In case titling a video “10 Best Movie Endings of All Time” wasn’t enough, here’s the BIGGEST SPOILER WARNING OF ALL TIME! We’ve looked at how movies begin, so this time we’re digging into all the ways they can end. They can twist or offer catharsis, they can wreck you with sadness or overwhelm you with joy. And how many otherwise good movies have been sullied by a less than stellar ending? And because they say there are only two important parts to a movie, the ending and everything else here are our picks for the 10 that have done it the best.

From bittersweet happy endings like Shawshank Redemption, Amelie or Charlie Chaplin’s greatest hits, to sweet-bitter sad endings like Portrait of a Lady on Fire or Call Me By Your Name, to an ambiguous, top spinning ending of Inception or a cathartic full circle tied-in-a-bow ending from Martin Scorsese like The Last Temptation of Christ, filmmakers have many tools to choose from when wrapping up their movies. There are even non-ending endings like Silence of the Lambs or Ex Machina. Endings that happen too fast like Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Each kind of ending has it’s own risks and rewards, and the films that do it best end in a way that’s satisfying, fresh and also seeming somehow inevitable. It’s hard to narrow it down to just 10!

The Picks:

00:00 Intro
00:25 Happy - Cinema Paradiso (1988) dir. Giuseppe Tornatore
02:46 Sad - Dancer in the Dark (2000) dir. Lars von Trier
05:18 Abrupt - Sword of Doom (1966) dir. Kihachi Okamoto
07:33 Gentle - In The Mood For Love (2000) dir. Wong Kar-wai
09:38 Twist - Psycho (1960) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
11:56 Ambiguous - A Separation (2011) dir. Asghar Farhadi
14:05 Catharsis - 8 ½ (1963) dir. Federico Fellini
16:12 Non-Ending - Come and See (1985) dir. Elem Klimov
18:03 Breaking the Frame - Waltz with Bashir (2008) dir. Ari Folman
20:20 Poetic - Beau Travail (1999) dir. Claire Denis

For more CineFix Movie Lists, be sure to subscribe to IGN Movies & TV, but in the meantime if for more deep dives on beginnings and endings, check out these lists and Brilliant Moments!!

Fight Club, The Empire Strikes Back and the Top 10 Twists of All Time - https://youtu.be/CwetMm33UnI

Rear Window, Goodfellas and The Top 10 Cinematic Beginnings of All Time - https://youtu.be/DnzGbKj-udc

Stand By Me, Moonlight and 5 Brilliant Moments of Death - https://youtu.be/sclf6ir22mk

Indiana Jones, James Bond and the 10 Best Character Introductions of All Time - https://youtu.be/5psXjzWUve8

The Iron Giant, The Lord of the Rings and 21 of the Best Character Departures of All Time - https://youtu.be/C-OdVEsRueE