Pop Culture Happy Hour - Great Movies Under 90 Minutes

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

What do you do when you need a good movie, but you don't have much time? The answer is that you find a short one. In this encore episode, we recommend three films that deliver a lot of punch without taking up your whole day. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

What do you do when you need a good movie but you don't have much time? You've got work, family, pets, friends, how are you going to fit in a film? The answer is that you find a short one. And there are plenty of films that deliver a lot of punch without taking up your whole damn day. I'm Glenn Weldon. And I'm Linda Holmes. Today we're recommending three movies under 90 minutes on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR, so don't go away. Welcome back.

You just met Glenn Weldon of the NPR Arts Desk, also with us longtime NPR contributor and culture writer, Balal Qureshi. Welcome back, Bilal. Hi, Linda, and thank you for having me. Absolutely. So we are doing, as I said, a compact show. We are trying to move through a couple of films that we can recommend that are under 90 minutes. That's the rule that we set. Belal, what did you pick to recommend? Well, as soon as this prompt came through, I had to say I had an immediate reaction, which was Run Lola Run, the German film from 1998, 99 that came out in the States in 99. It's 80 minutes. So a very crisp 10 minutes under your 90 minute given time period. And it's actually a movie about time.

So it's about what you can achieve in 80 minutes. And it's one of my absolute favorite movies. And I think that when people think of world cinema, it sort of feels like a very pretentious, annoying idea, subtitled movies from Germany. This was a movie that I saw when I was, I think, 16. And it made me think, wow, movies with subtitles can be really cool. And this movie, to me, is one of the coolest films I've ever seen.

And happy to talk more about sort of the plot, too. But let's just say it explains a girl with red hair trying to save her boyfriend's life by running through Berlin with a 20-minute clock down three times over. And set to the most amazing electronica soundtrack. And when I think about Romola Loran, it's like Tom Tickford, who directed it, who went on to collaborate with the Wachowski sisters on the very dubious Cloud Atlas. but The Matrix and Ronald LaRan both came out in 1999 and around the same time. And I remember it because it was like these movies just like, I still think about them.

And there was so much packed into their running length and just like nothing you've ever seen. And honestly, I rewatched it in anticipation of this conversation. And it's still one of my favorite movies. Yeah, I watched it for the first time last night. You know why? Because I had time. Because I rewatched my film. And then it was 930.

And I thought, oh, I can watch another whole movie. And I did. And I'd never seen it before really tight yet loose. There's a shagginess to it that's really pleasing. And her boyfriend is no gift. Yeah. Yeah, I like this one because I like a film that plays around with time. And as Belal mentioned, it's sort of a real-time kind of thing.

And I think those things are often really fun because most films and TV shows are really kind of spread out. You know, they take place over the course of a year, five years or ten years. I like a movie that's sort of in real time like this. So I like this movie, too. This one is so much fun and kinetic and great and so beautifully designed. Yeah, love this one. Great pick. All right, Glenn Weldon, what is your pick for a movie under 90 minutes?

All right. Clocking in at a lean, propulsive and I would say ruthlessly efficient, one hour and 28 minutes. The 2011 British sci-fi comedy, thriller, horror, social critique called Attack the Block is my pick. It's the debut feature of Joe Cornish, who, wrote and directed it. It all takes place on one night, Guy Fawkes Night on a council estate in South London. There's this group of black kids who fancy themselves gangsters, but that remains to be seen. They're a little sweet, they're a little soft. They're led by Moses, who's played by John Boyega, in his very first feature role. That character doesn't say much, and he's very

serious, kind of a grump, but Boyega is just Boiega. He's so incredibly charming and charismatic. The film starts off when they mug a nurse, who is played by Jody Whitaker, a monster, the size of a small dog falls from the sky, the kids dispatch it, and then much bigger, much more scary monsters come after that. You know, I said at the top that it was efficient. When you ask a screenwriter what that means, they'll say, well, it's every character moment, every emotional beat moves the story forward. And I guess that's true, but the remarkable thing about this film is how much characterization

Cornish kind of shoves into an hour and 28 minutes. We get to know each one of these kids, and they're like, there's like five of them. The aliens are incredibly well designed. Their fur seems to absorb light. They're completely like matte black, but they have these glowing green teeth. Mostly though, this film just moves. The scene where we get the explanation of what's going on, you know, the scientific explanation, which is the deadliest scene in any sci-fi film stops things dead.

