Adaptation (2002)

Charlie Finished His Script

In Spike Jonz' brilliant but often bewildering, twisting and turning comedy/drama, struggling screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) pursued and spied on the New Yorker author Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) of the book The Orchard Thief while working on its movie adaptation, discovering her snorting lines of mind-altering, ghost-orchid green extract and committing adultery in an extra-marital affair with the real Florida orchid thief John Laroche (Chris Cooper).

The film's conclusion counteracted his earlier assertion to his studio contact Valerie Thomas (Tilda Swinton): "I don't want to cram in sex or, uh, guns or car chases, you know, or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons, or growing, or coming to like each other, or overcoming obstacles - succeeding in the end...life isn't like that, it just isn't."

Escaping with his alter-ego twin brother Donald (Cage in a dual role) into the Florida Everglades swamp (where Charlie received profound advice from Donald: "You are what you love, not what loves you" during the night), they were hotly pursued by Laroche and Susan after she madly wanted to kill him for witnessing her drug habit and extra-marital affair. Donald was 'killed' when thrown through Charlie's car windshield (extinguishing his alter-ego forever, and giving him new confidence), and Laroche was attacked and killed by an alligator, after which Susan madly exclaimed: "I want my life back. I want it back before it all got f--ked up. I want to be a baby again. I want to be new. I WANT TO BE NEW."

Upon his return home, Charlie met with pretty ex-dating partner Amelia Kavan (Cara Seymour) and openly admitted his affection for her by kissing her (with her own confession: "I love you, too, you know"). He simultaneously discovered how to finally end his script:

I have to go right home. I know how to finish the script now. It ends with Kaufman driving home after his lunch with Amelia, thinking he knows how to finish the script... Anyway, it's done. And that's something. So: 'Kaufman drives off from his encounter with Amelia, filled for the first time with hope.' I like this. This is good.

This was accompanied with the playing of the Turtles' song "Happy Together" - and a sped-up time lapse photograph of flowers and an LA street over a period of several days

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

It Was All A Tall-Tale Story Told By The Baron

This entire Terry Gilliam adventure was a tale told by elderly Baron Karl Frederich Hieronymous von Munchausen (John Neville) about his alleged marvelous exploits to a group of theater-goers attending a play (about his own life) while the city was under siege from Turkish hordes.

The tale ended with the Baron's shooting "death"- assassination by city official "The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson" (Jonathan Pryce) during a victory parade and the taking of his soul by the Grim Reaper 'doctor' -- the twist was that the Baron's tale was only a "story within a story."

It was the final scene of another tall-tale staged story the fabulist was telling the audience as he appeared back on stage: ("And that was only one of the many occasions on which I met my death, an experience which I don't hesitate strongly to recommend!").

Sally Salt (Sarah Polley) - the young daughter of the theater company's leader, remarked incredulously: "It wasn't just a story, was it?"

In the finale, the Baron rode off onto a faraway hillside, saluted the town, and then cryptically disappeared.

Aeon Flux (2005)

Aeon Was the Clone of Trevor's Wife

In the post-apocalyptic year of 2415, inhabitants were forced to live in the walled city of Bregna ruled by the totalitarian Goodchild dynasty of genetic scientists, following a devastating lethal virus in 2011 which killed 99% of the population (leaving only 5 million people) and caused everyone else who survived to be sterile (the cure had caused sterility).

[However, nature was beginning to find a way to overcome the sterility issue and women were again becoming pregnant naturally. This was the main reason for the murder of Aeon's sister Una (Amelia Warner).]

Mastermind scientist and Chairman Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas) revealed to assassin-rebel Monican agent Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) that while researching for a cure, the original population had been cloned over seven generations, to ensure a population. At a certain age, everyone in Bregna was cloned and would begin again at infancy, thereby destabilizing the human race.

Aeon also learned from Trevor and the 400 year old hologramic Keeper (Pete Postlethwaite) that she was the clone of Trevor's wife from 400 years earlier, and was named Catherine.

