the **** out of it. What a shame. So close, yet so very far.

And Scarface.

Futurama_Fanatic

the michael clayton ending is ****ing awesome

"you're so ****ed. do you even know how ****ed you are?"

george clooney should have won another oscar for that performance

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Geaux Tigers

As a Western movie connoisseur what am I missing with Unforgiven I thought the whole thing was sorta lame and kinda corny...

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"Louisiana has a heritage of great players that play their high school football within the boundaries of Louisiana."

"As soon as we know exactly who we are playing and what date we will be playing on, the schedule will become more finite."

"If we're defending, come see the trophy, it's in our trophy case. We're not defending it; it's there."

- Les Miles

E.H. Munro

You're missing the entire point of the movie. It's the anti-western, the de-romanticisation of the gunfighter. The whole genre is filled with romantic portrayals of the gunfighter, for good and ill. Or, as with The Shootist, both in the single person (though John Wayne's portrayal of a dying gunfighter at the dawn of the 20th century is a type of antecedent for Unforgiven). But in Unforgiven that's all stripped away. Gene Hackman's "good guy" (Little Bill) is a dysfunctional monster. Richard Harris' English Bob is the idyll of the romantic gunfighter, mannered, charming, and funny. He's also an arrant coward, as we see illustrated in his encounter with Little Bill, and Little Bill's telling of the story behind the story of Bob's infamous gunfight with "Two Gun Corchoran". Little Bill explains to Saul Rubinek's writer (who romanticises gunfighters for a living) that English Bob is indeed a dangerous man, because he's willing and able to commit murder, and not everyone is, but the larger point that Little Bill is unaware of is that he's no different than English Bob. He just thinks he's better because he's wearing a badge.

The humane Bill Munny is a hopeless farmer that can't shoot worth a lick when the movie opens. He is trying to be the man that his late wife wanted him to be, and won't drink or whore. Before our eyes, though, he's transformed into a monster that wreaks "justice". But it's all ugly and brutal. Because in the end that's all he and the rest of his ilk are. Little Bill only realises it as he's staring down the barrel of Bill Munny's gun, but Bill Munny understands what he is. He doesn't even bother to argue with Little Bill when Little Bill promises to see him in hell.

Jamie Woolvett's reaction to murdering someone in cold blood is a direct, and colder descendant to Ron Howard's reaction at the end of The Shootist, and in deliberately similar circumstances (Woolvett's Scofield Kid shoots the actual attacker that sets the story in motion while Opie shoots the man that murdered J.B. Books, point being that each shot someone that in some way deserved it). What we're meant to see is that Little Bill was right, what makes he, Billy Munny, and English Bob dangerous is that they have no hesitations where murder is concerned. The Scofield Kid understands what it takes to cross that line at the end, and knows that he can't be that sort of monster.

The ending of The Shootist is amplified in Unforgiven by giving us two two stand-ins, the Scofield Kid and Rubinek's writer, both view gunfighter's romantically, and each is changed by their encounter with the reality. Rubinek's character is unaware of what English Bob and Little Bill really are because he doesn't really encounter them on their native ground, he just talks to them, listens to the stories, and is charmed by them. When Rubinek first sees the reality in the saloon, he tries to contextualise Bill Munny's actions in terms of what Little Bill has told him about gunfighting. But Bill Munny's response lets him know that Little Bill was full of ****. His final view of Bill Munny is Munny riding out of town threatening to kill everyone unless they do what they're told. The writer specifically orders Bill Munny's priorities (his own safety, bury my friend properly, oh, and hey, you better leave the whores alone) to let us know that any justice that Munny has brought was purely incidental.

