Film discourse on social media is back. This time around, I’m horrified by posts from young moviegoers who freely admit to fast-forwarding to “the boring parts” (like, you know, discussion scenes), or even watching them at double speed. Array Let’s talk about attention spans. . . and how we don’t have it anymore.
I’m not saying I blame those people. The modern generation takes credit for our brain’s addictive tendencies by educating us to use our phones as if we were in a voracious search for serotonin. Meanwhile, blockbusters are longer, but also faster and louder: there is a big difference between 3 hours of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels and 3 hours of Avengers: Endgame. When we’re asked to pay attention to a discussion for too long or look at a view that doesn’t seem to advance the plot, we pull out our phones. (I’m also guilty of this when I watch them at home, which is part of the explanation why I like watching videos in the theater, where I have a duty to pay attention. ) them. )
But there’s an art to this boring film, and some of them wouldn’t be as convincing if they tried to shake us with every frame. Here are some wonderful videos that invite you to get bored by injecting a little silence or stopping in a long conversation. They will move you deeply, challenge your preconceptions, or maybe put you to sleep. Any one of them would literally be a victory.
Duration: one hundred minutes
Writer-director Kyle Edward Ball’s film began as a YouTube channel faithful to user-submitted recreations of the nightmares of his formative years. The plot of this feature film takes this concept and is about a four-year-old boy named Kevin who is injured while alone at home with his six-year-old sister, Kaylee. What follows makes little narrative sense, and in fact, it’s easy to see why the micro-budget film polarized audiences. Where the film succeeds, and brilliantly, is in recreating the feeling of a child’s twilight world, in which even a familiar space can seem strange, unsettling, and terrifying under the right circumstances. Ball takes his time to create this atmosphere, and that’s almost the entire atmosphere. I’m not sure that what he intends to do has been done better than ever.
Where to stream: Shudder, Hulu, virtual rental
Duration: minutes
I’ve watched pretty much everything David Lynch has produced and I still don’t know how to talk about the Inland Empire. If you don’t count Twin Peaks: The Return (the 18 hours Lynch needs you to consider a film), it is the most recent of the director’s feature films, although it was released in 2006 (the first film shot entirely on virtual video, recently remastered). There are sexual personnel and anthropomorphic rabbits in the story of a woman who offers everything to get a role in a Hollywood movie, only to sink into a fever sleep of barely 3 hours. Whether it’s a poignant and surreal immersion in a kind of cinematic collective unconscious, or an impenetrable collection of non-sequences. No one evokes feelings of unease and dread like Lynch, even though we, as viewers, are sure of who we are.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, virtual location
Duration: minutes
At just 81 minutes long, it’s hard to get too bored of David Gelb’s documentary, but what’s at stake here is more non-public than disturbing. With music by Philip Glass, the film follows Jiro Ono, who was then 85 years old. Sushi master, considered one of the world’s most important living sushi chefs. She makes sushi that looks (and probably tastes) amazing, and she makes the same sushi day in and day out together with her kids, all while continuing to hone her skills. his 80 years and more. That’s all. Just a slight exploration of the concept that the key to happiness may be to be smart about something, but also never to be completely satisfied with your talents.
Where to stream: Hulu, Peacock, Tubi, Crackle, virtual rental
Duration: 102 minutes
Bob (Bill Murray) goes on business to Tokyo in the middle of his first midlife crisis. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is a recent Yale graduate who accompanies her husband, a prominent photographer, to the city. The two strangers spend time together. and revel in the city with a kind of melancholy that isn’t quite romantic. In terms of the plot, that’s about it, but it still ends up being deeply moving.
Where to stream: Max, virtual rental
Duration: 132 minutes (theatrical cut)
There’s one scene in the first Star Trek movie that’s debatable not because of its political or philosophical content, but because of its length: a barely five-minute round-trip tour of the newly redesigned USS Enterprise, accompanied by a catchy track. Jerry Goldsmith. This is either a maximum erotic piece of spaceship porn or one of the most boring sequences ever filmed, depending on your point of view (in fact, I like team spaceship porn). The rest of director Robert Wise’s film, released in theaters before it was completely finished, has a majestic rhythm. There are no fights, little action and a lot of serious pontification. In some tactics it seems too difficult to be 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it has its own strange power.
Where to stream: Max, Paramount, virtual rental
Duration: minutes
Much of the discovered footage film’s runtime deals (though realistically) with boring other people wandering the Maryland woods, while disturbing, though rarely exciting, events test them and pit them against each other. . Not much really. It happens before the memorable final minutes, but all of this contributes to a sense of unbearable tension. Indeed, it is a game in which the sum is greater than the (often boring) parts.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Duration: 127 minutes
When we think of spy dramas, we tend to think of Bond (James Bond), Bourne or Atomic Blonde. . . but Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is anything else entirely, a quietly paranoid film set in the dirty and dark ’70s. Gary Oldman plays George Smiley, played by John Le Carré, who comes out of retirement to help uncover a mole at the highest levels of British intelligence. There is hardly any action, and not even a major voice. Instead, Tinker Tailor argues that espionage is just about information. : who owns it, who controls it, and who knows how to get it.
