Cooking a six kilo turkey. Getting coronary bypass surgery. Driving from London to Sheffield and assembling around one fifth of a bookcase bought from IKEA: these are all things you can do in three hours.
Though, during the dog days of lockdown, it’s unlikely you’ll get the governmental green light or, frankly, have the energy to do any of the above activities. Far better to recline on the sofa and watch some of the longest pieces of quality celluloid ever created.
Here’s our pick of eighteen of the best three hour-plus movies that you finally have time to give the attention they deserve. Order a (very large) pizza, pour an entire carafe of wine and settle back: it’s gonna be a long night.
Once Upon A Time In America (229 minutes)
‘Epic’ in movie form is pretty much defined by spaghetti western auteur Sergio Leone’s 1984 marathon tale (and his final film) of a guilt ridden former gangster (De Niro) returning to Manhattan to come to terms with his past life. Leone attempts to cram about half a century of American life (from the 1920s through to the late 1960s) into the movie which absolutely must be seen in its original full length version. The original release, a full 84 minutes shorter, mangles the plot into utter incomprehension with Pauline Kael in The New Yorker writing, "I don't believe I've ever seen a worse case of mutilation."
The Irishman (209 minutes)
The last time round the block for the Hollywood holy trinity of Pesci, De Niro and Scorsese is far from a gentle goodbye into the tender night. Boy, does the menace build slowly (and we mean, really slowly) in the tale of Mob hitman Frank Sheeran (De Niro) and his years of service as bodyguard to Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa (played by a typically vowel-drawling Al Pacino). There are moments where the pace goes from the elegant to the frustratingly glacial but, no mistake, watching the brooding, banality of violence by ageing wiseguys is a melancholy, but enthralling spectacle.
JFK (206 minutes)
Frantic, messy and, at times, utterly hysterical, if you haven’t done your homework beforehand then the temptation, upon the completion of this sprawling tale of the murder of the 35th President, to never believe anything the so-called Establishment ever tell you again is all but overwhelming. Frankly, much of this film leans on totally unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and Stone’s own convictions. Nonetheless, this is still one of the most absorbing movies ever made about the 20th century’s ultimate ‘whodunit’.
Barry Lyndon (203 minutes)
Stanley Kubrick's longest movie has long been dismissed as a snooze-fest and, at times, it does seem like the director is openly challenging us to stay awake during some of the drawing room scenes that punctuate this 18th century comedy of manners about the rise and fall of the eponymous Irish opportunist who charms his way into the English aristocracy. Slow it may be, but this is one of the most beautiful films ever shot; John Alcott’s camerawork turns the landscapes of England, Ireland and Germany (where production took place) into almost Turner-esque watercolours of light and texture.
Malcolm X (202 minutes)
Prince and Oprah Winfrey donated money to get this movie completed after production was shut down when director Spike Lee refused to comply with Warner Brothers’ demands that the biopic of the black liberation hero run no longer than 135 minutes. The end product is well over three hours long but it’s Denzel Washington’s finest hour bar none. And it really does seem that we need every minute of this movie to take the journey that captures X’s early recklessness slowly giving way to passion and, finally, weary wisdom.
The Godfather Part II (200 minutes)
Yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard the pub-bore argument that this is the only film ever made where the sequel is better than the original. For our money, the first Godfather still wins out for its sheer, brute force but Part II doesn’t waste a minute of its near three and a half hour screen time with its bolder, darker exploration of Michael Corleone as his deepening paranoia and thirst for Mob vengeance begins to unhinge him.
Spartacus (198 minutes)
Beset by problems after leading man Kirk Douglas fired the original director a week into filming, Stanley Kubrick took over for this cast-of-thousands Roman epic. If you’re a newcomer to the weird world of Kubrick movies this is probably the most mainstream picture the great man ever made. And though at times the worthiness seems tailor made to lubricate the Oscars committee (it worked by winning four), the ‘I am Spartacus’ scene still makes for one of the all-time great scenes in cinematic history.
Apocalypse Now (196 minutes)
We all know it’s got the best soundtrack of all time and the helicopter/ceiling fan opener will probably never be beaten as a war movie scene setter. But is it really worth sitting through Francis Ford Coppola's uncut version? Of course it is. You get to see Martin Sheen smoke opium in a jungle rubber plantation. Even better, you get to see Marlon Brando reading pieces from Time magazine to Sheen while he’s in a semi-conscious state. None of this is strictly necessary to the film but it does add merit to a movie that throws us head first into the moral confusion of war without ever trying to resolve it.
