thumbnail of The Brutalist (4 hrs long) okay perhaps not the best example
And not exactly 4 hours of easy watching.
It’s not for the Marvel crowd but it’s an amazing movie wIth world class cinematography and it sucks you in.
It didn’t seem like 4 hours at all to me.
yeah i didn’t regard it as a particular difficult film at all.
but people are different and at different levels. tons of people in this thread seem to flip out at the notion some films aren’t for everyone. not everyone reads at the same grade level, but for some reason the idea of films being at different levels is very offensive to folks.
running a marathon is a lot harder than running a mile. and we have people who can’t run a mile telling us marathons are stupid and shouldn’t exist.
Thanks for explaining that different people like different movies. Truly groundbreaking stuff, right up there with the marathon metaphor.
I’m not a film student but I assume that long, comparatively difficult films by Tarkovsky, Ozu, etc are a lot of what the film students are watching and I would imagine that the professors are commentating on more recent developments
Tarkovsky films are incredible but are a “watch once in your lifetime” sort of deal.
I asked my grandmother if she had seen STALKER and she said yes, when it came out in theaters, like 40 years ago (in the USSR), and I asked if she was interested in re-watching it with her grandkids
She said: “No. It’s a very difficult film. A very difficult film. You watch it only once because you don’t get the same feeling a second time”
I watched it like thrice and it only got better and more fascinating on every rewatch.
that’s weird. i’ve watched many of them multiple times.
That may be true but the example in the article, Jules et Jim, is under 2 hours long.
Right? They should be making them watch the entire Lord of the Rings extended trilogy instead.
Love that people complain about the length of movies while simultaneously happily siting through eight, hour+ long episodes of Stranger Things over two evenings.
Especially when many hours could have easily been left on the cutting room floor of most streaming shows, but they need to streeetch the runtime so that the writers can meet their contractual, or whatever other internal requirements.
My favorite is when they they say something like “it starts getting good in season 3”. Like I’m going to watch tens of hours of a show that kind of sucks just to see if it actually starts getting good or not?
Of course, the reality is that they aren’t really watching the show like I would - as in, they aren’t sitting down and giving it their undivided attention. The show is on, but they’re also on their phones the entire time, or it’s on in the background and they are doing something else, or whatever. Probably one of the reasons why the show feels like it’s full of filler - they need to make sure that someone that’s only sort of paying attention can still follow what’s going on.
or they just have more patient and different standards than you do.
tons of shows are bad or awkward in their first season, and then go on to become blockbusters later on as the creative team finds its stride. that’s just part of the process. Very few shows are banger from start to finish because of all the complexity involve in creating a show over multiple years.
Personally I really enjoy watching how a show changes over time as team members, cast members, etc come and go. Part of my enjoyment of a show is the process of the show changing, for better or worse. And it’s interesting to compare seasons and episodes against each other as they vary in quality.
I’m pretty sure that’s actually true.
Doesn’t surprise me at all, really. Seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy too, because if you make a show like that, then someone who sits down and actually tries to watch it is more likely to start getting bored and starts to get out that second screen.
The other issue, particularly with movies, is a lot of this stuff is created with the idea of making it easier to translate to other languages, hence things like the overly simplified dialog.
Love that people complain about the length of movies while simultaneously happily siting through eight, hour+ long episodes of Stranger Things over two evenings.
Because a movie is a constant continuation, where as each episode has a hard end and you can stop and decide if you want to continue or stop.
Except that if you look at the stats, most Netflix viewers binge watch (88% here), and most engage in long binges (70% here reported 5 episodes or more at a time), binge watching is by all accounts ‘the norm’ for streaming service users.
So while you may be able to ‘decide if you want to continue or stop’ the statistics show that the vast majority of people end up watching much, much longer than a movie runtime - which was my point.
because most people put it on as background noise, like they did with TV.
half my my ‘binge watching’ is me falling asleep and waking up four hours later and the show is still going on. And then the next day I go back to where I was, usually 5-6 episodes back.
People tend to be more willing to do a lot of something if it’s broken up into smaller parts.
