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Comment by paozac | Hacker News Reader

True. I've been wondering why mainstream films are getting longer, too. 2-2.5 hours has become the norm.

Recently some more films have cropped up that are around 60 minutes - an awkward length somewhere between what you'd typically classify "short film" vs. "feature film". Because it's not clearly classifiable as one or the other, films of this length suffer uphill financing and marketability challenges. Unfortunate, because no length is strictly better than another, it's up to how the film works with the time it has. So it's encouraging to see some filmmakers work with the ~60 minute range now that there're more alternatives for commercially releasing a film these days.

>Recently some more films have cropped up that are around 60 minutes - an awkward length somewhere between what you'd typically classify "short film" vs. "feature film".

I don't think those films you mention are actually mainstream hollywood productions.

In which case, the ~60 minute length is not surprising: it has been the case for lots of alternative films over the decades, and it's the very cutoff point lots of film festivals use to separate the two categories (though the Academy uses 40 minutes for that purpose).

What about netflix binge watching. Netflix stats show that some people like to spend a weekend watching a tv show in one big binge.

Depending on the exact film/genre I don't have a problem with that.

I've heard Quentin Tarantino's new film "Hateful Eight" is ~3 hours long, and I'm still quite excited to see it.

I do. Mainstream movies became a caleidoscope of boring repeating scenes. They often lack any sort of plot.

Compare "Back to the Future" (any one) with whatever new movie in this genre you can remember.

It's not exactly the same genre since it's not futuristic, but last year's The Grand Budapest Hotel is also a light-hearted & fanciful adventures film, and it certainly has a plot - besides being a much better film all around than any of the BttF trilogy, in my opinion.

On the other hand, it's also only 100 min. long, so it doesn't exactly fit with trend of longer movies.

I think 90–100 minutes is perfect. Anything longer and I'd prefer multiple episodes.

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