I counted 28 seconds. And the way the characters interact with the police feels kind of strangely relevant today. There's a moment when Whitaker's character just says, you know, we should call the police. and they give her this very brief, but very withering look, and then they just go on with the film. Government probably bred those creatures to kill black boys. First they sent drugs to the ends. Then they sent guns.

Now they sent monsters to get us. They don't care, man. We ain't killing each other fast enough, so they decided to speed up the process. Believe. So that's Attack the Block is my pick. It's so fun. You know, I realized when I saw this as your pick

that I haven't, never seen it. Oh, it's good. And my first thought was like, I'm so excited to watch it because it's one of those that's been on my list of I got to watch this for a really long time and I've just never got to it. And I'm like, oh, here's a nice short, compact movie that's sitting there with particularly Boyega, who I know I love, just waiting for me to watch it. I'm so excited. So my pick for a movie under 90 minutes is also one that I think of as a classic. And it comes, mine's the oldest of the ones that we chose. It's from 1984. 82 minutes long. It is Rob Reiner's and, of course, Michael McKeon and Christopher Gist and Harry Shearer's. This is Spinal Tap. There was a time when mock

documentaries were not as common as they are now. This is certainly not the first mock documentary by any means, but it is one of the ones that I think really introduced it to American comedy audiences as a form that had a lot of potential to kind of do very, very, very dry satire. And that's what I love about this is how it's just bone dry. And I think because of the form, because of the documentary form and also because of the acting styles of the people who are in it, they are never pointing at the comedy, which is what I love about it. They say things kind of under their breath.

And some of the classic moments when they're talking about, for example, their Stonehenge stage set and stuff like that. It's all sort of understated in this weird way where everything's very matter of fact. This is before Christopher Guest kind of branched off and started doing his whole kind of set of mock documentaries with his kind of very particular repertory company. And, you know, look, I'm not the first person to say this. I won't be the last person to say this. But it is a great lesson in the fact that to make fun of something efficiently, you have to

understand it. you can't have so much distance from it that you hold it in obvious contempt that causes you to not know it real well. That's true if you're satirizing romance, romance at comedies, action movies, no matter what you're sort of teasing, you have to know your stuff. And this is one of those movies where this band could so almost be a real band. Like the skew is so modest and careful that that is what I have. always really loved about it. And I will say a movie like this, the worst thing that can happen to it is that it goes on too long. That is why almost every Saturday Night Live sketch in the history

of Saturday Night Live has been too long. That is one of the reasons why I so appreciate the fact that they get in, they get out, that's it. And then everybody goes home and you feel kind of satisfied and pleased. There are a million people that you love who pop up in this movie as well, I would say, some of whom were not as famous then as they are now. So just take a deep breath, sit down, this is spinal tap. I'm not going to vouch for every single bit of humor in any movie from 1984. It's a long time ago. But I think there is still a lot in there that makes me laugh and that is worth appreciating.

You just use the word efficient. And I think Glenn did as well. And I have to say that that is something that I find myself also craving so much now because I've been trying to keep up with a lot of the TV series that win all the awards and I know long form is very much what we're all in the mood for now. And it, for me, it's often very mixed results. Like, sometimes I feel like, could this show have ended four episodes ago? I might have been fine with that. And I found that, you know, to me, this exercise also really reminded me of how much, like both of you said, you can pack in story, characters, people, faces, and if you actually really embrace that challenge, and that's why I think I're still

like movies. And maybe there could be a one episode show once in a while. I would totally sign up for that. A show could be contained in one episode. But Ron Lola Luron to me is that's the, that's the reason I keep coming back to it because it has almost all of Berlin contained in this film at that time and all these characters and these stories and just a lot of feelings. So I don't know. I like the idea of efficiency in a time when that seems like it's disappeared. I'll tell you what I think is funny. I could also do a show that is my favorite movies that are over three hours long. It just depends on the thing. There's no right. length for a movie. There's no right length for a book. It just depends on what the individual

form is. And I think all of these are good examples of people who made good use of a nice compact fit. So tell us your favorite movies under 90 minutes. Find us at facebook.com slash PCH. That brings us to the end of our show. Thank you both for being here. Thank you. Thank you for having us. And of course, thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. If you have a second, subscribe to our newsletter. It's at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter. We will see you all back here next time.