As an example, my great-grandmother used to always cut desserts and appetizers into smaller sizes if she noticed they weren’t being eaten. No one would take a large slice of cake but lots of people would take a small slice and then another small slice after. My grandmother took that advice from her and so did my mom, and it really does work very well. Same applies to movies and tv shows.
yeah this is just that large singular tasks tend to demand more of us than multiple smaller tasks.
Yeah that’s a good point. It’s a psychological hurdle.
Though there is nothing stopping anyone from pausing a movie partway through and returning to it later.
Even though I said that, I am more reluctant to start watching a movie because of that time commitment, but I have done that when I did start some movies but wasn’t really feeling like I could stay interested in the moment.
I know a lot of people who hate watching just part of a movie. I’m one of those people too, though I also don’t really like tv shows normally. I’d rather a standalone film over one in a series as well. If I’m going to watch something, I want it to start and end in the same sitting, and ideally be 90-120 minutes, though there are exceptions of course.
true, but it sucks.
a movie is meant to be consumed as a unified whole. so is each tv episode. it’s typically more immersive when you watch it whole.
Doesn’t mean people are attentive throughout though. I think it were Netflix execs that are currently pushing writers to constantly reiterate plot points because people aren’t paying attention.
I read the same, and I feel like that is a negative feedback loop.
Like the more the content is written so that people don’t have to pay attention and plot and scenery is verbally stated by actors, the less people will feel like they need to pay attention… and then they’ll turn to their phone.
Its gonna come back to bite them when they dumb the content down and people realize they don’t actually need to pay for Netflix to run in the background, and can instead just have YouTube videos of people reciting the plot to them while they doodle on their phones.
Not to completely invalidate your point but streaming shows are pretty formulaic in terms of pacing, with convenient break intervals, and are seldom very deep. Films are harder to break up around a bathroom trip or decide to put on hold until another day.
Not to completely invalidate your point but have you ever noticed the [pause] button when you’re watching a movie?
The exception is for cinema films, and any cinema film over two hours long (which is very rare) will generally have an intermission. Not that we were limiting the discussion to cinema entertainment anyway.
I read the other day that Netflix goes out of their way to restate the premises vocally and frequently as possible, and has as much plot duplication as possible so that people can still enjoy it while they’re watching their phones.
i mean some of the movies film professors pick, i had trouble sitting through, uh, 20-30 years ago (that is not an estimate i was one of those students) so is this on the professors? what are the films?
Theres something about homework that can make anything insufferable.
yeah. the university i did my undergrad at, they had their “international cinema” where they aired all the “boring” films their hoity toity professors wanted their students to watch. it was the best free date night all week after i dropped that major. damn good films, but when i had to watch them? please no.
it’s precisely why i am a home cook and not a professional chef. once you turn something to work, you can burn the love out of it. i never want to stop loving food.
totally. I recently read a book i was supposed to have read in school, and really liked it. I probably would have liked it at that age, but couldnt really sit through it.
Lyrical Nitrate
Hey chadGPT, summarize this Fellini for me.
Great question, let’s dig into this! Federico Fellini’s 8½ is a sequel to his previous hit film Se7en, and its protagonists are a group of eight friends. One of the friends becomes a father, and his baby counts as the “½” in the title. The group gets into various crazy adventures, such as being a failed film director, fantasising about hot women, having mommy issues, and hating religion. The overall message may be summarised as: friendship is magic.
Do you have any further questions on French New Wave films?
You want to re-calibrate from the constant barrage of content? Find a way to watch The Wrath of God its a good movie that opens with a series of 30 second set shots of water flowing. Its like anti-transformers level of stillness
That’s like saying math students are having trouble sitting through a calculus class. All that means is the better, more deserving ones who put the work in will be successful. A tale as old as time.
Or it means that the education system is tailored for one specific learning style and that those with different styles or a neurodivergency are shit out of luck.
Or the more likely, it’s a bunch of new students who’ve grown up watching everything in portrait mode and short bursts with Subway Runner or someone cutting soap for some reason on half the screen.
I’m absolutely not an expert and not qualified here. But if we accept that you’re 100% right and need way more broad options, is it even possible to solve this at scale? (I’m assuming we’re all talking about the US since our education is atrocious). 350M Americans spread out across 3.5M sq miles - only smaller in landmass than China, Canada, and Russia, but with substantially LESS uninhabitable land and a relatively large population. That means our population density is nearly ¼ of China’s.
