The best movies under 90 minutes

A quadrilogy of Beatles biopics is currently in production, but will all four of them combined come anywhere close to capturing the personalities of the Fab Four and the mania surrounding them as this loopy, self-satirising musical comedy? Starring John, Paul, George and Ringo as ‘themselves’, it famously opens with the band in frantic escape from a horde of screaming fans and hardly slows down from there, stuffing all manner of anarchic zaniness into 87 freewheeling minutes, only pausing at random intervals for performances of the most iconic pop songs of all-time. Alun Owen’s Oscar-nominated script gives each mop-top a chance to poke gleeful fun at their public image – and for Paul’s alleged grandfather, played by BBC staple Wilfrid Brambell, to make a strong case for being the true fifth Beatle.

How long? 87 min

Workplace comedies don’t get any harsher, or more hilarious, than Mike Judge’s flambéing of corporate office culture. Although it bombed at the box office, it became a cult favourite of the early DVD era, likely because millions of beige-collar drones could identify with having eight different bosses and only a vague idea of what their own job description even entails. Sure, few of them curb-stomped a malfunctioning copy machine, or tried to defraud their company with a scheme inspired by Superman 3, but many could certainly recognise the impulse, and experience the catharsis of watching someone else do it.  

How long? 89 mins

Before she gave us Barbie, Greta Gerwig (in collaboration with director and partner Noah Baumbach) gave us Frances Halladay, the endearingly shambolic protagonist of Frances Ha. Shot in black and white in a Brooklynite homage to Manhattan, this charmer is a New York movie down to its bones. Aside from being hilarious and touching, Frances Ha is also a fun peek into the origin stories of Adam Driver, who would go on to collaborate with Baumbach on Marriage Story, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s hunk-dork Michael Zegen.

How long? 86 mins

Alfred Hitchcock’s single-location thriller opens in media res with a guy getting strangled to death in a penthouse apartment, his body dumped in a wooden chest and used as the centrepiece for a screwed-up party game. Unfolding in real time, with a series of stitched-together long-takes creating the illusion of one continuous shot, it’s thought of as Hitch’s most ‘experimental’ film. Neither he nor Jimmy Stewart, who plays a suspicious dinner guest, considered it a success, and it’s certainly tiers below Vertigo or Psycho – but as a quick jolt to the senses, it’ll leave you sweaty and lockjawed as any of them.

How long? 80 mins

Roger Ebert famously called cinema ‘a machine that generates empathy’, and the miracle of Rashomon is how deftly Akira Kurosawa manipulates that machine – and his audience – by playing with perspective. A classic that makes its way onto pretty much every greatest films list, Rashomon tells the story of a murder in Heian-era Japan from three radically different perspectives. Ultimately what matters isn’t which story is true (because, you know, what even is truth?), but what the three versions of the story say about the people telling them, and about humanity at large.

How long? 88 mins

Before he was a queer icon, the Babadook was just a humble monster in a great indie horror movie. Not sure how it happened but somehow this modern classic has avoided the franchise treatment – so far, anyway. The Babadook is a quick hit of spooky horror that feels homemade in the best possible way. Plus, it’s Australian so the accents are fun. Somehow both a coming-of-age story and an exploration of grief, The Babadook manages to feel both cosy and terrifying.

How long? 90 mins

Call it The Art of the Steal: French master Robert Bresson makes clandestine thievery look like a magic trick, if not ballet, in this nouvelle vague milestone. Shot on the streets of Paris at the same time as Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, it follows a lanky, blank-faced young man (Martin LaSalle) as he descends into a life of nonviolent crime, motivated by a melange of financial desperation, existential ennui, Catholic guilt and sexual repression. While it’s not really about pickpocketing, Bresson is clearly fascinated with its machinations: see the scene in which LaSalle and his cohorts yank multiple pocketbooks at a bus station in a single go, a sequence choreographed as a graceful dance of hands, garments, wallets and cash.

How long? 76 min

The Paranormal Activity franchise might have spun a bit out of control in recent years (they’re up to six sequels and counting), but the original is a minor miracle of a movie and perfect for a quick jolt if you need to scare yourself silly in less than two hours. Picking up stylistically where Blair Witch left off, this fun spin on the found footage genre influenced a whole generation of spooky horror flicks over the next decade.

