Social media movie discourse is at it again. This time around, I’m being horrified by posts from younger moviegoers who freely admit to fast-forwarding through movies to skip past “the boring parts” (like, you know, the dialogue scenes), or even to watching them at double speed. Let’s talk about attention spans...and how we ain’t got ‘em anymore.
I’m not saying I blame these folks. Modern tech takes advantage of our brains’ addictive tendencies by training us to use our phones like we’re on a ravenous hunt for serotonin. Meanwhile, blockbusters have gotten longer, but also faster and louder—there’s a big difference between three hours of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and three hours of Avengers: Endgame. When we’re asked to listen too long a bit of dialogue, or gaze at a vista that doesn’t seem to be directly advancing the plot, we’re pulling out our phones. (I’m also guilty of this when watching at home, which is part of the reason I love seeing movies in the theater, where I am duty-bound to actually pay attention.)
But there’s an art to the boring movie, and some of them wouldn’t be half as compelling if they actually tried to thrill us with every frame. Here are great movies that invite you to be bored by injecting a bit of silence or lingering on a long conversation. They’ll move you deeply, challenge your preconceptions, or maybe put you right to sleep. Any would be a win, really.
Skinamarink (2022)
Run time: 100 minutes
Writer/director Kyle Edward Ball’s film began life as a YouTube channel devoted to recreations of the childhood nightmares submitted by users. What plot there is in this feature length take on that idea involves a four-year-old named Kevin who injures himself while home alone with his six-year-old sister, Kaylee. What follows makes little narrative sense, and it’s certainly easy to understand why the micro-budget film was polarizing for audiences. Where the film succeeds, and brilliantly, is in recreating the sense of a child’s twilight world, one in which even a familiar home can feel bizarre, unsettling, and terrifying under the right circumstances. Ball takes his time creating that mood—and it’s nearly all mood. I’m not sure what he’s trying to do has ever been done better.
Where to stream: Shudder, Hulu, digital rental
Inland Empire (2006)
Run time: 180 minutes
I’ve seen just about everything that David Lynch has ever produced, and I still have no idea how to talk about Inland Empire. If you don’t count Twin Peaks: The Return (the 18 hours of which Lynch wants you to consider a film, this is the most recent of the director’s features, though it was released way back in 2006 (the first film to be shot entirely on digital video, it’s recently been remastered). There are sex workers and anthropomorphic rabbits in a story about a woman who gives her all to get a part in a Hollywood movie, only to descend into a nearly three-hour fever dream. It’s either a moving and surreal dive into some kind of cinematic collective unconscious, or an impenetrable collection of non sequiturs. No one musters emotions of unease and dread like Lynch, even if we, as viewers, aren’t even sure what we’re so anxious about.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)
Run time: 81 minutes
At a mere 81 minutes, it's hard to get too bored by David Gelb's documentary, but the stakes here are more personal than world-altering. Set to a score by Philip Glass, the film follows the title's Jiro Ono, the then-85-year-old sushi master who's regarded as one of the world's greatest living sushi chefs. He makes sushi that looks (and, presumably, tastes) incredible, crafting the same sushi day after day alongside his sons, while continuing to refine his skills into his 80s and beyond. That's pretty much it. Just a gentle exploration of the idea that the key to happiness might be getting really good at something, but also never being completely content with your talents.
Where to stream: Hulu, Peacock, Tubi, Crackle, digital rental
Lost in Translation (2003)
Run time: 102 minutes
Bob (Bill Murray) takes a business trip to Tokyo smack dab in the middle of a major midlife crisis. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is a young Yale grad tagging along on a trip to the city with her celebrity photographer husband. The two outsiders spend time together, experiencing the city with a kind of not-quite-romantic melancholy. Plot-wise, that's pretty much it, but it still winds up being deeply moving.
Where to stream: Max, digital rental
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Run time: 132 minutes (theatrical cut)
There’s a scene in the first Star Trek movie that’s controversial not for its political or philosophical content, but for its length: a nearly five-minute shuttle flyby of the newly re-designed USS Enterprise, accompanied by a rousing bit of Jerry Goldsmith scoring. It’s either a nearly erotic bit of spaceship porn, or one of the dullest sequences ever put to film, depending on your perspective (I’m very much team spaceship porn). The rest of director Robert Wise’s movie, rushed into theaters before it was quite finished, is similarly stately paced. There’s no fighting, little action, and plenty of self-serious pontificating. In some ways, it feels like it’s trying too hard to be 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it has a strange power of its own.
Where to stream: Max, Paramount+, digital rental
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Run time: 81 minutes
So much of the ur-found footage film’s runtime involves slightly (but realistically) annoying people wandering around lost in the Maryland woods while disturbing, but rarely thrilling, events put them on edge and turn them against each other. Little actually happens before the memorable closing minutes, but it all serves to effectively build up an unbearable sense of tension. This is definitely one where the sum adds up to more than the (often boring) parts.