How many different learning styles do we support? Do they each get their own tailored schools, each with their own full staff? How do you equally support the 1/5 of the country (60M+) that live in all those spread out rural communities? And what time scale can we even fix this problem on, understanding that we’re in the midst of a teacher shortage as it is?
I think proper spending on education absolutely is part of this equation, but someone will have to gut our military spending, so that’s hurdle number one. But regardless, tax dollars being a limited resource… I wonder how much spending doing this right would cost. For a full educational overhaul.
We should only support neurodivergent learning styles. The neurotypical kids can just conform or end up in prison; they’re not worth the tax dollars to accommodate, sorry. It’s simply not cost effective, we’ll have to leave them behind.
Or we can just prescribe them drugs to make them conformant.
you can’t accommodate everyone. one of the biggest problems with our current education system is exactly that we are doing this and it’s gutting education.
people are going to fail. they need to fail. that is how they learn. some people are smarter, faster, stronger than others, and we need to celebrate that fact rather than pretend it’s an evil to be eliminated.
education is systematically failing because we are trying to squeeze blood from stone. and the expectations on all sides are completely out of whack. but nobody wnats to ‘go back’ to the stuff that worked because it’s considered ‘oppressive’. which was pens, paper, and respect for educators. technology has overwhelmingly been a disaster for education.
my film education had required viewings. as in we once per week we had to go to the cinema and watch the movies and attendance was required. if you didn’t attend the viewing you got marked down. you typically only watched a movie on your own if it was a project you were working on for a paper, because you had to do repeated viewings.
Not really.
I’ve seen similar complaints about reading assignments for college students as well. The stamina to focus on one piece of work for an extended period of time isn’t there compared to a generation ago.
You might have had some students not be able to focus before. Now it is almost the entire class.
can’t run a marathon if you can’t run a mile.
our kids can’t run a mile and can’t read a minute. and we blame everyone but ourselves for this.
All that means is the better, more deserving ones who put the work in will be successful.
Oh, how adorably naive.
There’s a difference between a movie you want to go see in a theater and the film assigned as classwork by a professor.
Same as if you were told you had to read a book by an author you don’t care for in a writing style that doesn’t click with you snd maybe even from a different time with framing that doesn’t exist today.
It’s work.
Maybe desire to play with a phone and use social media might be an issue, but at least some of these same kids that have a hard time sitting through a film would have doodled, started falling asleep or just daydreamed instead.
most of the comments in this thread are the same as the students in the article. they just want to be pandered to.
and think think anything that doesn’t pander to them is stupid and worthless and they see no point in it existing.
people failing to understand the universe doesn’t’ revolve around them and their opinions. almost as if there are other people out there with different opinions and some of those people have far more informed opinions than their own.
I’ve always considered myself a film buff but even i’m struggling to sit through most of the tripe that’s coming out of hollywood these days. Arts films have always been a challenge but rewarding once their completed.
everything is being done by committee now, and a lot of art films aren’t made for the art anymore, the are made to be award bait. same with a lot of indie stuff too. hence why so many of the oscar nominees pander to identity political correctness.
Oppenheimer was rough. The whole fuckin thing about whether he was a commie or not, or just how commie he was, is it commie to not want to drop the bomb, etc. Myopic, tedious. You could cut an hour out and it would be the same movie. They didn’t even get into the “Demon Core”.
I’m surprised that’s what your experience of it was. To me it was about his hopeless (arguably naive) struggle to do what he thought was right and true in a time where both truth and morality were mostly becoming weaponized in service of alignments of power. He thought he could thread the needle only to time and time again have simply been used by others to further their own agendas, leaving hurt bystanders in his wake.
I somewhat agree that an hour could be cut out, though I don’t exactly know which parts.
Admittedly that is a more accurate synopsis. It was very informative in terms of how/why those events took place, how the politics of the era were conducted, the connections to our current era, a lot of things that don’t often get discussed. It is probably a very “important” movie, unfortunately it’s not a very entertaining one. Compare it to “Cheney”, for example, which was moderately informative, but highly entertaining.