How long? 86 mins

Hal Ashby’s beloved black comedy Harold and Maude is a dark play on life, love, and mostly death. Harold is a morbid young man who delights in staging elaborate fake suicides and freaking out his family. Maude is his 79-year-old opposite who delights in life and tries to improve the world little by little with the time she has left. Opposites attract, you know the drill – but in this case it’s not exactly a romance and the ending, while it might be happy, is not what you’re expecting.

How long? 90 mins

Christopher Guest’s filmography is pretty much just cult hit after cult hit, so it‘s never easy to pick a single favourite. Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman are both comedy classics, but for that extra push over the cliff This is Spinal Tap can’t be beat. What’s remarkable is how much of the movie still feels fresh and relevant 40 years on – probably helped by the fact that the preposterous extremes of the music industry haven't changed all that much. It’s also worth noting that so much of modern comedy goes right back to Spinal Tap: there’s a case to be made that without it, there’s no The Office, Parks & Rec or Abbott Elementary.

How long? 82 mins

If Before Sunrise took place on the eve of Armageddon, it might look something like this underrated cult classic. Anthony Edwards meets, and then loses, the woman of his dreams (Mare Winningham, his actual future wife) the same night he answers a ringing payphone and inadvertently learns of an incoming nuclear attack, setting him tearing across neon-lit 1980s Los Angeles to find her before the bombs start falling. (Or don’t.) Moving in close to real time, what starts as an oddball romcom gathers a more serious tone as it races along, before reaching a truly harrowing – and fatalistically romantic – crescendo.

How long? 87 min

Much like This is Spinal Tap eventually gave us a whole substrate of mockumentary comedy pop culture mainstays, Blair Witch is the grandmother of Paranormal Activity and its subsequent sequels, spin-offs and imitators. What’s impressive about the OG in this case is how slight it is: just 81 minutes of haunting shakycam and heavy breathing and it’s bound to stick with you. While this franchise has been spun off into movies, video games and even comics, it’s refreshing to remember that the original concept was so simple and well-executed.

How long? 81 mins

Want to talk microbudget? Sean Baker’s hilarious, moving sophomore directorial outing Tangerine was shot on three iPhones. Yeah, for real. It’s a masterclass in making art that’s so specific that it becomes universal, and Baker used the success of the film to catapult himself into the Oscar-nominated The Florida Project. Tangerine is about two trans sex workers hunting for one of their boyfriends who may or may not be a cheater, but in a broader sense it’s about the difficulty of getting what’s yours in a hostile world determined to trip you up at every step. Carve out 88 compelling minutes for it.

How long? 88 mins

The Toy Story franchise has a pretty good run, to be honest, unless you count last year’s Lightyear which we obviously don’t. While the original movie might not have the visual polish or the emotional heft of later entries in the series, it’s an incredibly charming and efficient little story, not to mention introducing a whole lot of beloved characters we’re still enjoying 30 years later. This one is good for kids of all ages.

How long? 77 minutes 

This is one of those movies where the elevator pitch must have been incredibly simple but somehow it just works. ‘Guy in a phone booth and also there’s a sniper pointing a gun at him’ pretty much sells itself. Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland and Forest Whitaker are all great, with an important assist from Katie Holmes. Phone Booth smartly leaves you wanting more: as soon as the central tension at the heart of the story is resolved, they roll credits. We stan an efficient thriller.

How long? 81 mins

Rushmore is the only Wes Anderson movie that’s eligible for this list (unless you count the delightfully weird short Hotel Chevalier from 2007 that screened before The Life Aquatic). Rushmore lays out a set of themes that would end up being at the center of Anderson’s filmography for decades: daddy issues, the pressure to overachieve, impossible unrequited love, and of course Luke and Owen Wilson. It’s a short-but-sweet delight that still stands alongside his very best stuff.

How long? 90 mins

Some say The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Christmas movie, while others insist that it’s a Halloween movie. Everyone is right! The truth is that it’s never the wrong time of year to watch Henry Selick and Tim Burton’s perennial classic. From Danny Elfman’s earworm-y tunes (do yourself a favour and check out Fiona Apple’s cover of ‘Sally’s Song’) to the gorgeous stop-motion animation, this one is a feast for the senses.