[In a subplot, Trevor's younger brother Oren (Jonny Lee Miller) was staging a coup - he wanted to destroy Trevor's lab work to cure the sterility. His plan was to kill the clones which were reproducing. He also wanted to kill Aeon by destroying her DNA, but the Keeper preserved it and continued recloning her every time she died.]

In the finale, Aeon killed Oren, and destroyed the DNA library or storage system (that was housed in the "Relic," a giant blimp that circled around the city). It crashed into the outer wall and exposed the population to the outside jungle world.

After the Thin Man (1936)

David Graham Did It

The most surprising "whodunit" of the Thin Man series ended with the murderer being the least likely suspect -- spurned former fiancee David Graham (James Stewart). He was angry at ex-fiancee Selma Landis (Elissa Landi), so he killed her husband Robert Landis (Alan Marshall), and attempted to frame her.

The film was also famous for its surprise ending that was undetected by detective Nick Charles (William Powell) - his socialite wife Nora (Myrna Loy) disclosed her impending maternity on a train as she knitted baby socks -- Nora gently chided him: "And you call yourself a detective" when he finally, after a few moments, realized the significance.

Alien (1979)

Ash Was a Robot; The Only Two Human Survivors Were Ripley and Jones (the Cat)

This Ridley Scott film has become famous for its genuinely shocking and memorable "chestburster" scene during a mess table meal aboard the spacefaring freighter Nostromo. Crew-member Kane (John Hurt) experienced a seizure - coughing and choking on green, spaghetti-like strands of food. Kane was turned around, laid on the table, and held down by the crew, while they forced a spoon into his mouth to prevent him from choking on his tongue. Then, in a terrifying moment, blood graphically exploded out of the front of his white T-shirt - as he moaned, jerked violently, quivered, and died, the Alien burst from the bloody spot on his chest - the hissing, razor sharp-toothed monster/lizard was literally "born" from the guts of the first infected crewman.

A secondary shocking moment was when the crew discovered Science Officer Ash's (Ian Holm) true nature when Parker literally knocked his head off with a fire extinguisher and exclaimed: "It's a robot! Ash is a god-damned robot!"

One by one as the crew members searched for the creature, they were eliminated: ship's mechanic Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) when searching for the beast in the air vents with a flamethrower. The next two gruesome casualties were navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) and Parker (Yaphet Kotto).

Self-reliant, hard-assed, feminist action heroine Lt. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) learned the corporate machinations behind the alien - the Company employing them had deliberately rerouted them to pick up the alien, and that the crew was expendable. Left alone, Ripley heroically activated the emergency destruct system to blow up the ship. She successfully abandoned ship in the shuttlecraft Narcissus with the cat named Jones (she told herself: "I got you! You son-of-a-bitch"), not realizing that the alien had hidden onboard.

In the film's exciting conclusion, Ripley stripped down to her skimpy underwear, then donned a space suit when she realized the alien was present, opened the airlock hatch, and jettisoned the creature into outer space - and then blasted it with white-heat exhaust before entering hypersleep with Jones for the long journey home in the Narcissus ("This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off").

All That Jazz (1979)

Gideon Died During Open Heart Surgery

The spectacular finale - the film's most outstanding dance/musical number - featured wild, imaginatively-surreal hallucinations that were experienced by near-death, drug-addicted, egotistical New York choreographer-director Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) after a heart-attack, as he underwent open-heart cardiac surgery.

At the end of a corridor, flirtatious angel of Death Angelique (Jessica Lange) tempted him to leave the world of the living. Chorus girls danced around his bed (while he and television host O'Connor Flood (Ben Vereen) sang Bye Bye Life to a heavenly studio audience).

This dark finale ended with Gideon in a body bag being zipped up in preparation for being sent to the morgue.

American Beauty (1999)

Colonel Fitts Killed Lester Burnham

Director Sam Mendes' Best Picture-winning film opened with voice-over narration of mid-life crisis-suffering suburbanite Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) revealing: "in less than a year, I will be dead."

