Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

WiseRatFlames An unexpected masterpiece

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

SnoopyStyle Duke White (Harvey Keitel) decides to end his crazy gambling life by hanging himself. When that fails, he jumps into Niagara Falls. He has 5 sons. He has three sons with Goldie (Wendy Crewson). Then came Juicebox (Jared Keeso) from showgirl Champaigne. There is Todd (Siam Yu) from the Siagon Incident and Goldie finally left him. Nevertheless she remained the boys' mother.In his will, Duke tells the three oldest that they are doom to die from drugs that they took for money along with him. The pharmaceutical company had paid each brother $100k as compensation for their impending death but Duke had lost it all betting on horses. The three brothers are sent into a spiral to find some kind of meaning in it all. Uncle Pal (J.K. Simmons) tries to help each one in his own way.Eddie 'Nuts' White (Jason Jones) is a failed undefeated boxer who wins only because everybody keeps punching him in the junk. Cal (Scott Caan) is a womanizer who wants his teenage love Miranda (Tricia Helfer) back after sleeping with a waitress who also slept with dad. Jacob (Paulo Costanzo) is the responsible one and completely unhappy. He makes a bucket list to do.Jason Jones is so ill-fitting as a boxer. If anybody should be the boxer, it should be Scott Caan. The three guys don't look anything like brothers. They don't fit together and have no brotherly chemistry. Paulo Costanzo and Jason Jones could be brothers but there is no chance for Scott Caan. The movie is so quirky that it makes it hard to follow and lacking in flow. Newcomer Jonathan Sobol is the writer/director. I think he has a lot to say and a lot of style. He just needs to rein it in and control it better. The other problem is that the three brothers go off on their own. It would help with the brotherly chemistry if they face their challenges together. I'm all for quirky comedies. It would help if the family is more together.

Dave Harlequin (NerdNationMagazine) As with any good film, it's always important to start things off the right way in order to spark your viewer's interest. How funny that a film entitled "A Beginner's Guide To Endings" absolutely mastered the art of an opening scene. The striking image of Oscar-Nominee Harvey Keitel walking through a brightly lit carnival at night with a noose around his neck immediately hooked my interest in this movie. When Harvey Keitel started speaking, his voice over setting the movie's tone, it just pulled me in even further. "The events leading up to my death were a lot like the rest of my life," Keitel says. "Things didn't go exactly as planned."Keitel, playing Duke White, sets up the scene quickly, talking about all of the regrets in his life and introducing the few things he doesn't regret: bringing his five great boys into the world. Three of the boys are now adults and are introduced along with the rest of Duke's family via a nicely crafted "family scrapbook" sequence. Between Keitel's opening sequences and the animated credit sequence that immediately followed, I fell in love with this movie about five minutes in.The main storyline begins in a local church, where his brother (J.K. Simmons of "Spiderman" and "Juno" fame) is the priest residing over Duke's funeral. But in traditional Duke fashion, there is no body since it appears Duke went over Niagara Falls. Simmons plays the character superbly, and builds up the films offbeat humor. He explains that Duke was never much for the Bible, so he instead reads the lyrics to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird." The dysfunctional funeral continues in great fashion when one of Duke's sons (Scott Caan of the "Oceans Eleven" film series) shows up late, just in time to get in a brawl with his brothers in front of their father's casket. The fight is so bad that Simmons has to break out his first aid kit, which the family has used so many times the kit has been given the nickname, "Old Rusty." It is just a tiny detail that makes this oddball family feel real and made me like them more and more.That is why the news they get at the reading of Duke's will hit me like a sucker punch. It's the crux of the plot and even the synopsis for the movie, so I don't feel bad revealing this, but writer/director Jonathan Sobol turns up the heat, revealing that Duke had the three oldest boys involved in an experimental drug treatment program that has now cut their life expectancy down to nothing and they'll be dead in a brief matter of time. While many of them find this rather hard to believe, one of the boys, Jacob (Paulo Costanzo of "Road Trip" and "Royal Pains") goes to his doctor in an attempt to find out the truth. The doctor tells him about the drug tested on them and is blunt when he asks if there is ever anything he wanted to do, followed by suggesting that he goes and does them.Before long we see each brother handle their mortality in different ways. Scott Caan is a womanizer who is afraid of being like his dad who had a bunch of boys from different mothers, so he goes on a quest to find the one woman who got his motor going and who he feels he can commit to, a total psychopath named Miranda. His brother "Nuts" (a former boxer) is just trying to wrap things up with training his younger brother "Juicebox" for a boxing match, before realizing he's gotten his brother involved in something he has no business being a part of. And Jacob creates a bucket list of things he wants to do, taking his youngest brother along for the ride, as they go from one insane item on the checklist to the next. Their three stories build into a glorious crescendo, and the editing pulls their stories together with some wonderful cuts that tighten the tension and milk the humor. What is fantastic is this could have been a dreary movie about regret and people facing their mortality, but Sobol injects a little dark humor in every scene and keeps the viewer wanting more.Overall, "A Beginners Guide To Endings" is a beautifully paced movie that unfolds the plot quickly, and makes excellent use of the Niagara Falls setting. For a film that could have easily been too morbid or morose, it really makes for an entertaining and uplifting story in general. Definitely one of the best narrative movies I have seen in quite a while, and one I will be recommending to everyone I know.

alexfromhorn This movie is really impressive. I expected it to be some pretty bad stuff I'd turn off after a shot while but I liked it very much. The way it's told is a mixture of classic styles and it also reminded me a little of the way Tarantino tells his stories. The whole plot is cool and without comparison. Cast of characters, acting, settings, locations etc are completely awesome, character development as well. So I'm still stunned that I watched this movie 2 years after it came out and it only has 198 views with a rating of only 6.6 which is completely ridiculous to me. Music and ending are nice as well. I really liked it and I think it's one of those movies that's worth to be watched again. I guess someone did a very bad promotion for this DVD because it's worth to be watched by way more people and not only because of it's nice humor.

Bill Adams A favorite movie of mine, Magnolia, is introduced with a narrator talking about odds and the unlikelihood of certain things happening and A Beginner's Guide to Endings starts in a very similar fashion. The credits for this Jonathon Sobol film are cleverly presented as parts of games of chance and from the outset there is that feeling that unlikely things are going to happen and this will be an unpredictable and unusual comedy. The Beginner's Guide was one of more than a dozen options available at the Domestic Arrivals Film Festival in London Ontario and it is one that I almost missed. When so many quality films are offered in such a short time frame sometimes difficult choices have to be made. This film was one of the best decisions I made and everything about it impressed me. The award winning screenplay gave the ensemble cast plenty of material to work with and their performances were all pitch perfect.J.K. Simmons serves as an adviser to the White brothers, a family so dysfunctional that they could lower the property values in any neighborhood they chose to call home. Siam Yu manages to deliver up some laughs as a very credible Todd, the youngest product of Duke White's many misadventures. While Harvey Keitel doesn't need a lot of screen time as the Duke White character his presence is felt throughout the full 92 minutes. Any casting changes would have made this a different film and it likely wouldn't have been a better different. Everybody needed to be who they were to make it work as well as it did. The shooting locations in Niagara Falls are very familiar to most people, but because of the close proximity to London there may have been a stronger connection for the audience here. This isn't a film for everyone but it is one that l will go out of my way to see again.