{"id":1217210,"date":"2025-02-19T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1217210"},"modified":"2025-02-19T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T18:00:00","slug":"35-of-the-best-long-movies-actually-worth-their-runtime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1217210","title":{"rendered":"35 of the Best Long Movies Actually Worth Their Runtime"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The tendency in movie runtimes seems to be trending toward length, and even if the data doesn\u2019t really bear this out<\/u><\/a>, recent, super-long\u00a0installments in big box office franchises at least mean the bloat feels<\/em> real.\u00a0For some reason these wildly popular series feel the need to justify their existence by lashing us to our seats for well over two hours, when many of us might have happily paid the same price for a flick that would give us the hope of ever getting home to see our dogs again.<\/p>\n

Still, a movie\u2019s quality isn\u2019t determined by its length, and most of us are watching these things at home anyway. Some stories are just more effective when they take their time\u2014either because they have so much to say and do that nothing feels wasted, or because it allows them the freedom to luxuriate in setting a mood and building a compelling world filled with interesting characters. As the critic Roger Ebert once said<\/u><\/a>, no good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough.<\/p>\n

An interesting case here is the 1984 classic Amadeus<\/em>: There are plenty of stories of studios butchering films only to have a director step in later with fixes. This might be a case of the opposite, at least to many critics: the film was released at around 161 minutes, only for Milo\u0161 Forman to create a director’s cut in 2002 adding back in an additional 20 minutes or so. There’s a lot of debate about the value of the extra bits (I’ve only ever seen the shorter version), but rough consensus is that the shorter, tighter theatrical version is superior. For a couple of decades now, the longer Amadeus<\/em> is the only one that’s been readily available, which is about to change as the original theatrical cut has been subject to a restoration and a forthcoming release<\/a>. <\/p>\n

So here are 35 good (or great) movies, all of which run to nearly three hours (or much longer), all of which also justify their runtimes by generally making every second worth the sit.<\/p>\n

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Amadeus<\/em> (1984)<\/h2>\n

Running time:<\/strong> 2 hours and 52 minutes (director’s cut) or 2 hours and 31 minutes (theatrical cut)<\/p>\n

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Why it\u2019s worth your time: <\/strong>The late, great Milo\u0161 Forman directs this unconventional biopic of musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, adapting the play by Peter Shaffer, who also wrote the screenplay (they both won Oscars for it, as did lead F. Murray Abraham). Unlike the typical plodding biography, Amadeus tells its story not through the eyes and experiences of Mozart (Tom Hulce) himself, but those of his archnemesis, Antonio Salieri (Abraham), a composer doomed to exist forever in the shadow of the greater talent. The result is an epic, bitchy meditation on relative mediocrity\u2014Salieri is good, maybe even great, but struggles to achieve a portion of what seems to come to Mozart without effort. It\u2019s got all of the gorgeous period trappings you\u2019d expect, while also telling a deep, juicy story about the price of (understandable) jealousy. You can rent Amadeus<\/em> (Director’s Cut) from Prime Video<\/a><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Amadeus (1984)\n <\/div>\n