The film's ending was still a shock when the death actually played out. Lester narrated the film's final lines, during which a pair of gunshots sounded in the Burnham kitchen. He described some of the meaningful experiences of his life (with a montage of images, some black and white from the past) - and despite his death, he expressed his feelings of "gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life":

I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a second at all. It stretches on forever, like an ocean of time. For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout Camp, watching falling stars. (Gunshot) And yellow leaves from the maple trees that lined our street. (Gunshot) Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper. And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird. And Janie, and Janie. And Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain, and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry. You will someday.

Lester was shot in the back of the head as he looked wistfully at a family photography in the kitchen, reacting: "Man, oh man." The gun slowly appeared on the right side of the frame, and the white-tiled kitchen wall to the left of the frame was splattered with blood and brains, sailing in the air over a vase of red roses after the gunshot. Daughter Janie (Thora Birch) and her boyfriend Ricky (Wes Bentley) were the first to see the blood and body. Ricky stared quizzically at the sight. Lester's voice-over narration began, returning to a few seconds before the fatal gunshot. In the home's bathroom, teenaged Angela (Mena Suvari) turned toward the sound of the first gunshot (Lester had aborted an attempted seduction of her moments earlier). Following the gunshots, Fitts rushed into his home, where he was shown breathing heavily and with blood on his white T-shirt. His gun rack showed one missing weapon.

The Aftermath of the Murder - And The Reverie

Lester was murdered - not by his real estate agent wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) (who at the same time removed a gun out of the car's glove box and said to herself: "Lester, I refuse to be a victim") - but by his shamed and latent homosexual neighbor, retired Marine Col. Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper). Fitts had earlier kissed him in the garage (after he thought he had witnessed his son performing oral sex on Lester).

American Psycho (2000)

Patrick's Crimes May Have Been Hallucinations

Speculation arose over the numerous bloody murders in this film (mostly off-screen) committed by loathsome 27 year-old narrator/yuppie Wall Street broker and psychopath Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), who self-admittedly claimed he was into "murders and executions" (interpreted in a noisy bar as "mergers and acquisitions"). A greedy, image-conscious power broker on the side, he had an ever-present Walkman, and was obsessed with a facial cleansing regimen and body worship, dinner reservations at the most exclusive and hip restaurants, and showy business cards (a scene in which a group of homoerotic cronies competitively whipped out their cards and compared card stock, font, font size, color and layout.

Wearing a clear rainslicker in his own apartment, he committed the brutal axe murder of rival associate Paul Allen (Jared Leto) with a shiny new axe head. He also murdered two hookers in his apartment during a menage a trois when he stabbed one of the two prostitutes during intercourse under a sheet, then chased (in the nude) through the apparently empty hallway of his complex after the second fleeing hooker Christie (Cara Seymour) with a chainsaw and dropped it down on her from a stairwell.

Did the murders really happen, or were they only his own murderous impulses and cocaine-induced fantasies? In his own words, he clearly declared his paranoid psychosis amidst the shallow and empty aspects of competitive and consumeristic corporate culture: ("Did you know I'm utterly insane?" and "I think my mask of sanity is about to slip").

By the end of the film when the two worlds of business and sex/hyper-violence came together, he went on a murder spree (a woman at an ATM, a security guard, a janitor, etc.) and blew up police cars and officers hot on his trail. Believing he was about to be caught, in a sweaty panic, he called up his lawyer Harold (Stephen Bogaert) and confessed to everything on the answering machine ("I guess I'm a pretty sick guy"). But then later, the confession meant nothing - his lawyer thought the call was a clever prank, and reported he had recently had dinner with the 'deceased' Paul Allen in London.

The film's twist, in a blatant monologue confession scene (in voice-over) as the camera slowly panned toward his face, called into question what Bateman had actually committed, as he surrendered to the insanity around him. Was it true that the murders were all in his imagination, or not? He spoke:

There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. My punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.