Schindler’s List (195 minutes)
Criticism of this film is as culturally verboten as daring to dislike David Bowie in public. But we’ll say it right here, the final hour of the extraordinary tale of the German factory owner whose use of cheap labour saved over a thousand Jewish people from certain death does lapse into sentimentality as Spielberg attempts to show us the selflessness behind the ostensible opportunism of Schindler. Regardless, a quarter of a century on from its release, this shocking, grimy and genuinely unforgettable depiction of inhumanity, is still absolutely required viewing.
Nixon (192 minutes)
Almost certainly the least seen film on this list, Oliver Stone’s take on the worst President in American history (until now) was released in 1995, a year after Tricky Dicky’s death, and is, as you might expect from the maker of JFK, another whirling dervish of conspiracy and revisionism. It’s still well worth three hours of your time though. Anthony Hopkins gets Nixon’s haunted hang-dog expression down to perfection and Stone’s headstrong direction means that, come the conclusion, you actually have a little compassion for the criminal in the White House.
The Green Mile (189 minutes)
It’s probably appropriate that a film about waiting on Death Row should be this long, but of all the films in this list, this is the one that would benefit the most from a sharper edit: there’s simply too much prison small talk scenes which get in the way of such superb moments as Harry Dean Stanton testing out electrocution equipment and Tom Hanks (as prison guard Paul Edgecomb) getting his bladder issues sorted out by a six foot seven prisoner with healing powers and a love of mice. It’s not quite as good as director Frank Darabont’s earlier companion jail piece The Shawshank Redemption. But then again, few films are, are they?
Magnolia (188 minutes)
Turn of the millennium Los Angeles is the setting for Paul Thomas Anderson’s most engrossing work, where a blockbuster cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tom Cruise (the latter putting in the best performance of his career) play an ensemble of dejected, wounded-by-media has-beens including a dying TV mogul and an adolescent quiz show winner. Scrambled, uneven and sagging a little in the final hour, this is still an utterly absorbing movie whose fixation on the perils of media malaise feels more germane now than ever.
Woodstock (185 minutes)
Jimi Hendrix! The Who! Sly and the Family Stone! American Express presents BST in Hyde Park this most certainly is not. And the documentary of the ultimate mass musical freak out (and possibly the weekend that the 60s dream died) is worth every minute of your time. Even if the artists' performances don’t thrill you (though do check your pulse if this is the case – you may be dead) there’s more than enough fascination to be had with watching the primitive staging, the oddly contemporary looking hippy apparel of the crowd and the mournful tones of the PA announcer telling the mud-splattered throng that ‘the brown acid circulating around us is not specifically good’.
The Deer Hunter (183 minutes)
It’s not De Niro’s longest film, nor is it even the longest Vietnam movie, but it’s without doubt one of the most viciously violent and bleak war films of all time. What begins as a buddy movie in small town, blue collar, rust belt America turns into a full blown dystopian jungle rampage as the trio of steel workers (De Niro, Christopher Walken and John Savage) find themselves playing real-life Russian roulette with the Viet Cong. Truly a film depiction of armageddon with camouflage gear, the horrors of battle have rarely seemed so troubling and futile as depicted here.
Wolf Of Wall Street (180 minutes)
Repeated viewings of DiCaprio’s nefarious turn as stockbroker conman Jordan Belfort in 80’s New York only seem to heighten the desire for a very cold shower when the end credits roll: Scorsese’s depiction of sleazy, pin-striped decadence really does get more unpleasantly visceral over time. Dark, funny and utterly immoral; wealthy, drug addled depravity on the big screen has never been more compelling
Casino (178 minutes)
Joe Pesci and Bobby De Niro are on sublime form as two Mob hustlers out to swindle 70s Vegas. But the tornado that rips through the entire three hours (which passes incredibly quickly thanks to Scorsese’s typically attention-deficit, speedy editing) is Sharon Stone, playing one of the most vile anti-heroes in Hollywood history. Her turn as the mercenary, utterly unscrupulous wife of ‘Ace’ Goldstein is an absolutely extraordinary tour de force of rage, booze, coke, greed and screaming in brown leather cat suits.
The Godfather (177 minutes)
And so to the original, and still the best of the trilogy for our money. The wedding scene intro seems to fly past but actually lasts for an eternity as we’re invited into Marlon Brando’s study for a scene dripping with violence – though not a drop of blood is spilled. Never mind the Mafia, this is also the best film ever made about business and family and how generational changes can lead to schisms and eruptions that never get fully resolved.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (177 minutes)
This Civil War Western is the ultimate riposte to the argument that all marathon length movies must have narratives of byzantine complexity. There’s a snuffbox with $200,000 in it. A man called Bill Carson knows where it is. Clint Eastwood (as Joe) competes with Tuco (Eli Wallach) and Setenza (Lee Van Cleef) to find it. Spoiler alert. Clint finds it. And that’s about it plot wise. But the intervening three hours is terrific escapism with no small amount of bloodlust.
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