We all enjoy the occasional expansive epic – part of the charm of the Oscar-nominated The Brutalist (215 minutes, not including intermission) is its sheer, bum-numbing scale. But time is precious, and in a busy world, the pleasures of a film with a running time of 90 minutes or less are not to be underestimated. There is a special magic to a movie that neither wears out its welcome, nor anaesthetises your posterior.
It is undeniable, though, that movies are getting longer even when they don’t need to. Oppenheimer was a blast – but was worth an entire three hours? It’s been a while since a must-see flick clocked in at a tidy 90 minutes.
The list below is our recommended selection of must-see movies that come and go in a trim hour-and-a-half or under. This, of course, is an arbitrary cut-off – and means we are forced to omit the highly watchable likes of Greta Gerwig’s coming-of-age dramedy Ladybird (95 minutes), and Arthurian comedy classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail (91 minutes). But it leaves lots of perfectly proportioned cinematic treasures, from gripping drama to mind-bending psychological horror and uproarious comedy.
Character actor Joanna Scanlan delivers a powerhouse performance as Mary Hussain, a grieving widow who learns her husband has a secret family across the Channel in Calais. Travelling to France to uncover the full truth, she strikes up an unexpected understanding with her husband’s lover and their teenage son – and discovers connections she had never imagined possible. (89 minutes, BFI Player)
A tear-jerking meditation on family, grief and the inevitably of time’s passage, this French film delivers one emotional sucker punch after another. Joséphine Sanz is Nelly, an eight-year-old whose grandmother has just died from a hereditary bone disease. Left to wander the woods by her grieving mother, Marion, she comes across a girl her own age – and her spitting image (Sanz’s twin, Gabrielle). Her name is… Marion. Nelly has fallen backwards in time and is bonding with her own mother as a little girl in Céline Sciamma’s heart-wrenching modern fairytale. (72 minutes, MUBI)
This twisted modern-day take on Thelma and Louise is inspired by a real Twitter thread by Detroit dancer Aziah Zola Wells, who accompanied a stranger to Florida with the promise of earning a fortune pole dancing for rich clients. Zola got more than she bargained for – or so her increasingly outrageous tweets suggested – and her story is relayed as a gonzo road trip with Taylour Paige as Zola and Riley Keough as her new best friend. (86 minutes, All4)
Noah Baumbach’s early indie hit about a family rocked by divorce draws on his real-life experiences of his parent’s separation to deliver a devastating black comedy. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney are the husband and wife who cannot keep their marriage on track, with Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline as their traumatised kids. (81 minutes, Netflix)
Comedian and actor Rachel Sennott is outstanding as directionless college graduate Danielle, who is dragged along with her parents to a Shiva (a sort of Jewish wake), where she encounters not only her ex-girlfriend, but also the wealthy married man with whom she’s been having an affair. The debut feature from director Emma Seligman is a Gen Z bonfire of cringe in the tradition of Curb Your Enthusiasm. (78 minutes, MUBI)
Lily Tomlin excels as a silver-haired poet and activist trying to help her granddaughter (Julia Garner) scrape together the $630 she needs for an abortion. Elle visits old haunts from her days as a radical in a desperate attempt to drum up the cash while tiptoeing around her estranged relationship with her daughter, Judy (Marcia Gay Harden), who has sold out by taking a high-flying corporate job. (79 minutes, available to rent)
John, Paul, George and Ringo are in their cheeky prime in this timeless musical comedy from 1964. The plot – if it can be described as such – sees the young, mop-topped Beatles making their way to London for a TV performance, fleeing over-enthusiastic fans while belting out hits such as “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “She Loves You” and – spoiler alert – “A Hard Day’s Night”. (87 minutes)
A rock parody so devastatingly on the nose, the music industry never quite recovered from it. Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest are leaders of the eponymous 70s heavy metal band embarked on a disastrous North American tour where they discover that their appeal has grown more “selective”. (82 minutes)
Jesse Eisenberg’s exquisite, semi-autobiographical comedy about two cousins on a Jewish heritage trip to Poland is one of the most moving films of the year. Eisenberg plays brilliantly to type as the neurotic, serious David but Kieran Culkin steals the show as the unfiltered, charming, depressed Benji. With a rare light touch, A Real Pain manages to balance profundity on heavy topics like generational trauma, the Holocaust, mental illness and grief with real human comedy. (90 minutes, in cinemas now)
Comedian Bo Burnham channels his struggles with anxiety and on-stage panic attacks into an incredibly moving and quietly hilarious story about 13-year-old Kayla (Elsie Fisher), who is struggling to make friends at school and navigating her first real crush. (88 minutes, BBC iPlayer until 12 March)
