Top Ten Best Movie Endings - Mike

( Just the last few moments.)

1. Kramer vs. Kramer (Seemed real, inspired and improvised. Raw emotions - really smart ending. That's how I would have done it. You wanted just one more scene - but no. It's as it should be, Dustin's no teeth smile to his former wife, elevator shuts. He got his son.)

2. The History of Violence (David Cronenberg’s sly, brilliant merger of a revenge fantasy and an essay on the American Dream has an appropriately messy, provocative ending. So much going on in their faces. The whole journey, what do we do now?, and the little girl was genius. How much we all need to believe in 'the fantasy of family'.)

3. Hannah and Her Sisters ( Perfect, just perfect. Not so much cause Woody can reproduce - Diane Weists' magical delivery "I'm pregnant".)

4. Private Benjamin (Goldies face - beaming and then throws up her veil into the wind. Her face goes through a big ( beginning - middle and end) transformation and every moment is crystal clear - and shiny. Underneath, it's her commenting on and playing up her persona, but then it's so much more. It's a very pro-feminists piece of film-making. And then there she goes walking off into an unknown  future...a better world - without marriage.)

5. The Verdict (She's calling him - Galvin won the case and has the girl desperate on the other end. He got his balls back!)

6. Ordinary People ( Gets me every time. It's big melodrama words but the men are two of the best actors having a very real moment and the camera pulls back, music plays - it's pure cinema poetry and I have no problem with Robert Redford winning the OSCAR over Marty)

7. Silence of the Lambs ( Every frame of the film was perfect. I can't believe how many times I've watched this movie. It still holds up like brand new. It all leads up to that sweet ending of Hannibal following this ultimate next meal - it's scary and witty - and we're all rooting for him - love it! Changed the way we see movie hero's. This ending almost doesn't fit into the tone of the movie before - but it's still so good.)

8. Working Girl ( Ironic and insightful and inspiring all at once - it's a great moment. Joan Cucsak leaps to her feet "She did it! - She got out!" then that terrific score and music by Carly Simon "Let the River Run!" camera pulls back fast - Melanie turns her body perfectly in the chair of her new office. Camera pulls out of the building - we see many offices - hundreds. Women movin' on up! Being upwardly mobile, and power hungry, but what's it all mean? Smart director.)

9. Fargo - (Cinema, especially recent cinema, isn't known for its portrayals of happy marriages -- especially not in crime movies. But the last scene in this Coen brothers masterpiece doesn't involve any blood, bullets, or double-crosses. It just shows the Gundersons, Marge (Frances McDormand) and Norm (John Carroll Lynch), sitting in bed. He tells her that his painting is going to put on a three-cent stamp, she tells him how great that is, and the emotional core that has been developing throughout the film is suddenly sitting right in front of us.)

10. Rocky - (As Bill Conte's score soars in the background, a bloodied Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) and a hat less Adrian (Talia Shire) finally proclaim their love for one another. And in the distant background, a ring announcer tells a frenzied crowd that our hero has actually lost the fight that held us captive for an entire final act. In one dramatic move, two shy nobodies find their hearts and nothing else matters.)

Honorable Mentions -  No Country for Old Men, The Usual Suspects, Memento, The Spanish Prisoner, Before Sunset, Postcards From the Edge (used to hate it - now I love it), The Color Purple ( Beautiful silhouette of 'Mister' moving through the field with the reunited sisters doing their childhood clap), Shakespeare in Love ( What can I say - I'm a sucker for women walking off alone), Tootsie, 9 to 5, All That Jazz, The Birds, Some Like it Hot, Jacob's Ladder (whole movie a brief hallucination before dying - fabulous) & Little Miss Sunshine ( Gives one hope that good movies are still possible).