Kay Corleone watching her husband's office door close in The Godfather…William Wallace's sword impaling the ground in Braveheart…Rick and Louis walking off into the mist in Casablanca…
It's not enough just to stick the ending when you're making a movie. You've also got to stick the final shot, leaving that last indelible mark on an audience before they get up and shamble toward the exit.
Some films do it better than others…and there's even a lot of variation in how well the directors of Oscar Best Picture winners pulled off that monumental filmmaking task.
Some nail it, others don't — and you can judge for yourself in this cool 5-minute montage (posted originally at Movies.com, then reposted on Crave movie site /Film) of closing images from all 86 Academy Award winners for Best Pictures. We get everything from 12 Years a Slave all the way back to Wings in 1927.
Check out nine decades of great film in five minutes…pretty cool.
