11
votes
Vote for "Movie of the Week" in January - 100 minutes or less
Voting closed
So I am making the poll a bit earlier. The holidays are coming up and it might also be better to have the schedule about a week before rather than having it the day before the first movie of the month. This time we are going for shorter running times - so anything at 100 minutes (1 hour and 40 minutes) or less. "Movies are too damn long nowadays" is a common complaint, so lets see what we can come up with of good movies that don't require a long evening to watch.
We will need five movies for January.
Rules
- Must have a running time of 100 minutes / 1h40m or less based on official running time on IMDb
- Not one we have already done
- Only one nomination per user
- Please only nominate if you intent to participate
In case of ties in the number of votes, random.org will decide. Voting closes Sunday.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - 93 minute runtime. Taking place just before Thanksgiving, Steve Martin and John Candy become travel buddies when their flight is diverted and they need to make their way home.
I rewatch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles almost every year (usually around this time), and actually already did last week. But I would happily watch it again right this very moment, and again during the week the topic gets posted... that's how much I love that movie! :P
The whole John Candy oeuvre is awesome, and John Hughes is an amazing director too. So the combination of the two, along with Steve Martin, in Planes, Trains... is truly something magical. Same goes with Uncle Buck (Candy, Culkin, Hughes) for similar reasons.
I feel like Four Rooms (1995, 1h38m runtime) would be an especially appropriate pick, since it takes place on New Year's Eve. And it's also really easy to watch over multiple sessions, or with extended pauses in between, since it's an anthology of four stories by four different writer-directors (Anders, Rockwell, Rodriguez, Tarantino) that all take place at the same hotel, and involve the same Bellhop (Tim Roth).
Plus, I personally think it's a severely underrated film, that I would happily watch again, and would love to hear other user's thoughts on... especially due to it having a 13% Tomatometer score on RottenTomatoes, but a 69% Audience score, so it's clearly rather polarizing.
p.s. If it's picked I would humbly request it take the first week in January slot, so it's closest to New Years. :)
So 1st of January. Is it a good hangover film? :)
It's a dark comedy film... so I think it actually might be better watching it slightly hungover (or still a little drunk from the night before, or if you go the hair of the dog route ;) rather than stone cold sober. Depends on the severity of the hangover though, I guess. IIRC it's not an uproarious laugh out loud movie, but it is pretty darkly amusing. It's been quite a few years since I last watched it though, so I have recollections of really enjoying it, but can't remember all the story details, which is why I'm actually looking forwards to watching it again... and likely will regardless of whether it gets picked or not.
I would totally watch this again. Tim Roth's performance alone was worth the price of admission.
Okay, my nominee goes to Marcel The Shell With Shoes On (2021). It is a mockumentary where a filmmaker records a stop-motion animated shell with shoes on—hence the title—who has lost his community and now lives with his aging grandmother. This is magic realism territory, so no one is especially surprised by the existence of a stop-motion animated shell with shoes on. There's a storyline, but the focus is more on delivering some melancholic but optimistic slice-of-life. There are big themes at play, but everything is kept low-key, without everyone ranting and raving about their feelings.
The internet's love for this one baffles me. I made it through about 10 minutes and had to turn it off. The baby-talk kid voice on the shell is very irritating.
It’s a millennial thing. The video it’s based on is from the early 2010s and was mostly acclaimed by millennials. I wasn’t a fan of it either. It felt like a lesser Paddington.
City Lights. I guess this will be an opportunity for you to watch a silent film. And I think this is great. It’s still funny, it’s a very good time to watch.
What We do in the Shadows.
I have appreciated Waititi's work in Jojo Rabbit and the Hunt for the Wilderpeople and I would like to try this one.
87 minutes
May I suggest The Iron Giant?
87 minutes, and I was going to add it for the Christmas movie topic anyway. The outstanding animation masks a story with some philosophical depth, and it's got the old school multilayered dialogue which used to offer different nuances for both children and adult viewers.
Roger Ebert review - spoiler warning.
The Quiet Girl - 94 minutes.
A simple, beautiful movie and I believe the first Irish language movie to be nominated for an Academy award.
I am gonna throw in Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel from 2009 with a 83 minute runtime. Don't know much about it but it looks interesting and starring Chris O’Dowd famous from The IT Crowd.
It's "OK". Kinda runs out of steam IIRC. O'Dowd is his usual charming loser self, and one of the other guys played "Mr Poppy" in that UK Nativity made-for-TV film that was mentioned in the Christmas thread and is also alright in it. I'd rewatch it if it gets picked, but I'd be in no hurry to watch it again otherwise.
Nominating Pontypool (1h33m runtime) Excellent little low budget, claustrophobic Canadian horror movie with an interesting concept and some genuinely creepy vibes. Takes place in a snowy Canadian winter so it's thematically appropriate for January too IMO.
We had five movies with 4 or more votes, and I am going to put Four Rooms first by suggestion that it was fitting as a New Years movie. So the schedule for January is: