Hello, Streaming Platforms, May I Suggest a "90-Minute Movies" Category?
Picture this: it’s a casual Tuesday night, ten months into a pandemic. After work, dinner, cleaning up, and lying on your bed staring at the ceiling in a fit of existential despair, you look at your phone and realize that it’s already 9:30 p.m. You decide to watch a movie before bed, you know, to unwind a bit. But then, after scrolling and scrolling, you can’t seem to find any movies less than two hours long. In a fit of frustration, you flip on America’s Next Top Model instead, and watch two episode of a decade-old season before nodding off.
Not to sound like your dad, but movies are too long these days. Who has time to watch The Prom (131 minutes) or Wonder Woman: 1984 (151 minutes) or, god forbid, the Irishman (209 minutes)? Especially on a weeknight? A three-hour movie is a whole event, one that I need to clear my entire day for.
According to NPR, movie running times—particularly for blockbusters—have gotten longer in recent years due to a combination of factors. The rise of multi-screen theaters, shorter theatrical runs, and of course, the existence of streaming platforms all mean that, as NPR puts it, “Movies can be so long nowadays because there is now less financial pressure to keep them short.”
Okay, sure, it makes financial sense, but did no one stop to think about my Tuesday night pandemic schedule—or my attention span? What about me!?
I'm not the only one who's totally over this. One 2018 survey of 24,000 Americans found that 45% of respondents said the ideal movie length was 90-120 minutes, followed by 21% of respondents who preferred 60-90 minute movies. Clearly, 90 minutes is the sweet spot!
Now, I’m not suggesting that studios stop making three-hour-long movies entirely. (I don’t want to live in a world without The Lord of the Rings!) I’m just saying that a 90-minute movie is something entirely different from a 150-minute movie, requiring a totally different schedule, mindset, and snacks. Streaming platforms should treat them differently. So why don’t they?
Netflix’s weirdly specific sub-sub-sub-genres have become something of a meme. Currently, my Netflix homepage suggests subgenres including “Oddballs & Outcasts," “Fight-The-System TV Shows,” and “Because You Liked The Haunting of Hill House.” A bit of googling turns up even more specific sub-sub-subcategories, like "suspenseful Scandinavian movies based on books" and "20th century period pieces for hopeless romantics.” No one asked for that!
If I know I want to watch, say, a romance movie, I can click over to the "Romance" section in Netflix and browse sub-genres like “Romantic Comedies,” “Romantic Dramas Based on Real Life,” and “Twisted Romance.” Or I can view the whole list of romance movies and sort them alphabetically, or by release date. But there’s no way for me to separate the 90-minute romances (like Someone Great—92 minutes) from the two-hour-plus ones (like The Kissing Booth 2—134 minutes).
And it's not that these streaming platforms don't have 90-minute movies—I recently watched Yes, God, Yes on Netflix. It was very good and, better yet, only 72 minutes long! But Netflix simply puts it in its "Dark Comedies" category along with Okja (121 minutes) and Ludo (150 minutes)—the running time isn't easily visible.
I currently subscribe to Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, and even the Criterion Channel, but not a single one of these services offers so much as a “sort by length” option. Streaming platforms, I’m begging you, help me find your 90-minute movies more easily!!! I’m going to run out of ANTM cycles very soon.
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