"A Walk on the Wildside" Saul Bass designed the titles. Great mix of music, live action (cat) and titles.

ChrisL

i guess i shoulda stuck around to watch harry potter's closing credits, and moulin rouge's closing sequence is great

The opening of Arabesque is cool. It's like a liquid kaleidescope among the opening credits.

I don't remember the closing credits for Moulin Rouge, but the opening credits blew me away.

Some other opening credits that stick with me for whatever reason:

Catch Me If You Can
2001: A Space Odyssey
Dr. Strangelove
The Deep End
Brazil
Alien
Mars Attacks!
Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I'm sure some of these are just because I like the film, but just about any of them I would enjoy watching just the opening.

ha ha! gotta love monty python's holy grail and all those llamas from honduras.

Paul, if you like Charade don't miss the opening credits of Two For The Road, pure 60's, same team of Arabesque too: Maurice Binder, Mancini and Stanley Donen directing.

A lot of Kyle Cooper Stuff:

Spiderman
Spiderman 2 <-- Better than one, with a better opening sequence
Se7en

Other:
Panic Room
Fight Club

Thnx Ignacio... I'll hafta check those out.

I wanted to put Monsters Inc. on my list too, I think it's cuz it's got that same feel as Charade with the general feeling being more fun and not so much mystery/suspense.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has an extremely long animated opening by Saul Bass. Probably the longest opening he did. It's a very long movie, so I guess it's appropriate.

La Belle et la B

No opening credit discussion can go without mention of Pablo Ferro

thnx for throwing in a bit of french there, nick.
reminded me to add Amalie to the list. I love those paper cutouts of Champion (i hope i got that ID right!)

The Island of Dr. Moreau: Excerable film, cool type in titles

Zero Effect: Great film, interesting titles, has to do with signatures and alternate identities

Bound: Early Wachowski film, they did it to prove themselves for Matrix funding, a hyper-noir lesbian crime drama, great 3D type intro.

I have other favorites, but they've been mentioned already.

Moulin Rouge and Harry Potter 3 tie for most impressive closing credits.

Gatacca
Panic Room
Spiderman
Catch Me If You Can

North by Northwest
Vertigo (come to think of it, any hitchcock film and/or saul bass title)
Dr. Strangelove
From Russia with Love
Goldfinger
Catch me if you can
Pink Panther Films
Auto Focus
Harry Potter (3rd)

I don't know if somebody has posted this before, but I found it very interesting...
It currently contains 474 photos of old movies closing title.
A lot of variations in typeface & style for "The End":

http://www.flickr.com/photos/djll/sets/72157608369709836/with/3882541673/

This 2004 forum thread is new to me. I'm surprised no one cited "All The President's Men" with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, where the opening credits sequence is an extreme closeup of typewriter keys smashing onto paper and the closing shot is a teletype printout confirming Richard Nixon's resignation:

That sequence was a fantastic use of the power of the press--the close-up images of typewriter bashing paper in slow motion with huge reverberating sound was dynamite.