I watched “Magnolia” last night. At a whopping 3 hours and 8 minutes, it’s definitely one of the longest movies I’ve seen in quite some time. Most of it was worth my time, although the last hour bored me (up until it started raining frogs, that is). And I bought Aimee Mann’s cover of “One” from the movie today.
It really is trying to watch a three hour movie. For a movie to take that much of your time, it needs to hold your attention the entire time. And the experience got me thinking about time. It is very precious, especially for a student. And being a blogger, there never seems to be enough of it to get everything that you want written.
Often times, my movie choice hinges heavily on the length of the movie. Sometimes I know I don’t have the patience to sit through a really long movie. Other times, I really do feel a great desire to be fully engrossed in the world of a movie, something I feel longer movies are more capable of doing. (For those wondering, I watched “Magnolia” because the iTunes rental period was about to expire.)
I can’t find it anywhere online, but I swear that John Waters once said that a good movie should never be longer than an hour and 45 minutes. Whether he said it or not, I think it provides a good question to discuss. How much does a movie’s length impact its effectiveness?
I think certain movies should hover around that time length, like horror movies and comedies. But an innovative drama like “Magnolia” or a sprawling epic like “The Lord of the Rings” should be able to take as much of our time as the filmmakers need to fully achieve their vision. Really, I’m willing to sit out anything with vision.
Thoughts? Can you sit through a three hour movie?
Marshall and the Movies 
If it’s good, and I mean entertaining good, not Oscar good (they are not exclusive, but they sure as hell try to be).
I don’t mind a long film, if it’s good. But – with work and stuff – I am limited in how much time I can devote to a movie and when. Friday and Saturday nights can be up to four hours, but on a week night anything longer than two hours (like the Ultimate Cut of Watchmen) is getting “chunked”.
Horror and Comedy films never more than two hours. Ever. They are fairly formulaic and repetitive after the second hour.
Films like Inception, LOTR, Kill Bill can take as much time as they like to. Epics, large scale actioners and the like never feel as long as they are.
After the second hour? Those are usually formulaic after the first MINUTE.
If they’re worth it. I’ve done the extended versions of LoTR back-to-back-to-back before, so that’s a good 11 hours straight of watching basically the same movie.
And then of course Seven Samurai and Lawrece of Arabia are two of my all-time favorite movies. I love me a good epic, no matter how repetitive they might get.