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Over at Cracked.com, they've made a list of the top ten worst twist endings of all time. Obviously that list has a lot of spoilers, but I'm going to attempt to write this post without revealing any of them. Why? To make sure you go over there, of course. So, if you're not worried about ruining the endings to some movies you probably shouldn't see anyway, then head over and read the hilariously confusing explanations, or attempts at explanations, and/or how some endings don't make enough sense to bother with explanations. I will let you in on the titles of the movies, just in case you are interested in seeing any of them in the future and would like to go in spoiler free. The ten, in order from "least asinine" to "most asinine", are: Stay (2005); High Tension (2003); Signs (2002); Hide and Seek (2005) and Secret Window (2004), which tie for #7, because they're considered the exact same plot (is that spoiling it for you guys? probably -- oh well, I tried); The Forgotten (2004); Basic (2003); Perfect Stranger (2007); The Number 23 (2007); Planet of the Apes (2001); and The Life of David Gale (2003).

I haven't seen the number one movie, but I can't imagine it's worse than the others that I have seen, especially Planet of the Apes. Basically, I think Cracked.com considers it the worst because it stars Kevin Spacey, who also starred in The Usual Suspects, which pretty much, along with The Sixth Sense, obviously, got Hollywood on this crappy twist kick to begin with (He was also in Se7en, which had another so-so twist ending). Look at those films; they all came out between 2001 and 2007. And what was the most common twist? The main character did it. Either he or she has a split personality, or amnesia, or suffers from some other psychological ailment. Other idiotic yet easily written twists include: aliens did it; it's all a dream (as if you need to steal from Bob Newhart, come on!); and, in the fashion of Suspects, it's all just made-up stories. Personally, I'm upset to not see my least favorite twist ending. It involved a whole crop of great actors who just so happened to be explained as existing inside the imagination of some mental patient. That one had the split personality plus the dream plus the Suspects idea that none of what we watched is real. Can you name it?

Defying all predictions, Bobcat Goldthwaite is walking away from Sundance 2006 with all rights sold on his beastiality romcom Stay. Yesterday, French firm Gaumont announced that it was moving to acquire all international rights on the film, as part of its new strategy (begun with its financing of Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep) to generally loosen up a bit. "It's not the kind of film Gaumont is known for," CEO Franck Chorot admitted to Variety on Thursday, "but we are broadening our range with original films that have a potential for international sales." In even better news, Roadside Attractions has teamed up with Samuel Goldwyn to take domestic rights on the film. Neither Roadside or Goldwyn, nor William Morris, who brokered the deal for Goldthwait, announced financial terms, but Roadside's Eric d'Arbeloff released the following statement of motivation: "I've never encountered a film that so intelligently combines raunchy humor with warmth and emotional truth ... Bob Goldthwait's film is going to draw people for its outrageous premise, but they will leave the theatre surprised how much it touches them." I concur. Now: can we get a deal for Wristcutters?

Features
The Descent
Stay
Thank You For Smoking
Kinky Boots
Sherrybaby
Cinnamon
Lucky Number Slevin
Friends with Money - Karina's take
Friends with Money - James' take

Foreign
13 (Tzameti)
Little Red Flowers
Adam's Apples
Eve and the Firehorse
Man Push Cart

Documentary
TV Junkie
Wordplay
Wide Awake
Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!
The World According to Sesame Street
Thin
Angry Monk - Reflections on Tibet
Crossing Arizona
Everyone Stares, Police Documentary

Shorts
Flesh

A pretty girl sits on a couch reading, her face spotted with zit cream, her dog stretched out on the floor at her feet. She gets up, chain locks the door, and turns to look at her pet, splayed out on his back, his genitalia in full view. The next thing we know, the girl is running for mouthwash to the accompaniment of one of the best voice-overed opening lines in recent cinema history: "My name is Amy, and yes, in college, I blew my dog."

Bobcat Goldthwait's Stay isn't about bestiality as a fetish or a lifestyle – Amy's, um, indiscretion was a one-time thing, borne from boredom and unsatisfactory at best – but it uses the ultimate taboo as a male adolescent-approved in to talk about the role of honesty in contemporary relationships. Amy has kept this secret for years, but when her boyfriend John asks her to marry him, she starts to wonder if there's room for such a secret in a marriage. Weighing the advice of her co-worker and her mother (both of whom have their own sexual secrets), Amy must decide whether or not to break down and let the dog out of the bag. Her eventual decision backfires, and Amy finds herself hated by the very people she was trying to please. Matters are made worse by the interference of Amy's meth-addled brother Doug, whose casual hatred is at once racially charged (he didn't lose his job; it was taken by "the kikes and the niggers and their quotas'") and indiscriminate. Things are looking dark indeed, until a family tragedy touches off an unexpected, and unexpectedly satisfying, resolution to Amy's moral quandary.

Melinda Page Hamilton plays Amy, and it's a breakout performance if I've ever seen one. The actress is best known for playing a nun on Desperate Housewives, which gives her work here as the sexually voracious but morally conflicted Amy a nice little tweak. Hamilton, with her thin blonde hair and sapphire blue eyes and skin so pale it's almost clear, looks a lot like Renee Zellweger might look – if she was pretty, radiant and smart as a whip. Hamilton accomplishes things here with a blank stare that most contemporary actresses her age need a page of monologue to convey.

The press screening on Sunday morning started out packed, but journalists trickled out throughout. The 75% of the audience that stayed seemed to enjoy Stay quite a bit, although the experience was undeniably hampered by a crap digital projection that painted orange noise on almost every shot of Hamilton's otherwise stunning face.

Word around town has it that the film's "edgy" content is scaring off buyers. The very fact that the plot hinges on dog fellatio aside, I wish the suits weren't so afraid. Stay is an adult comedy about a girl who blew her dog and lived to regret it, but it's also an incredibly sweet and insightful adult comedy about a girl who blew her dog and lived to regret it. Bobcat Goldthwait has somehow produced a script that understands something about the gulf between what men claim they want from women, and the way they behave when we give it to them. Its careful balance of old-Hollywood melodrama (the score is hilarious, by turns silent film tragic and 50s soap opera subtle) and college humor charges the film with a bizarre kind of energy that I'm not sure I've ever seen on screen. Stay deserves to be seen.

Others on Stay: The Hollywood Reporter's Duane Byrge calls it a "carnal, crazy and, most amazingly, heartwarming love story," while Todd McCarthy at Variety feels the film "far exceeds the limits of how far a one-joke comedy can be extended," and describes a theatrical run as "a real long shot."