I knew Hollywood would ruin it and I actively avoided seeing it.
Now that I know how it was ruined I don’t need to watch. Maybe in 10 years I’ll ask AI to do a “trololol’s cut” for me and I’ll watch it.
@trolololol There are numerous films about the Manhattan Project, most of them better. Just much less Michael Bay, if you know what I mean. Made for grown-ups.
I recommend a docu-drama that came out the same year, A Compassionate Spy. Much more compelling.
Thx for the suggestion, I went after the trailer and saw it now.
It’s a biography. I’ll skip. I’m assuming it’s the typical trope of the story of a particular person and every character has to fit into the good or the bad guys.
I tend to like books and movies where there’s no clear line between good and bad, to the point that the author doesn’t bother with the distinction. AND stories about things, projects or societies instead of individualistic centered plots. Not that those are bad, it’s that I migrated to an English speaking country and English literature is really really biased in these things, and I crave for different styles.
Cinema Sins will probably cover it in a year or two and that usually covers enough of a movie to get the gist of it. /S
I missed the /s , what’s cinema sins?
YouTube channel that points out foibles and errors in film in a smarmy fast format.
Oppenheimer is one of the few movies where I seriously considered just leaving before it even ended because I was so bored. And I wish I did because by the end of it I was pissed that I spent that much time watching it.
I must have looked at my watch about 20 times wondering when it was going to end.
I feel like most of the recent Christopher Nolan movies have been extremely disappointing. His movies now basically consist of 2-3hrs of tension building that lead to nothing.
(And that trinity test was pathetic.)
I think he’s a great director, I’ve enjoyed all of his movies except Oppenheimer and Tenet.
That’s why i said recent. Tenet and Oppenheimer are both his most recent movies. The last Nolan movie I really enjoyed was Interstellar.
I only ever had Facebook, Twitter and Reddit and just couldn’t get into Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. so this is really perplexing to me. It just can’t be true can it?
I also can’t stand using a phone while watching a TV show (paid streaming, no ads) or a movie. It’s sad to me that people are unwilling to immerse themselves in something for just a while.
Did you have an iPad/phone shoved in front of you during mealtime, or when waiting for a sibling during their sports practice or game, or while waiting at the doctors office, or if your parents had guests or were visiting a friend, or in literally every single potential moment of boredom that could be filled with learning patience, reflection and just enjoying silence?
Because that’s the new normal for a whole generation of kids.
I have young kids in gen alpha, bought them up with quite minimal screen time, and the behavioural differences between them and their peers that have been bought up with heavy screen use iPad as the primary tool of choice is stark and very concerning for those kids’ future.
And lemme tell you, none of the parents I gently tried to encourage the importance of boredom with over the years changed their behaviour much. As soon as it became a regular tool to deal with an child needing attention it became a very hard thing to part with.
It distresses me to see this trend. It’s like some parents have a reflex to stick a tablet in front of their kid, even if the kid doesn’t need it or ask for it.
I work with a 4 year old kid who loves looking out windows. When he has free time, he often goes to look through them, even though there’s nothing particular interesting going on out there. He’s a chill little dude, completely mute, and I’ve never seen him angry. I’ve been told he likes to sit in a big chair on his front porch and watch everything and everyone go by, like a little old man on a summer day.
Yet every morning he comes in, he walks in holding a tablet. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m fairly certain this kid would be happy staring out a window for the whole 15 or so minutes it takes to arrive.
I always loved staring out the window in the car - I loved long rides because of it, showing little to no interest in whatever our destination was. It gave my mind the space to wander, to ponder, to go on imaginative flights of fancy that helped me learn to organize my thoughts. It’s upsetting that kids are being deprived of such moments nowadays.
Why pick a major you hate??
I don’t think the kids hate it, just that the attention span isn’t what it used to be.
But it also works for us imo, to a degree. I at least find the pacing of 80’s or 90’s tv much calmer. And I daresay a movie from the B&W era would be slower still.
And I don’t think there’s yet a professional short-form making masterclass so that’s where the kids end up
Ever watch 2001: A Space Odyssey? I love it, but man it’s slow.
