Movie Endings

TCM spent last week looking at the films of Elizabeth Taylor, showing her films every weeknight in prime time for the entire week. So, with no Star of the Month this week we get a new week-long theme, which is Movie Endings.

Somebody came up with movies that have interesting endings and categorized them into a bunch of different types, so we get a different type of ending on each night. Unsurprisingly, I'm not certain I agreee with all of their choices.

They thought, for example, that it would be a good example to include 2001: A Space Odyssey (11:45 PM Tuesday) in a night of movies with musical endings. So the movie used "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and the "Blue Danube" waltz. Big whoop. The whole final third of the movie is a mess. Just because it's prettied up with some classical music doesn't make it a great ending.

They put Now, Voyager (4:30 AM Thursday) in with the "Romantic Endings", which is reasonable considering the scheduling challenges in programming something like this. But Thursday night's theme is "Famous Last Words", which would also be suitable for Now, Voyager

And then there's the lack of comedic endings, which excludes a whole bunch of great movie endings. Some Like It Hot is one of the best examples. I also really love the ending of the original To Be or Not to Be, with Jack Benny playing Hamlet in England. Dinner at Eight is another movie with a great closing line. But none of these show up this week.