I suppose another antecedent for Unforgiven is Eastwood's own The Outlaw Josey Wales; in a lot of ways Unforgiven can be seen as its sequel (or as a sequel to its grandfather, John Wayne's Angel & the Badman). Both Eastwood's Josey Wales and Wayne's Quirt Evans eventually give up gunfighting for farming, though in keeping with Forrest Carter's ethos (the author of Gone to Texas, the novel that the movie is drawn from) Wales is drawn from farming into taking up arms when his family is murdered by union raiders during the Civil War. Bill Munny's background is quite similar to that of Josey Wales (Missouri rebels that keep their arms after the end of the Civil War), so in a way, we're seeing Josey Wales years later, with children and a lately buried wife trying to pretend to be a farmer. But he ultimately can't do it. There is no permanent change in character as is hinted at with the end of Josey Wales or Angel & the Badman (with John Vernon pronouncing Josey Wales dead so that Josey can return to his new family and their religious ways, or John Wayne's telling the marshall "Not me, mister, I'm a farmer" and returning to settle down with Gail Russell's Quaker and her family). The optimism of those earlier films is replaced with the certainty that the monster is always lurking beneath the surface.

In the end, unlike most westerns, Unforgiven undermines the gunfighter archetype in a way that few westerns did. Compare it to Eastwood's own Pale Rider, where the Man with No Name returns as God's judgment on evil gold barons. The two tales are opposite ends of the same spectrum (in the same way that Wayne's True Grit stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from his Angel & the Badman or The Shootist, two movies with an understanding of what the archetype really is).

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If everyone loves you you're doing it wrong.

"Opium is the religion of the masses." Fred Reed

The Power of 99 Press

"He thinks it's going to be fun being governor. It's only fun being governor of New York if you have money to spend, and I spent it all." Nelson Rockefeller on his successor, Hugh Carey.

Geaux Tigers

Holy **** you want me to read all that?

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"Louisiana has a heritage of great players that play their high school football within the boundaries of Louisiana."

"As soon as we know exactly who we are playing and what date we will be playing on, the schedule will become more finite."

"If we're defending, come see the trophy, it's in our trophy case. We're not defending it; it's there."

- Les Miles

E.H. Munro

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If everyone loves you you're doing it wrong.

"Opium is the religion of the masses." Fred Reed

The Power of 99 Press

"He thinks it's going to be fun being governor. It's only fun being governor of New York if you have money to spend, and I spent it all." Nelson Rockefeller on his successor, Hugh Carey.

Tragedy

Not a movie, but a couple endings for futurama come to mind.

The episode with Fry's dog, and how he waited for Fry to come back until he died.

And the episode with the 5 leaf clover and his brother.

Two poigniant episodes.

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Quote:

"GOT…damn! And I know Rubio saw it at like 4 in the morning and started crying and told them hoes from Ibiza to get the **** outta his room. And he said it in Spanish, too, so he looked like an angry drug dealer in a Michael Mann film. GOOD! How’s that for the league’s image, Stern? You ****ing *******. His name is Brandon…he from Compton…he got rapper friends…and he’s your league’s next superstar. Cry!

Hyperion

I think you learned a valuable lesson here. Don't talk bad about Unforgiven. And yes, you need to read that reply.



Here are a few more endings that I enjoyed:

Equilibrium

SLC Punk

Barton Fink

Big Labowski

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"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain...."

"The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly"

Pimped Out

7 leaf

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I AM WATCHING YOU THROUGH A CAMERA

RollWithEm

I will contribute my favorite endings to this thread soon, but I wanted to show everyone how little the Japanese care about spoiling a good ending. Check out their first promo poster for Cabin in the Woods.

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But that's just me.

RollWithEm

As promised, here are my top 10 favorite movie endings:

1. Dr. Strangelove
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. The Wizard of Oz
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. Jacob's Ladder
6. The Usual Suspects
7. Pulp Fiction
8. Casablanca
9. The Graduate
10. Se7en

This was an extremely hard list to make. Did I leave anything out?

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But that's just me.

RollWithEm

I agree whole-heartedly on those two.

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But that's just me.

RollWithEm

1)


5)


9)

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But that's just me.