Moor Larkin

Hmmmm. A local review in my town describes the ending of Hope & Glory as 'soapy' (as in soap opera I assume)..... The Emerald Forest had an appalling ending (IMO) and The Hard Way is only let down by a melodramatic shoot-out near the end (albeit the very, very end, in a cemetery, is well done). Is there a pattern emerging here?

The End

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silverwhistle

Excalibur has a wonderful ending, though: the boat with Arthur and the Queens sailing off into the sunset, with the Wagnerian soundtrack. Gets to me every time.

"Trust me, I'm a doctor...!"

clitheroekid

That is a nice ending!

D Cairns

THE HARD WAY is by John Badham, not John Boorman, so we can't blame him for that one.
HELL IN THE PACIFIC and EXORCIST II have two endings apiece, neither of which is very strong. But POINT BLANK is fine, and I even like the time-lapse ending of ZARDOZ where Connery and his gf age and die: Buster Keaton did a similar deconstruction of the happy ending in COLLEGE.

Moor Larkin

I was referring to The Hard Way (1979) (TV), but to be fair. Mr. Boorman passed the directors duties over to his assistant so you may be right in exonerating him....

On a less argumentative note I was trying to make my mind up to go to bed last night and flicked to BBC News 24, just to see if I was missing anything and who should be being interviewed on 'Hardtalk' but John Boorman...

He's a lovely guy!! Eyes sparkling like a thirty-year old.... I wouldn't be moaning about his 'Endings' to his face I'll tell you - he'd chomp me up and spit me round the room!!....

He'd evidently been talking about his latest movie but I stumbled in as they moved away into more general discussion. He referred to the Hollywood machine being a prisoner of its own Blockbusters and how they spend so much money in order to try and make them but even if they succeed they only just get back what they spent........ Sounds a bit like British premiership football!!

He touched on his early days in the BBC, making documentaries and had evidently been deeply affected by his treament at the hands of the established BBC people. He was the first there not to have attended university etc.. and felt very excluded in a class-conscious way. That had affected him to such a degree that he had never wanted to live in England again........

Anyhow I'm off to watch the interview in full...
BBC NEWS | Programmes | Hardtalk | John Boorman

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