Movies Should Be Much Shorter ⇥ thecut.com

Katie Heaney, the Cut:

The best web page I’ve found recently, which I will bestow upon you now, is this IMDb guide to “Best Movies Less Than 100 Minutes Running Time.” This will be the list I turn to when I am in the mood to watch something but not in the mood to commit to what feels like half my life to a movie that probably isn’t even that good. Movies are getting longer, but they are not getting better, and I have had enough.

I am fully aware of how much I sound like an old grouch when I write that movies are way too goddamn long. “Avengers: Endgame”, the biggest movie of the year, was over three hours long, and I felt every single minute of it. The second-biggest movie of the year, “The Lion King”, was just a shade under two hours long — which doesn’t sound too bad, until you compare it to the original, and realize that the extra thirty minutes in the terrible new one added nothing.

It’s not just movies, either: many albums are also way too long, despite the inherent flexibility of music streaming. Drake is notorious for padding the run time of his records. He has released a new full-length solo album every year for the past four years; the shortest one is one hour and thirteen minutes long, and it’s just a collection of off-cuts and outtakes.