Here are eight great movies that are 88 minutes long.
A new study finds that 88 minutes is the ideal running time for a film. Talker Research surveyed 2,000 people, and found that while they consider 88 minutes to be the ideal movie length, only 10 percent enjoy films that are two hours or longer. Older adults have longer attention spans for films, according to Talker Research, which found that baby boomers on average like movies to be 93 minutes.
So with that said, here are eight great movies that are 88 minutes long.
The Lion King
You won’t be shocked to learn that little kids sometimes have shorter attention spans than grown-ups when it comes to movie watching.
Luckily there’s the original Lion King, a good-for-the-whole-family classic that keeps kids amused with the antics of Timon and Pumbaa, while adults can enjoy deciphering its loose connection to Hamlet.
The songs, by Elton John and Tim Rice, helped make the story a hit on Broadway, too. The time flies by.
Airplane!
If you want to laugh for 88 minutes straight, this is probably your best bet.
A parody of disaster movies, this Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker masterpiece includes a barrage of sight gags, double entendres, and simply surreal spectacles like our favorite joke in the film, involving Barbara Billingsley and jive.
We’ve written a lot about that joke.
Zombieland
If you’re looking for a little comedy, a little action, a little horror and a lot of absurdity, Zombieland is your movie.
Director Ruben Fleischer’s propulsive hit stars Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone as survivors of a zombie apocalypse, roaming an American wasteland.
It also features one of the all-time best movie cameos, courtesy of Bill Murray.
Attack the Block
A stunning example of what you can do with a modest budget and big imagination, Joe Cornish’s cult classic Attack the Block is a fast-paced tale of members of a South London gang who have to defend themselves from aliens on Guy Fawkes Night.
It also marked the film debut of future Star Wars star John Boyega, pictured above.
The film earned great reviews but underwhelming box office upon its release in 2011, but its reputation and fandom have grown in the years since.
Rashoman
Oh look: One of the best and most influential films ever made, and you can watch it in the time it takes many people to drive to work and back.
Rashoman is Akira Kurosawa’s stunning telling — and retelling and retelling, from a multitude of perspectives — the story of a samurai’s death. The characters reveal, through their lies, how they want to be perceived.
Released in 1950, the film introduced a cinematic storty-telling technique that has been borrowed many times since, but rarely with such elegance and efficiency. The cast includes the great Toshirō Mifune.
Paths of Glory
Another classic, this early Stanley Kubrick film is also one of the director’s most straightforward stories.
It stars Kirk Douglas, who would later appear in Kubrick’s Spartacus, as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers who refuse to press forward in a suicidal attack during World War I.
He defends them against charges of cowardice, and in the process, everyone recovers a bit of their humanity. All in just 88 minutes.
Laura
Perhaps the twistiest movie on this list, Laura is the story of a young, beautiful, talented executive, Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), who is found murdered outside her apartment.
The grim tale is recounted by columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), who became her friend and tried to use his connections to help her along the way. But with that setup, the surprises are only beginning.
The cast includes a young Vincent Price, playing it relatively straight, instead of going all-in on his macabre horror persona. The Otto Preminger noir is also on our list of classic 1940s movies that are still a pleasure to watch.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
For the last film on this list, let’s get wild for 88 minutes. Pedro Almódovar’s classic follows actress Pepa (Carmen Maura), who is dumped by her boyfriend without explanation.
That sets in motion a wild series of events involving spiked gazpacho, a terrorist cell, a planned hijacking of a plane, a successful hijacking of a motorcycle.
The film not only introduced a wider audience to the wild brilliance of Almodóvar, but to one of his favorite actors, Antonio Banderas.
By the Way
Regretfully, the 2007 Al Pacino thriller 88 Minutes — in which Pacino’s criminal profiler is informed that he has just 88 minutes to live — is not on this list. It has a running time of 110 minutes.
If you like this list, you might also like this list of Classic Movies of the 1950s That Are Still a Pleasure to Watch. And you can read the Talker Research study about why Americans like movies that are 88 minutes long here.
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Main image: Gene Tierney in a publicity still for Laura, one of our eight great movies that are 88 minutes long. 20th Century Fox