Also it’s a movie that asks more questions than it answers, which annoys a lot of people.
I saw Terminator 3 in the theater. The first 20-30:minutes, with that crazy chase, I was like, is this going to be the whole film? Eventually it does show down and take a breath, but I still remember my initial reaction to that.
a lot of people are idiots if they are looking for ‘answers’ in entertainment products.
i don’t expect my car to tell me the purpose of life. i expect it to get me places.
and the purpose of film class is to teach you how films work as a medium and learn to analyze them as such. not to entertain you.
a lot of people are idiots if they are looking for ‘answers’ in entertainment products.
Yeah psshtt they can go to their mom to cry about “satisfying narratives” and “stories which make sense”.
A car is a mode of transport. That’s why it doesn’t tell you shit, but you can use it yo travel. However movies aren’t modes of transportation, and instead are media for stories.
Is this all honestly news to you? Have you hit your head? Want me to call an ambulance?
sorry, do you think all stories must be a certain way? or subscribe to a certain structure?
i mean, there are lots of different types of cars. a monster truck isn’t for travel, not is drag strip racer.
No, I’m just not a twat who threatens people with violence with they have a different perspective. Do you want to go beat the crap out of Stanley Kubrick because he didn’t make the movie you wanted him to make? Does it offend you that thinks you don’t like or enjoy, exist?
“A certain way” in much the same sense all cars need four+ wheels, a steering wheel and an accelerator and some breaks. If I get into the tiny details, having lights is also rather good.
What you were saying is that it’s unreasonable to expect stories to be… well, stories. You know, with a beginning, middle and end?
Unless you’re trying to tell me that two-wheeled chain driven transport with no steering wheel or motor is also “a car”, I think I’ve made my point.
i’m not aware of any definition of story that requires it have those elements, or they be presented in that order.
you have a very narrow definition of what a story is, and seem to think anything outside of that structure is bad or wrong.
i mean you can define a car however you want. doesn’t mean other people have to drive such cars or agree with you. definitions change. is a semi truck a car? it has all those qualities. but i wouldn’t call it a car and i’d considerate to have zero overlap with operating a car, hence why operating trucks often requires a CBD and not a regular drivers license.
I’m guessing you never took a college level film class? I took several. A lot of the movies we watched, and I’ve seen seen outside of class, don’t subscribe to your definition of story at all. I still very much enjoyed them and thought some of them were far superior to marvel movies.
I don’t think you understood what I meant. Most movies wrap up all the plotlines at the end. 2001 just leaves the viewer wondering what happens next. You see the star child, then the movie just ends. There’s also no explanation about the people that built the monoliths and transformed Bowman.
That’s the point of the movie. It’s not suppose to answer questions.
You simple want it to be a totally different movie than it is. You want it to be a nice convenient package that doesn’t make you question anything or think.
Other people actually enjoy thinking about things. They don’t want answers and they don’t care about plotlines.
I think you have me confused with someone else.
I don’t think you understood what I meant. Most movies wrap up all the plotlines at the end. 2001 just leaves the viewer wondering what happens next. You see the star child, then the movie just ends. There’s also no explanation about the people that built the monoliths and transformed Bowman.
that’s you.
i am still awestruck by that short of that girl who tosses her phone up in the air and it spins around a few times and gets the amazing slomo spinny shot of the beach and then boobs. I’m gonna be honest, i used to do camera work and i still can’t figure out how she thought it up (not the boobs part, everyone can think up boobs) she is a genius. she could cut out the boobs part it is such an amazing shot.
If only we’ve shown kids Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies a bit more…
I don’t see how that’s relevant.
people hate doing work.
Well they should fail then I guess.
To be fair those older movies are long as fuck. I watched something with 10 minute long opening credits the other day. I had to skip it.
I remember watching 2001, a space odyssey, and being thoroughly underwhelmed by it. Visually stunning, but if I hadn’t also read the book, I’d have had absolutely no idea what was happening for most of the film.
Watching it builds character
Umm actually ☝️🤓
90 minutes was thought to be how long someone could go between toilet visits, so movies were around that long until home video started. Alright cinema used to have intervals too, they should bring that back.
I don’t want to sound rude, but have you actually looked at the chart?
