You know a good ending when you see one. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly does not have a bad ending, nor an ugly one. It doesn’t actually have a good ending, either. It has a great ending, because calling it good would be an understatement. See also classics like Casablanca, Cinema Paradiso, The Godfather Part II, and The Shawshank Redemption, for reasons that are probably obvious if you’ve seen them.

A great ending is one thing, and plenty of horror movies have great endings. Some of the movies mentioned below also have great endings, but the focus here is on how those endings themselves end. The focus is on the very last shot you see before the end credits begin, or before the movie reads “The End,” if it’s an older horror film (from a time in cinema history when opening credits, rather than end credits, were the norm).

If something takes place in real time, it means that the amount of time it takes to watch something play out is the same amount of time that the characters experience passing. It’s not always done well (see 88 Minutes, which is perhaps the nadir of Al Pacino’s filmography), but when it is executed properly, it can make for an immersive viewing experience, particularly if what you're watching is supposed to be some kind of thriller.

There was a lot Jimi Hendrix ultimately did in the world of music, specifically rock, before he passed away at just 27 years of age. There were three studio albums done with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and then a final self-titled live album called Band of Gypsys. Then, there were some other songs that didn’t appear on the original studio albums, plus his rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which he famously played at Woodstock.

Young people dominating the music field is more common than young people in the world of film, at least when you're talking about people behind the camera. Consider, for example, the fact that The Beatles were together, recorded about a dozen albums (some of which are among the best of all time), and then disbanded before any of them had turned 30. The world at large, therefore, seems to freak out a little more when a filmmaker puts out something impressive while they're still in their early 20s.

Comedies that are easy to watch are nice and all, and there’s also no shortage of them. Rom-coms are especially reliable, if you're after something easy, and then even a good many dramedies – even if they get, you know, dramatic at points – are fairly gentle. If something’s split pretty evenly between comedy and drama, you can probably expect to feel happy as much as you're possibly going to feel sad.

On 5 June 2026, news broke that Anthony Head had passed away at the age of 72, and there was an understandable outpouring of sadness from those who'd appreciated his work in the past, not to mention tributes to the actor paid by both fans of his and actors he'd worked with. Head had a steady acting career over decades, and also boasted a pretty varied body of work on both the big screen and in the world of television, with notable roles played in movies like Repo! The Genetic Opera, and TV shows like Ted Lasso and Merlin.

Since a good many crime movies have a “crime doesn’t pay” thing going on (especially those made some time ago), it’s not exactly the happiest of genres. Even crime movies that focus on good people can showcase bad things happening to them, and then the really effective ones can also make you feel bad for people who themselves are doing bad things.

There are certain things you might expect to see at the end of a Western, and with some of the movies below, some have inevitable endings. Like, a reliable thing to do is have a showdown, building to it the whole movie, or a memorable Western ending might do something else, or have some kind of final battle/shootout end in a way that’s perhaps unexpected.

While legendary cinematic characters like James Bond and Godzilla have been in more movies than King Kong, that iconic giant ape has 007 and the King of the Monsters beat in terms of how long he’s been around for. The first King Kong movie came out more than 90 years ago, and much of it still holds up better than you'd probably expect a film of its age to do. Since then, there have been two other King Kong movies that have shared its title, and both are remakes of the original film, albeit one was set in then-contemporary times, and the other had a period setting in line with the 1933 original. Of course, there are various other King Kong movies with longer titles, but they're not really the focus here.

The most well-known franchise Vin Diesel is attached to is probably Fast and Furious, unless you want to count Guardians of the Galaxy, which he has a voice role in (albeit a humorously limited one). In any event, Fast and Furious has more movies that make up the overall series, started further back in time (2001, specifically), and also has Diesel at the center of things. He’s absent from 2 Fast 2 Furious, and only has a cameo in Tokyo Drift, but is in all the other main films (not the spin-off Hobbs & Shaw) as a central character. But there is one film series of his that technically kicked off before even the first Fast and Furious movie: The Chronicles of Riddick.

You could be someone who’s largely apathetic to movies in general and still be, in all likelihood, at least a little aware of how superheroes have been kind of a big deal lately. Maybe the 2010s was the golden era, and there was also a fruitful 2000s leading up to that next decade’s dominance, but you can’t rule out the 2020s when something like Avengers: Doomsday is still pretty hyped (at least at the time of writing, because time will ultimately tell whether it’s any good or not).