Where to stream: digital rental
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Run time: 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 something else entirely, a quietly paranoid film set in a grubby, dingy 1970s. Gary Oldman plays John Le Carre's George Smiley, here brought out of retirement to help uncover a mole within the highest ranks of British intelligence. There's barely any action, and nary even a raised voice. Instead, Tinker Tailor makes the case that spy craft is about information: who has it, who controls it, and who knows how to get it.
Where to stream: Starz, digital rental
Russian Ark (2002)
Run time: 96 minutes
As boring Russian movies go, Russian Ark is especially challenging, but also, ultimately, really lovely and rewarding. It’s also a supreme technical feat, unfolding in a single, uninterrupted take. Filmed in the the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, the story, such as it is, involves an unnamed narrator who wanders the halls of the building, encountering real and fictional people from the city’s 300-year history. The discussions are largely philosophical, but the scope increases as the movie progresses. By the end, we’ve encountered 2,000 people and multiple orchestras, all seamlessly maneuvered through time and space.
Where to stream: Hoopla, Kanopy, Plex
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Run time: 159 minutes
Few Stanley Kubrick movies couldn’t appear here; the director loves his deliberate pacing. Eyes Wide Shut is a particularly interesting case, though, since a movie about Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and a kinky sex cult doesn’t sound like something in danger of putting people to sleep. And yet, people were initially put off by the movie’s chilly formalism and distant, dreamlike feel. Kubrick’s swan song was a bit of a bait-and-switch, promising a peek under the covers of one of Hollywood’s then-hottest couples, and instead offering a slow-paced cautionary tale about the dangers of sexual obsession.
Where to stream: digital rental
Ikiru (1952)
Run time: 143 minutes
Japanese director Akira Kurosawa is best known for epics such as The Seven Samurai and Rashomon, but even in those relatively action-packed films, an ambivalence toward lives filled with violence breaks through. His filmography is also filled with quieter, more contemplative works, with 1952's Ikiru (meaning, roughly, “To Live”) among the best. Kanji Watanabe (Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura) plays a veteran bureaucrat who has worked in the same monotonous job for decades. At the same time he discovers that he’s dying of stomach cancer, a group of parents arrives in search of permits to clear a cesspool and build a playground for the local children. Watanabe commits himself to going against everything he’s learned about playing by the rules in order to help the parents cut through the red tape that would likely put an end to their dream. It’s both a universal and a uniquely Japanese story about heroic deeds, even if they mostly involve shuffling paperwork.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Run time: 3 hours and 10 minutes
What do you mean you're not into watching a three-plus hour courtroom scene? Director Stanley Kramer followed up Inherit the Wind with this legal drama depicting a fictionalized version of one of the twelve Nuremberg Military Tribunals that determined the horrifying extent of Nazi war crimes following World War II. Spencer Tracy leads one of the most star-stacked casts ever(?), including Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, William Shatner, and Montgomery Clift, among others.
Where to stream: Tubi, MGM+, digital rental
Beau Travail (1999)
Run time: 90 minutes
Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his experiences in Djibouti, leading a section of men as part of the French Foreign Legion in writer/director Claire Denis’s sun-baked queer classic. Everything is going great for Gallup until the arrival of Gilles Sentain (Grégoire Colin), who inadvertently threatens Galoup’s relationship with his commander, and inspires Galoup to a nearly irrational jealousy. There’s the potential for violent drama, but the film favors the languid and elliptical (also the very sweaty), building tension through stunning scenery and brilliant camerawork. Beau Travail makes frequent appearances on Best-Movies-of-All-Time lists, and deservedly so.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
The Straight Story (1999)
Run time: 112 minutes
This one is a David Lynch movie so uncharacteristic of the director that it hardly feels like his movie; watch this Disney release back-to-back with Inland Empire and feel your brain melt. The great Richard Farnsworth, joined by Sissy Spacek, plays the real-life Alvin Straight, who crossed the country to visit his ailing brother on a riding lawnmower, going around five miles per hour, which is also about how fast the narrative moves. Lynch’s sensibilities somehow bring a feeling of newness to the slow-moving story set in a rural landscape.
Where to stream: Disney+, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
Weekend (2011)
Run time: 97 minutes
Andrew Haigh’s slice-of-gay-life romantic drama stars starring Tom Cullen and Chris New as a couple of guys who hook-up at club and spend the titular weekend together. They talk about their interests and pasts, eat, go for walks, and engage in some frank (especially for the time) fucking—honestly, it’s still rare to find a mainstream-ish movie with even a basic understan
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