I have 😁 It was said to be the ideal time on average but you can’t stop filmmakers going over.
The Truffaut film referenced is an hour and 45 minutes.
What movie had 10 minutes of opening credits? Back when credits were at the open, it used to be about 30 seconds of credits.
Plenty movies from the 40s and 50s ran all the credits at the beginning along with an overture. IMO the overture is one of the best parts of older movies, which often had amazing, sweeping soundtracks
Please name one. Never seen one that had more than 2 minutes of opening credit even if you include the extra symphonic stuff as “credits” (we don’t count previews toward runtimes now, so not sure it’s a fair comparison). Maybe one or two had a dedicated symphonic opening but that was exceedingly rare
Reading your reaction to everyone else’s comments, did you read the part where I said credits and an overture? What’s got you so wound up over this? You’ll notice I never said 10 minutes like that first guy, but most movies have way longer opening titles than 30 seconds, which is what you said…
Which Lawrence of Arabia version from the 40s or 50s (your words) are you referring to?
If you mean the famous 60s film…. Yes, it has a minute of credits and another 4 or 5 for the overture. Not credits.
Again, still looking for examples of extended credit sequences. Overtures are basically the same as intermissions. That’s a totally different beast.
Even if you want to lump them together, we’re still at the “one or two” I mentioned. Huge Hollywood blockbusters. Exceedingly rare.
I literally said overture in the comment that’s got you all bothered
Oh boy. I just reread your edited comments. It’s hard to keep up when you edit like that
But yes, I would still care to hear your 40s and 50s examples. If you have one where overture+credits approaches 10 minutes, I’d be shocked. As we’ve discussed, some examples in the 60s can hit 5 minutes, but that’s about the most I’ve seen
Watched planet of the apes the other day and it had a good amount of opening credits. Couldn’t tell you the length off the top of my head
4 minutes. That’s a great example of the rare symphonic opening I was referencing.
But that’s also not the 40s or 50s.
The Outsiders had a stupidly long intro if my memory is correct. I remember taking the tape out to check if maybe it was at the end and the credits were rolling.
Lawrence of Arabia.
Why do people keep naming 60s films with 4 minutes of musical intros when I’m asking for 40s and 50s films with 10 minute credit intros lol?
Edit: overture is the word I was looking for, not “musical intro”. But that’s not a thing that happened in early cinema (barring Chaplin, who had strict control of scores - would be interested if someone else cares to google that)
4 minutes? Not the version I saw in theatre, my friend. Mind you, it’s not exactly what you wanted either, even though it was longer than ten minutes of music at the start: a lot of it was playing while the screen was black, then at a certain point every theme in the music came together, the glorious visuals started up, and I knew I was in for a masterpiece.
Star Trek the Motion Picture has like a 10 minute opening credits
you lie those credits were at least an hour
Am I being trolled or do people not know how years work
It was more of a response to your original comment which didn’t mention any particular decade.
I saw It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World recently and the whole movie was like 1 hour too long at minimum, with 10 minutes to both start and end the movie. Funny, but way too long.
Even its title is too long, you could cut about 50% of those words and not lose any meaning.
Yeah, that still sounds reasonable. Cutting something closer to 80% would be just Mad.
Bambi and snow white both have pretty long opening credits with beautiful music. I think of it as endurance training for my child it’s so long and boring.
Only 10 minutes credits? That’s weak.
To be fair you’ve already probability seem the best parts stolen, cut and pasted into modern day rehash money grabs. Enjoy your souless ai slop where the actors repeat the obvious plot over and over? Perhaps you would care for another transformer or fast and furious film? The cinematic filmography chopped so it fits vertically on a cell phone screen! But hey at least the actors repeat the main plot points so you know whats going on.
I watched both “Dune” from Denis Villeneuve yesterday, back to back, thats gotta be 4h straight. Went to pee once
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 CONGRATULATIONS ON WATCHING SO MUCH TELEVISION!!!!
(seriously, is that what you wanted?)
Thanks!! 😀 👍
What about three-hour films?
Some modern ones are absolute garbage, but some are worth the bladder pain!
I don’t think he knows about Second Disc, PattyMcB
