Six Acclaimed Movies With Short Runtimes (2024)

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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition.

In an age when many films drag on for more than two hours, some viewers are left pining for the days of shorter runtimes. For those looking for a great watch that won’t take up the better part of an afternoon, The Atlantic’s writers and editors answer the question: What is your favorite 90-minute movie?

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

What to Watch

Fantastic Mr. Fox, 87 minutes (streaming on Hulu)

Trying to pick George Clooney’s best role is no easy feat, but the title character in Wes Anderson’s charming, offbeat adaptation of a classic Roald Dahl novel makes it onto my shortlist every time. In the 87-minute film, told through stop-motion animation, Clooney plays a fox who experiences something of an existential crisis when he finds out that his wife (voiced by Meryl Streep) is pregnant. That’s a heady premise for an animated adventure-comedy, but Fantastic Mr. Fox manages to layer in complex questions about class, pride, and fatherhood without losing its jaunty pacing. The film’s rich amber tones showcase Anderson’s signature aesthetic at its most evocative, and some clever recording choices completely enmesh viewers in the claustrophobic animal world. It’s a testament to the singularity of Anderson’s vision, and to the acuity of the screenplay he co-wrote with Noah Baumbach, that Fantastic Mr. Fox works on so many levels in such a short time.

— Hannah Giorgis, staff writer

***

Tremors, 96 minutes (available to rent on Prime Video)

Come for a young Kevin Bacon battling hydra-headed wormlike beasts, stay for … actually, that’s the whole movie. Released one year after a 6.9-magnitude earthquake pancaked overpasses in San Francisco, Tremors monsterized the West Coast’s fear of the quivering ground. When seismographs zigzag in the tiny town of Perfection, Nevada, it’s not because of restless fault lines but rather because of giant man-eating creatures that tunnel through the ground at the speed of an A train. Armed only with their wits and an arsenal provided by Reba McEntire in her first acting role, Bacon and a motley crew of townspeople must outsmart the worms by leaping from roofs to a bulldozer and pole-vaulting across boulders.

What are the creatures? Where did they come from? Why do they sometimes seem savvier than the humans? Tremors never bothers to explain, and without the baggage of exposition, the film zips to its fist-pumping conclusion amid crack dialogue such as “Here’s some Swiss cheese and some bullets!” and “Broke into the wrong goddamned rec room!”

— Evan McMurry, senior audience editor

***

Notes on a Scandal, 92 minutes (streaming on Max)

In the film Notes on a Scandal, Judi Dench portrays a profoundly lonesome and deliciously vile history teacher named Barbara Covett, who becomes obsessed with Bathsheba Hart, the new art teacher (played by Cate Blanchett). Covett uncovers Hart’s illicit affair with an underage male student and decides to keep the secret in hopes of drawing Hart into her web. My wife has called the movie “sapphic hagsploitation,” which is just about perfect. (Dench is almost unrecognizable in the role; she’s done up like a raisin you’d find lodged between your couch cushions, and about half as pleasant to behold.)

Notes on a Scandal is a twisty and feverish melodrama that’s a masterwork of economical scripting. It’s also frequently hilarious despite the serious-on-paper premise. I used to bring the DVD out whenever I had friends over and learned that someone hadn’t seen it. You can throw it back like a shot of Fireball—it has just as much bite.

— Damon Beres, senior editor

***

The Iron Giant, 86 minutes (available to rent on Prime Video)

I remember watching The Iron Giant in theaters when it first came out—the look of the animation, the delightful storytelling tempered by danger, and, of course, the mysterious giant robot from outer space.

The movie filled a hole in my heart that used to be occupied by Disney films when I was younger. The characters are smart, vulnerable, and engaging, and the plot is wonderfully inventive. In less than an hour and a half, the film chronicles the friendship between a powerful, 50-foot-tall robot and Hogarth Hughes, a 9-year-old struggling against his own limitations as he tries to protect his friends and family. As the robot acclimates to Earth, it discovers the joy of play and companionship, as well as the fragility of life and the dangers of a fearful mob.

— Alan Taylor, senior photo editor

***

Cold War, 89 minutes (streaming on Prime Video)

Love under communism is a potent dramatic theme. An environment in which the state encroaches on the most intimate of relations creates a perfect tension for a romance. Throw in some lush black-and-white cinematography, two attractive stars who know how to capture longing with their lips and eyebrows, and music that seems to ache as well, and you can understand the elements that make the Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War such an emotional jab. After the credits rolled, I had to sit in the theater for a few minutes just to regain my composure.

The lovers at the center of the story are two musicians, Wiktor and Zula, who meet in 1949, when Wiktor roams the Polish countryside recording folk music and comes across Zula’s smoky voice. Short and intense, the film moves quickly through the high and low points of their relationship as their lives are shaped by Polish Communist rule—Zula compliant, Wiktor resisting. Between the textured images, Zula’s singing, and the historical forces interfering with the lovers’ elemental passion for each other, this is a movie that will leave you winded.

— Gal Beckerman, staff writer

***

Ghost in the Shell, 83 minutes (streaming on Tubi)

How do you squeeze a self-contained plot, fully rounded characters, and a comforting resolution into less than 90 minutes of film? One answer might be: Don’t even try. Ghost in the Shell, released in the United States in 1996, has a minimalist story about the hunt for a rogue AI that’s killing off Japanese dignitaries, and an ambivalent ending. By Western standards, its cyborg heroine, Motoko Kusanagi, is also a puzzle. We don’t get to see much of her inner life—in a story that’s all about inner lives—although we do see a lot of her nipples. None of that matters, though. You watch Ghost in the Shell for its philosophical vibes, haunting music, and arresting art style.

The film was considered a flop when it was first released: Roger Ebert wondered if it was “too complex and murky to reach a large audience.” But it gained a following upon home-video release, and influenced a generation of American filmmakers (the green-on-black code from the opening credits was the inspiration for the “digital rain” in The Matrix). Ghost in the Shell is proof that 83 minutes is long enough to communicate a pure cinematic vision.

— Helen Lewis, staff writer

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