Where to stream: Starz, virtual rental
Duration: minutes
Among boring Russian films, Russian Ark is particularly challenging, but also ultimately truly captivating and rewarding. It’s also an ideal technical feat, taking place in a single uninterrupted take. Filmed in St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace, the story, such as it is, comes to an unnamed narrator who wanders the halls of the building, encountering genuine and fictional characters from the city’s 300-year history. The discussions are largely philosophical, but the scope increases as the film progresses. In the end, we found ourselves with another 2,000 people and several orchestras, all moving seamlessly through time and space.
Where to stream: Hoopla, Kanopy, Plex
Duration: 159 minutes
Few Stanley Kubrick films could not appear here; The director loves his planned pace. Eyes Wide Shut is a particularly appealing case, however, as a movie about Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and an evil sex cult doesn’t sound like something that’s likely to put other people to sleep. And yet, other people were discouraged by the bloodless formalism and the detached, dreamlike atmosphere of the film. Kubrick’s swan song was a kind of bait and switch, promising a look behind the covers to one of the Hollywood couples at the time and instead delivering a slow-paced warning about the risks of sexual obsession.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Duration: 143 minutes
Japanese director Akira Kurosawa is best known for epic films like Seven Samurai and Rashomon, but even in those action-packed films, an ambivalence toward lives filled with violence shines through. His filmography is also filled with quieter, more contemplative works, with 1952’s Ikiru (roughly meaning “Living”) being one of the most productive. Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura, the Kurosawa regular) plays a veteran bureaucrat who has been doing the same monotonous task for decades. Just as he discovers that he is dying of abdominal cancer, a parents’ organization arrives seeking permits to cover a cesspool and build a playground for the community’s children. Watanabe vows to go against everything he’s learned about following rules to help parents overcome the bureaucracy that would likely end his dream. It’s a universal but quintessentially Japanese story about heroic deeds, even if they usually involve shuffling through paperwork.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, virtual location
Duration: hours and 10 minutes
What do you mean you don’t like watching a courtroom scene that lasts more than 3 hours? Director Stanley Kramer followed up Inherit the Wind with this legal drama depicting a fictionalized edition of one of the twelve Nuremberg military tribunals that determined the horrific extent of Nazi war crimes after World War II. Spencer Tracy leads one of the most star-studded casts of all time (?), adding Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, William Shatner and Clift, among others.
Where to stream: Tubi, MGM, virtual rental
Duration: minutes
Galoup (Denis Lavant) remembers his work in Djibouti, leading a male segment within the French Foreign Legion in the sunny queer era with the help of writer and director Claire Denis. All goes well for Gallup until the arrival of Gilles Sentain (Grégoire Colin), who inadvertently threatens Galoup’s relationship with his commander and inspires almost irrational jealousy in Galoup. There are possibilities for violent drama, but the film favors the languid and elliptical (also the very sweaty), creating tension through striking landscapes and brilliant camerawork. Beau Travail regularly appears on all-time video lists, and with good reason.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, virtual rental
Duration: 112 minutes
This is a David Lynch film so unusual from the director that it barely resembles his film; Watch this Disney release followed by Inland Empire and feel your brain melt. The wonderful Richard Farnsworth, joined by Sissy Spacek, plays the real Alvin Straight, who has been driving across the country to make a lawn mower stop with his sick brother. , traveling approximately five miles per hour, which also reflects the speed at which the narrative evolves. Lynch’s sensitivity brings a sense of newness to the slow story that unfolds in a rural landscape.
Where to stream: Disney, The Criterion Channel, virtual rental
Duration: minutes
Andrew Haigh’s romantic drama stars Tom Cullen and Chris New as two guys who meet up at the club and spend the main weekend together. They communicate about their interests and their past, eat, walk, and engage in some frank sex (especially for these times). Honestly, it’s still rare to find a mainstream film that has even a fundamental understanding of the mechanics of cis homosexuality. male gender. Anyway! A move planned for Monday raises the stakes by putting a time limit on their relationship, but otherwise, all the dramatic beats move, and the film offers a charming, touching, and sometimes genuine look at modern relationships. .
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel, AMC+, digital rental
Duration: minutes
Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke walk around Vienna, chatting freely and offering monologues about their perspectives on life, art, and love. Director Richard Linklater’s minimalist film with an impeccable cast is incredibly romantic and utterly realistic, with its plotless premise as ambitious and risky as everything in cinema. If you like it, two more installments follow at full speed.