How long? 76 mins

Somewhat forgotten as a core text of the ’90s indie movie boom, director Robert Rodriguez’s hot-shit Spanish-language debut is still a monument to low-budget ingenuity. An archetypal neo-western, about an itinerant musician who drifts into a Mexican border town and gets mistaken for a wanted cartel assassin, the movie seems to run on pure filmmaking energy, because it certainly isn’t running on money: the shooting budget was $7,000, which Rodriguez funded primarily by participating in clinical drug trials. Using nonprofessional actors and MacGyvering cost-saving workarounds at every turn, the result is raw and naturalistic, but the film hardly looks its budget — watch The Blair Witch Project, for instance, and marvel at how it somehow cost roughly eight times as much to make.

How long? 81 min

The premise of Cube – a group of strangers thrust into a mysterious, deadly situation and forced to cooperate or get picked off one by one – feels a bit old-hat at this point, but back in 1997 it was downright fresh, and we’ll take this cult Canadian B-movie over a handful of Saw sequels any day. There’s some Battle Royale in the DNA here, and even a bit of Harlan Ellison’s classic sci-fi novella ‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream’. It may be campy, but there’s stuff going on under the hood, too. It’s a must for Squid Game fans, too.

How long? 90 mins

A buzzy breakout for both director Emma Seligman and star Rachel Sennott, this indie comedy filters the likes of John Cassavetes and Mike Nichols through the perspective of a millennial Jewish bisexual sex worker. Sennott is the woman in question, forced to attend a shiva with her parents and endure awkward interactions with her parents’ friends, her ex-girlfriend and, worst of all, her sugar daddy and his wife. It’s a hilariously sharp coming-out for two creatives whose profiles have expanded greatly in the proceeding years.   

How long? 77 min

Richard Linklater’s love of playing with the passing of time is clearest in Boyhood, in which the audience watches a kid grow up over the course of many years in one (slightly overlong) movie. But 20 years before there came Before Sunrise, a breezy romance about a chance encounter that leads to a magical evening for two tourists in Vienna. And after that was its first follow-up, Before Sunset, which picks up nine years later when Jesse (Ethan Hawke, perfection) and Céline (Julie Delpy, luminous) meet again and… well, not to spoil it, but the movie and its subsequent sequels are intimate, cosy viewing.

How long? 80 mins

This one isn’t for the faint of heart, but sometimes you just need to cry, you know? Isao Takahata’s late ’80s tearjerker is out of character for Studio Ghibli, but it’s an enduring classic nonetheless. Grave of the Fireflies follows siblings Seita and Setsuko in the last days of World War II as they struggle to survive following the brutal bombing of their home city of Kobe. Fireflies is no gentle depiction of the effects of war – it’s not exactly My Neighbor Totoro – but everyone should see it.

How long? 89 mins

The gay mumblecore revival arguably kicked off with Andrew Haigh’s Weekend in 2011. We’ve since had HBO’s Looking (also a Haigh production) and Francis Lee’s gorgeous God’s Own Country, but End of the Century from first-time director Lucio Castro is the most directly in conversation with Haigh’s breakout film: even its Spanish title, Fin de Siglo, echoes Weekend’s (Fin de Semana). Javi and Ocho meet for the first time (or is it?) and may or may not live happily ever after (or do they?). Featuring exactly one all-timer of a weird jump scare, End of the Century is a must-watch for any fan of queer cinema or slightly surreal romance.

How long? 84 mins

In the grand tradition of Rope, Gravity largely takes place in several astonishing long takes. While that doesn’t mean exactly the same thing given that so much of this film was animated by computers, the results are still breathtaking. Gravity is a 90-minute theme park ride that keeps you gripping your arm rests until its last frame. And it’s not surprising that this movie slaps as hard as it does, given its pedigree: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Alfonso Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki are all legends individually, and together the results are undeniable.

How long? 90 mins

Tom Tykwer’s hipster crime thriller is up there with Pulp Fiction and Go as classic Rashomon-style adventures that illuminate a single set of events by presenting us with different perspectives on the same moment in time. Lola stands out because of some fourth wall-breaking shenanigans, energetic animated interludes, a killer thumping soundtrack and the performance of a lifetime from Franka Potente, running (and running, and running, and running) to save her boyfriend from some very angry German gangsters.

How long? 80 mins