Monday, January 21, 2008

Great Movies Under 90 Minutes

[Today is a holiday. Light posting is allowed.]

After Cloverfield, I got to thinking about how great a perfectly taut full-length mainstream movie under 90 minutes can be. No Vacancy and Red Eye are the two I came up with, but I want to hear about some I might have missed, or forgotten about.

28 comments:

sean witzke said...

Frankenstein and Duel come immediately to mind

Mojo said...

The recent irish musical "Once" and the french parkour action film "District B13" were both great and under 90 minutes.

Ping33 said...

Let's hear it for Pot comedies!

Half Baked - 82min

Harold and Kumar go to White Castle - 88min

Kyle Hadley said...

Well you disagree but for me Shoot em up is one of those movies.

As I was watching Vacancy I kept thinking that it would be cool to see on a stage. Coming from the world of theater, anytime I see a movie that is msotly set in one or two places, I wonder how it would look on stage and I thought Vacancy would be a cool scary play.

Marc Caputo said...

Phone Booth

Scene -- said...

i co-sign Harold and Kumar Go To Whitecastle, the smartest dumb comedy i've seen. Can't wait for the sequel.. here's the R-rated version of the trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C069HYFcK04

Anonymous said...

Evil Dead and its sequel are the two that I immediately think of.

And Night of the Living Dead must come in at around that time?

Expos 1983 Blog said...

Karl Freund's Mad Love (1935)

Anonymous said...

It's more a guilty pleasure than an example of a great movie, but I really love "Nick of Time." The premise is absurd, but it's got Johnny Depp, Christopher Walken and Charles Dutton for god's sake, and it takes place in real time (in exactly 90 minutes, if I'm remembering correctly).

I only saw it once, and it was years ago, but I thought it was darn fun.

Streeborama said...

Bride of Frankenstein, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Jeepers Creepers and John Carpenter's Halloween run at roughly 90 mins.

Others up for consideration that run a little closer to the 100 minute mark include An American Werewolf in London, Shaun of the Dead, and The Descent.

I only felt like digging through my horror shelf at the moment - thus the reason for listing only horror titles.

Streeborama said...

The original real time film - High Noon with Gary Cooper only runs 85 mins.

Ping33 said...

Hitchcock's Rope was earlier... and only 80 minutes ;)

Ping33 said...

One of my favourite movies: Fast Cheap and out of Control is also 80 minutes.
My favourite experimental film: Meshes of the Afternoon is only 18 minutes.

Annie Hall is only 93 minutes.

Ping33 said...

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens is also 93 minutes, as is Lost in La Macha.

Anonymous said...

Beavis and Butthead Do America is 81 minutes.

Marc Caputo said...

How about the big daddy of modern independent movies - "Stranger Than Paradise" (89 min)? I love it for all it stands for and for all it spawned, although "Mystery Train" is the personal favorite.

On a Jim Jarmusch note, Geoff, have you ever watched his "Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai"? That's a great genre mash-up (hip-hop/samurai/gangster/revenge).

sara d. reiss said...

this isn't related but, heath ledger - the new joker in the upcoming batman - was found dead in his nyc apartment today.

Todd C. Murry said...

What's mainstream? One of my favorite movies is shorter than 90... Paths of Glory, the early Kubrick WWI movie with Kirk Douglas as a military lawyer trying to defend soldiers from getting hung for treason. I'm not sure it's what you are after - it feels like a phenominally good Playhouse 90 more than a standard studio product, I guess. A lot of this talk also reminds me of the very short (not even a real feature length) Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, which also involves a military hanging.

Todd C. Murry said...

To Sara,

Not HIS NYC apartment, Mary-Kate Olsen's (!).

Streeborama said...

RIP Heath Ledger.

How's that for The Crow haunting your Batman film now? Wow.

neilshyminsky said...

streebo: Wowza. I made a Crow-Joker comparison on my blog, as I recall. Is that what you're alluding to, here? Creepy.

neilshyminsky said...

Or maybe I didn't. Can't find it on my blog. But, uh... I thought it?

sara d. reiss said...

to todd:
apparently, it wasn't m-k o's apt after all:
tmz.com

James said...

Neil: You made the comparison in the comments on Geoff's post.

neilshyminsky said...

Thanks james. I pasted it to my own blog with a short commentary. 'Haunting' indeed.

Streeborama said...

Neil: Yes. I was referring to the comments made by yourself and Geoff (before these untimely events) about the look of the new Joker. It's quite tragic how this has turned out. Haunting indeed. Eerily prophetic, perhaps?

Todd C. Murry said...

Yeah Sara, you're right:

"At first, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for public information, said that the apartment was owned by the actress Mary-Kate Olsen, but later reversed himself and said that was not the case. In a phone interview, Annette Wolf, a representative of Ms. Olsen, said, “It is not her apartment,” adding, “She does not own the apartment. She has never owned the apartment. She and her sister have an apartment in New York City but they are not in this building.” An earlier version of this article reported the erroneous detail from the police."

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