Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner

I’m increasingly impatient with long films; 90 minutes feels just right, but anything over two hours has to really try hard to justify itself. The Great Beauty, weighing in at 142 minutes, never felt long to me, with its superb visuals, soundtrack, characters and performances all working together to carry its lazily-meandering story along; when this film ended I could have watched it from the beginning again straight away, because it easily earns its length. On the other side you have Peter Jackson’s gruelling Hobbit films, masterpieces in padding; of the 161 minutes of The Desolation of Smaug, you could probably cut out about 150. →