Where to stream: digital rental
Duration: 118 minutes
Jim Jarmusch directs Adam Driver as the main character, a bus driver and poet who follows pretty much the same regimen every day (which is deeply relevant, though more common in real life than on screen). He drives his bus, walks his spouse’s dog, and stops at a bar for an afternoon beer, writing poetry in his bag every day. As a film, it’s intentionally undramatic, though it revolves around the small-occasion kind. that can cause a primary disorder in your life.
Where to stream: Prime Video
Duration: 201 minutes
Even the duration of Chantal Ackerman’s masterpiece is long, the finished film lasts more than 3 hours and takes place in just 3 days, with a plot that, through the design, barely moves. And even! The film captures the highly disciplined schedule of a widowed mother who follows the same regimen every day, including some sad sexual pictures involving a single client before her son returns home from school. Everything is quietly captivating. When the monotony of Jeanne’s daily life begins to dissipate, very slowly, the resulting depression is as fascinating, hypnotic, and as subtly terrifying as anything that has ever gone before.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, virtual rental
Duration: one hundred minutes
While its pacing may not be as languid as the other videos indexed here, It Follows’ premise makes it clear that we’re on a completely different spectrum than other chase-based horror videos; Even the slowest of slow zombies can also overcome threats in writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s film. The plot comes to something that can also be described simply as a sexually transmitted curse, in which a victim is haunted by an entity that can watch. like any. He doesn’t chase you, and he doesn’t even outright threaten you, but he will chase you to the end of the world, if necessary, taking his time. It is the film most guilty of the discourse on “great horror. ” ; Some would say the entire subgenre is boring.
Where to stream: Netflix, Hulu, virtual rental
Duration: 121 minutes
Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos, who earned Oscar nominations for The Favorite the year after its release, is obviously never in a hurry, and each of his films employs a speed that is described as leisurely. In Le Favorite, this taste serves to adorn the satire; here, it’s helping to create a deeply unsettling atmosphere. Inspired by Greek tragedy (Iphigenia in Aulis via Euripides, in particular), the film presents a probably very productive circle of relatives (led by Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman) who come into contact with a mysterious teenager (Barry Keoghan) who he hints to himself. gradually in his lives. We know he’s up to something and, eventually, they know it too, but it’s not until the final act that we fully realize his motivations and his ruthlessly planned revenge on him.
Where to stream: Max, virtual rental
Duration: minutes
In Ingmar Bergman’s old fantasy there are many incidents, but also a lot of calm. Many of the director’s films generate waves of deep feelings that start as bubbles just below the surface and only peak sporadically, but strongly. Here, on the contrary, we have the story of the time of the Black Death, of other people in other stages of acceptance, knowing for certain that God, if not dead, is at least completely silent and uninterested toward them. Max von Sydow plays the cynical knight Antonius Block, who plays chess with death even when in his travels he encounters a parade of peasants whose only hope for happiness lies in defying entropy and embracing life.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, virtual location
Duration: minutes
Director David Lowery has a pretty brilliant track record, at least outside of some perfectly successful Disney films, and A Ghost Story is probably one of the most productive contemplations of death ever filmed. A man dies suddenly, but instead of moving. He then chases after the woman he left behind, while dressed in a classic ghost sheet. That’s it as far as the plot is concerned, but there’s a poignant appearance to the man’s slow march through the afterlife and his growing realization that replacement is painful. but it hurts less than to endure. Never before or since have I cried at a scene in which a grieving woman was eating a whole cake.
Where to stream: Max, virtual rental
Duration: 179 minutes
The story on which the film is based, via Japanese editor Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore, IQ84), is only about forty-five pages, and yet this film adaptation runs three hours. It is the story of a widowed theater director who creates a bond with the young woman to take him to Hiroshima for his new project. Offering few incidents and relatively minimal dialogue, the cinematography and sound design make those silent sequences captivating. In the end, it is a story about the transcendent. good semblance of human connection, even through all the pain that separates us. It’s also a movie about how sometimes it’s okay to chat with your Lyft driver.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel, virtual rental
Duration: 185 minutes
Kubrick, who never actually touched the same genre twice, tried his hand at the old drama to surprising effect, even though it was probably the least watched film of its time. It’s not hard to understand why, given the long running time and lack of sci-fi/horror attributes in the style of 2001 or The Shining, but it’s very much a Kubrick film, with all that that entails. The feelings are deep but distant, and it is a technical triumph, full of exquisite period details. . While the speed is undeniably slow, languid, the story of a ruthless social climber (Ryan O’Neal) is also probably the director’s funniest (in a very dry way), and also the most deeply cynical. If his other films seek to locate the goodness of humanity, he maintains that other people are just.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Duration: 185 minutes
It is said that it is very unlikely to make a true anti-war film, since films aim to captivate and excite us, and how can you make a war film without action? Writer-director Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line is rarely a very precise anti-war film, however, it focuses much more on the philosophy of war and its effects on the lives and minds of the foot soldiers who They fight in it. Instead of combat sequences, the most we can do is look at the faces of the soldiers witnessing it. The result may not be the greatest war film of all time, but it is something unique in the history of this genre.
Where to stream: Starz, virtual rental
Duration: minutes
As with Malick’s unconventional take on the war movie, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn is doing something completely unforeseen with the many Vikings-adjacent films and TV shows of the last decade. The mute One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) is a fighter, but only because he was made to be one. Under the influence of a Norwegian chieftain in the Scottish Highlands, his escape leads him to befriend a more talkative boy as they make their way to the coast, beset by (mostly) terrifying visions and (occasionally) genuine threats. . The film is much more interested in the environment than in violence, of which there is little; In the long interludes of walks and mysterious dreams lies the center of the story.
Where to stream: Netflix, AMC, Shudder, virtual shopping
Duration: 147 minutes
Travis Henderson (the late Harry Dean Stanton) comes out of the desert, bewildered and probably unsure of who he is. A doctor manages to locate his brother Walt (the late and also wonderful Dean Stockwell), and Travis begins an adventure back to himself, his family and the possible options that have explained his life up to that point. Wim Wenders is a brilliant director of Desolation and presents the elegant American West as an equally strange, mysterious, and healing alien landscape. And you can see a lot of that landscape over the course of the roughly 3 hours that the movie lasts.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, virtual location
Duration: 166 minutes
Solaris is apparently a science fiction mystery about first contact with an unknowable extraterrestrial entity. It also includes a 5-minute uninterrupted scene of a car driving through a tunnel. (Nothing exciting happens in the tunnel. ) Based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem, this 1972 Soviet film by quintessential dull filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky takes you to another world that also doesn’t seem to have much going on, like astronaut psychologist Kris Kelvin. he explains. He is sent to the remote Solaris space station to determine whether it is worth pursuing the project of examining the planet below, which appears to be nothing more than a vast ocean. But there’s something going on beneath those waves, and beneath the endless, endless shots of churning waves and empty station hallways; The film and the global alien seek to lull you into a false sense of security. Tarkovsky’s aim was to move beyond what he saw as the bloodless materialism of Western science fiction and move towards something more emotionally resonant, and he’d be damned if he didn’t achieve that (although it was a bit boring).
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, virtual rental
Duration: 139 minutes
One more from Mr. Kubrick, obviously a master of very planned rhythm. The year 2001 is exciting in its magnitude – from the dawn of humanity to a long term enhanced and threatened by synthetic intelligence, to our final evolution (?) – it is simple to the many elegant and sublime asides along the journey. A round trip docks at a local station to the tune of the Blue Danube Waltz, and this is just the first of many sequences with a minimum of discussion and a maximum of classical music. The film’s kaleidoscopic and consequential ending avoids them. classic thrills in favor of something more cerebral for some. That’s why the film’s messages and meanings have been debated for decades.
Where to stream: Max, virtual rental
Running time: 161 minutes
When the Soviet State Committee for Cinematography criticized the pacing of Stalker upon its initial release, Andrei Tarkovsky reportedly replied: “The film deserves to be slower and more boring at the beginning, so that the audience who went to the wrong theater will have time to leave earlier. ” . At the end the main action begins. ” Although the “main action” here is also quite underrated, if we’re being completely honest. In the near, nebulous future, an occasion of some sort has created an area known only as “The Zone”, a region where the general rules of physics do not apply, and which is also full of wonders and terrors, the aesthetic is After the Apocalypse, basically dusty, there is a market for stalkers, Americans who know enough to help others to find what they are looking for. In this case, our stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) is attacked through characters known only as “L. ” ‘Writer’ and ‘The Professor’ to help them find a piece that can satisfy their innermost preferences. It’s easy to get lost in Tarkovsky’s world if you’re willing to give yourself over to it, and the concepts The philosophical problems involved – adding the question of whether knowing our heart’s preferences would be anything more than a crisis) are, indeed, compelling.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, virtual location
Duration: 122 minutes
Like all of Michelangelo Antonioni’s vital films, La Notte abandons plot to tell its story through atmosphere. In terms of fashion? They are just vibrations. Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau play a married couple (a bitter novelist and his indifferent wife) who live a day of social commitments even though they are increasingly aware that marriage rarely works. Antonioni knows how to find good looks in the most prosaic settings, and the dullness of it is more appealing than the action of many other films.
Where to stream: Max, Criterion Channel, virtual rental
Former child star turned dog owner.