Grand finales: The greatest movie endings

Here's to looking at Casablanca, one of the most beautiful movies ever made. From the dialogue to the set-pieces to the story of two people reconnecting in a gin joint where they're reminded of their previous romance, this is one of those rare perfect pictures. The ending, in which they must say goodbye at an airport, is almost too emotional for words.

What is Rosebud? Orson Welles' newspaper tycoon mentions it throughout Citizen Kane, which is what many consider to be the greatest movie ever made. It's more than just a sled, as the ending reveals — it's a symbol of lost innocence, childhood and how his character's priorities were shaken in a snow globe of greed. There's a reason people still discuss the ending to this day. Its deeper meanings still lie hidden underneath the rubble.

Kids these days — always ditching school, watching movies and cursing out loud. At least that's the story of Francois Truffaut, whose autobiographical feature sees a child doing all those things while running away from home. It's an intensely realistic and emotional experience, and it's also one of the first films about children coming of age. The ending is a stunner: a freeze-frame of the boy staring into the camera, on the beach, caught between the future and the past, the sea of uncertainty and the sands of hope.

We aren't making a list of the best movie endings without classic Western The Searchers. I reckon this is the greatest ending in the genre, with a hauntingly beautiful shot of John Wayne standing in a doorway between the desert and home, the Wild West and the new form of society. It's a doorway into the power of cinema.

Maybe it's a fantasy for many young men out there — sleeping with a mother and her daughter — but maybe that fantasy has consequences like, I don't know, the two of them finding out? The entire thing comes crashing down for Dustin Hoffman, but he manages to swoop the daughter up and run off. Their escape isn't some triumphant celebration but a moment of uncertainty. What lies down the road next? Mike Nichols captures that uncertainty with almost impossible clarity.

A flower in a desert of forlorn misery. City Lights follows a tramp who falls for a blind girl who eventually sees the light. Forget the tissues. Bring the whole box! The moment when she realizes her lover is a bum but doesn't care is truly transcendent. 

Get ready to call your mom in a puddle of tears. The story follows a family separated in futile Japan and their journey to find each other, which is really just an ode to how far mothers will go to be with their children. There's not an ounce of sentimentality here until, for a brief second, we are given a motherly embrace from a fictional mother who seems as real as the floor beneath you. 

Okay, so maybe the movie can get a little sentimental. But the ending, where the former prisoners Red and Andy meet again on a beach, is something else. 

Many of the best movie endings are ambiguous, leaving us teetering between one answer or the other like a spinning top. That's why Inception's ending is perfect. It literally keeps us teetering between answers, as we are to guess whether our main character is still dreaming or is awake.

There's nothing ambiguous about this ending. Just sheer hopelessness on the streets of Rome. When a father and son have their bike stolen, they aren't sure how they are going to make money. Dad tries to steal another person's bike and is humiliated in front of his son — a moment so crushing, it had the wheels spinning in my head weeks after the credits rolled.

A movie about a director making a movie about a director making a movie? What is this, movie Inception? Try a portal into the mind of a director. There are no spinning tops in this movie, only a carnival of people spinning around the director's mind.

Some of the best movies end with movie kisses. The greatest of them all could be The Princess Bride, a fairy tale about a kidnapped princess and her true love. 

Some of the best film end with twists as well. There's nothing like the feeling of having the rug pulled out beneath you in a movie, like the feeling you get when you watch a man discover what happened to his wife when she disappeared years ago. The answer is buried deep, but it's worth seeing where the wife is now.

One of the greatest twists of them all is...well, we actually aren't supposed to talk about Fight Club. So we aren't going to spoil how it ends. But the secret behind this underground fight club is explosively shocking.

There are some movie endings that just don't shock you, but move you, rattle you and overwhelm you with their power. There's no easy way to describe the ending of Stalker, a science fiction masterpiece about a man who brings people to a forbidden place called the Zone, where they leave physically or psychologically altered. All we can say is that the answer to whether the Zone has powers arrives, sort of, in a shot of a girl moving a glass across the table with her mind. Or is it the train rattling in the distance? Either way, it's undeniably moving.

A car chase, a freeze frame and an iconic line of dialogue. The ending to Ferris Bueller's ditch day is simply perfect. The movie sticks the landing like Ferris leaping from a trampoline to another backyard.

All the planets aligned to make Stanely Kubrick's ending land. The visuals, the direction and the literal planets aligning helped make the greatest science fiction movie ever land perfectly. People to this day still debate what it all means, but there's no debating the universal power of his vision. 

Some movies crawl to their end while others sprint to a conclusion that ties everything together perfectly. Gallipoli is one of those movies that sprints — like the main characters who are sprinters before they become runners for the army — to an ending so powerful it might leave you shell-shocked. It's a freeze-frame that is perhaps only rivaled by The 400 Blows.

At the risk of making an äss out of myself, I have to admit that the misery of a fictional donkey brought me to tears. I can't explain how. It's one of those transcendent endings that makes you cry without you knowing why. You don't see director Robert Bresson pulling the heartstrings, but pull the heartstrings he does. 

One of the greatest freeze-frames and one of the greatest movie kisses. Ponyo sees a fish run away from home and become a human, where she falls for a young human child. They brave storms, floods, monsters and dazzlingly poetic images in the name of true love. It's a wonderful film everyone can enjoy.