The Five Greatest Endings in Movie HIstory

5. Trainspotting: Pop songs have been the pulse of better films since The Graduate, and smart filmakers understand the synchronicty between human emotion and a well placed tune. Those directors and music supervisors who pull it off successfully: Cameron Crowe and Danny Bramson, Tarantino and Kathy Nelson, Scorcese and Scorcese can pump a scene with additional sensory input that induces literal tears from me: it's not from the visceral experience of watching the movies that I've seen a dozen times... It's the moving picture synched to music in a beautiful, symbiotic ballet that makes me ooze salty salutes of joy. Case in point: Hero/Anti-hero Renton of Trainspotting stealing and backstabbing his mates to achieve freedom. With Underworld's thumping "Born Slippy" narrating like a coke-addled Muzak, Renton strolls confidently into uncertainty as oblivion clangs it's merry bells.

4. In the Company of Men: This has nothing to do with music, and nothing to do with happy endings, or even closure. It is simply a gratifying "fuck you" to mysogyny. In the film, two jaded ad execs set out collectively to mentally and spiritually destroy a neutral woman, for the sake of feeling better about themselves and to acheive some sort of "I've been dumped" catharsis. What they don't realize is that pettiness and shallow ambivalence towards looks and physique is the death of a meaningful connection. When the deaf heroine watches in silence as the "castrated" wimp screams and pleads "like a bitch" for her to take him back, it's like a slap in the face to both sexes.

3. There Will Be Blood: Call this a hasty judgment, but I can't recall an ending that left me so stupified in a long, long time. After two+hours of capitalism, greed and bile spewed forth like so much gushing crude, the film turns insular and focuses on a single man's sink into spiritual torpor, hatred and madness. (Spoiler Alert!) After Plainview beats the shit out of the religion and phony humanity that has nipped at his ankles the entire film, he drunkenly, and somewhat heroically, signals the end of his life's work with the simple utterance of the words, "I'm finished!" And that's it.

2. The Shining: It should be noted that endings to movies are a much different beast than book endings. A book needs to damn well have a connected, lucid, somewhat concrete ending that makes us feel that we've gone on this journey of better or worse prose for some reason that has been, regardless of ending, at least entertaining(otherwise read non-fiction asshole!) Films don't need that kind of audience jerk-job to finish the night. If it's a piece of shit, you should've been smart enough not to attend. But we're not talking about shit. Great films earn the director's right to jerk the viewer. Apart from hubris, the great films are granted the right to leave one with thought, anger, heated conversation and bewilderment. I like that, and I realize that all of these endings thus far have been downers. I don't subscribe to that term. A beautiful ending is the legitimate, unexpectected, joyous and/or odd fade to black that signals you've seen something great. A master like Kubrick ditched King's Hallmark novel ending for one of complete weirdness. Take it as you will: Evil never dies, a man can't escape his fate, alcoholism kills legacies etc. All is know is that in the end evil is left holloring and desperate, alone, frigid and searching for human connection. If that ain't poetic...

1. Jaws: Hey, it's my favorite movie, and what can I say about the film that ushered in the sea change (hey pun) of moviemaking. Nothing was new or refreshing, it was simply satisfying. And it had a badass final line of dialogue. I wanted to be Roy Scheider. I wanted to dress like him, be the guy who was accepted by salties like Quint, and who would swim home to be embraced by the town as a savior. I find it difficult to claim Jaws as my favorite movie in conversation. Goodfellas is the perfect movie of all time. Jaws is the "BEST" movie of all time. It was Star Wars to me as a kid. It was the movie that put my head in the place it is today, my interests in place, the real true entity that makes me who I am and made me realize that movies are one of the greatest things in my life. The marquee line, as Brody blows up the shark is: "Smile you son of a bitch," but the real moment is when Brody and Hooper gently kick to shore. The exchange is:
Brody: I used to hate the water.
Hooper: I can't imagine why.
What the context asks, blah blah blah, is why Brody couldn't love the excitement, friendship, unexpected, danger, freedom that he found in the water, and ultimately why he left his job as a New York cop. Can't he see it? We're left with the impression that he can't. Does life, evil and salvation exist everywhere on Earth, and is satisfaction attainable? I'll leave you with that.