Comments on: Suspiria (2018)

By: Dan S

Dan S — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 18:43:11 +0000

In reply to Nate.

I love your “sub-120” hill, and I will join you to die on it. You raise some great points; I think I’m going to refer to “Nate’s Casablanca Test” in the future, comparing runtimes to that movie and whether their stories and filmmaking earn anything beyond 100 minutes. I personally call 145 minutes “The Devil’s Runtime.” Too many blockbusters live in that realm.

I binged a bunch of “mumblecore”-esque movies in 2021, and part of the reason why is that their median runtime is about 85 minutes.

By: Nate

Nate — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 19:39:09 +0000

On the spectrum of “If you’re not pulled into its overbearing sense of dread, I suspect this will be a deeply boring film for the majority of the time,” I was somewhere in the middle for this one, which I sort of expected, but I was honor-bound to see any movie starring Dakota Johnson and Mia Goth. But I wanted to comment on the runtime issue, and to plant my flag on the hill of ‘filmmakers need to stop making such long movies.’

How many movies of this length would not be improved by being cut? I’d venture to say very few. I think there are good reasons why movies are traditionally 90-120 minutes – for one thing, that’s about how much time we spend dreaming in a night – and going longer than that is almost always a detriment to your film. Of all the movies I’ve ever seen in my life, I only love about a handful that are longer than ~130 minutes.

Obviously, there are exceptions to anything, but in general, making your movie this long just smacks of indulgence to me. Casablanca got in and out in 100 minutes. If you need an hour more than that for your story, you’d better have a damn good reason.

By: Dan S

Dan S — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 17:09:09 +0000

In reply to Hunter Allen. If you ever want to remember that Nazis were bad, and you especially want a bunch of red-tinted naked ladies thrashing about to remind you, you know where to turn.

By: Hunter Allen

Hunter Allen — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 04:59:45 +0000

I loved this in 2018 and haven’t changed my mind, but have not managed to rewatch it even once (it’s on Amazon still afaik, but hell, I even have a physical copy), and it is all down to that runtime. “Let’s just throw on Guadagnino’s Suspiria and have some laughs,” said no one, ever. Possibly the longest horror film I’ve ever seen? Plausibly the longest ever made (not really, but maybe the longest to ever get a major release)? How long was The Wailing? Felt like four hours, anyway.

Oh, right, Doctor Sleep’s extended cut, which I *have* thrown on to have some laughs, so maybe the whole “here’s eight movies worth of themes” heaviness might have something to do with it, after all.