The Lunchtime Poll #10

Only 6 votes this last time out, but it was an oddly worded question, so I'm not surprised. And it's a total split. Maybe this next one will be more popular.



This week Heather and Veronica want to know:

On average, what is your preferred movie runtime?

6 comments:

  1. It depends for me. On your everyday, average flick... 90-105. If it's an adaptation of a novel I love, 120-150. I voted the former, though, since it's the average.

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    1. I agree. Some films need to be longer, especially when based off dense previous material, but when I'm going through films to watch for RI actors, my preferred runtime is also in the 90-105 range. If it's a weekend, I don't care as much, but I watch so many during the week, that anything over 2 hours starts screwing with my nightly schedule.

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  2. Of course, the answer is "as long as it needs to be," but frankly, I think most movies these days tend to be longer than they need to be. I've actually been adding a bunch of 1930s and 1940s films to a database recently, and it's surprisingly how many of them are in the 70-85 minute range, and I love that. Especially comedies and B-level crime or action films. They get in, do what they're there to do, and end, no fuss. It's great. That's one reason I enjoyed Premium Rush so much - it's like 85 minutes, and no wasted time. Awesome.

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    1. I totally agree. In fact, I think one of my biggest complaints when I wasn't totally grabbed by a film was that it could've easily been 15-20 minutes shorter (seems to be the average "overtime"). And on the flipside, a big compliment I give a film is to say that it was exactly the length it needed to be (like Premium Rush).

      It seems like today a lot of filmmakers think that a film needs to be almost 2 hours to be better or at least taken seriously. Like being 90 minutes is for crappy films or something, and it's not necessarily true.

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    2. Yeah, and certainly older films aren't immune from that either (how many 2+ hour silent films have I sat through and been like "oh my lord, just end already!"); it definitely is a prestige thing and has been since the advent of features, where longer films are somehow seen to be inherently more prestigious. Like you can't be taken seriously if your film isn't at 2 hours long.

      The problem now is that genre filmmaking, which used to be exempt from concerns of prestige, is now central to Hollywood's output, and thus even most genre films often end up padded out to prestigious running times for no good reason.

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    3. Thanks to all this, I did some research into how many Best Picture winners were 2+ hour films. It was a bit eye-opening in how epically long they got. Hope to write somthing up about it next week. Thanks, Jandy!

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