A key text in the “mumblecore” movement, this early collaboration between Noah Baumbach and his future wife, Greta Gerwig, stars Gerwig as a millennial struggling to keep her life and career together in contemporary New York. Gerwig is perfect as a young woman speeding towards life’s crossroads without a road map. (86 minutes, MUBI, TUBI, Prime Video)
This Gen X touchstone is fuelled by the chemistry between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who reconnect 10 years after first meeting while interrailing in Vienna – an encounter chronicled in 1995’s Before Sunrise. Their lives have changed – but they find the chemistry that crackled between them a decade earlier endures. (80 minutes, available to rent)
Considered one of the greatest British films ever made, Brief Encounter stars Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard as married strangers who strike up an intense emotional connection after a chance meeting at a railway station. Directed by David Lean and written by Noël Coward, it’s a heartbreaking examination of true love and the life you might have led had fate taken you in a different direction. (84 minutes, ITVX)
Jonathan Glazer’s ferocious and surreal gangland romp stars Ray Winstone as a former criminal heavy dragged out of happy retirement in Spain to participate in a bank robbery in London. So far, so Guy Ritchie – but Glazer invests the geezer-ish goings-on with a trippy weirdness, helped by chilling performances by Ben Kingsley and Ian McShane as pathological mobsters. (88 minutes, available to rent)
This early Alfred Hitchcock thriller stars James Stewart as an egotistical university lecturer who unwittingly encourages two of his students to commit what they regard as the perfect crime. It’s a bravura display of Hitchcock’s directing style – with the story playing out in real time across four tense extended takes. (80 minutes, available to rent)
Adapted from a Stephen King short story and starring a baby-faced River Phoenix, this 80s coming-of-age story follows a group of young teenage boys who discover a body while hiking. Directed by Spinal Tap’s Rob Reiner, it is a moving rumination on childhood friendships and the bittersweet pain of growing up – as well as a poignant homage to the talented, late Phoenix. (89 minutes, Netflix, NOW)
Filmed over three years, Thomas Betterton and Jenny Gage’s 2016 documentary tracks the growing pains of a group of teenage girls coming of age in Brooklyn in the early 21st century. It is a moving portrait of the pain and joy of adolescence, as the safety of childhood is left behind and the excitement and responsibilities of adulthood loom. (79 minutes, Prime Video)
New York’s famous queer “ballroom” culture is celebrated in Jennie Livingston’s iconic 1990 documentary, which heralds the resilience of the gay and trans community amidst the devastation of Aids. The movie also championed the “Voguing” dance style – soon after made famous by Madonna. (77 minutes, BBC iPlayer, Prime Video)
This moving natural history documentary is about the friendship between filmmaker and free-diver Craig Foster and a young octopus with whom he strikes up a bond, near Cape Town. Life, death, friendship and loss – all are explored in a movie taking place in the animal kingdom that is ultimately about what it means to be human. (90 minutes, Netflix)
Morfydd Clark is quietly terrifying as a religion-obsessed care nurse who believes it her mission to save the soul of Jennifer Ehle’s Amanda, a former dancer dying of lymphoma, in Rose Glass’s unsettling psychological chiller. (84 minutes, available to rent)
A daughter (Emily Mortimer) is forced to confront her aging mother’s dementia in Natalie Erika James’s Australia-set psychological thriller, which uses horror to explore the trauma of mental decline and our dread of growing old. (89 minutes, Prime Video)
The instant classic that put Japan’s Studio Ghibli on the map tells the heart-warming tale of two sisters who move to the countryside with their father, while their mother recovers in hospital from an (unnamed) ailment. There, they encounter an ancient spirit that teaches them to look at the natural world in new ways. (86 minutes, Netflix)
Pixar’s break-out hit soars to infinity and beyond as it introduces us to Tom Hanks’ Sheriff Woody and Tim Allen’s Buzz Lightyear – toys from different worlds who must learn to work together as they navigate the big bad world beyond the playroom. (81 minutes, Disney+)
This dark and unsettling stop-motion cartoon, written by French filmmaker Celine Sciamma, is about a young boy who accidentally kills his alcoholic mother and tries to cover up the crime. Not really for kids – but the handcrafted animation is stunning. (66 minutes, available to rent)
As the titular swamp-dwelling ogre, Michael Myers brings cheeky humour to Dreamworks’s irreverent fairytale about a grumpy monster, a friendly donkey (Eddie Murphy) and a princess-in-distress (Cameron Diaz) who’s perfectly capable of saving herself. (89 minutes, Netflix, BBC iPlayer to 18 March)
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