HBO Max’s 10 greatest short-ass films

Blame it on know-how, blame it on TikTok, or blame it on the multitasking nature of our capitalist society. The very fact is, for many of us, our consideration spans have solely gotten shorter. A two-and-a-half-hour film? Ha! That’s an indulgence reserved for particular events or the uncommon few filmmakers who earn these extreme runtimes (taking a look at you, Dune). 

We the individuals are drained, we’re impatient, and we wish to veg out after work with a rattling good film in 100 minutes or much less. Fortunately, a brief runtime isn’t a knock on high quality, and HBO Max at present has one of many largest alternatives of nice short-ass films on the market. This listing began at 45 entries, which I painfully but fastidiously curated down to only 10 movies to fulfill quite a lot of film tastes.

1. Shiva Child

Right here’s a nightmare situation: You’re a younger, bi Jewish girl who simply completed hooking up with one among your sex-work shoppers — he’s wealthy and cute and, hey, perhaps you kinda like him. You present up on the shiva your mother and father dragged you to, and oh fuck, Sugar Daddy walks in…with a sizzling spouse…holding a new child child. And he is aware of your mother and father. Oh, and your ex-girlfriend, who’s been a complete flake these days, is there too. Emma Seligman’s debut characteristic is just like the Jewish comedic model of Trey Edward Schults’ Krisha, solely it finds the humor (and the suffocating nervousness) within the chaos. Even higher, it’s solely an hour and 17 minutes.

watch: Shiva Child is now streaming on HBO Max.

2. Girl Snowblood

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Any Tarantino fan who hasn’t seen Girl Snowblood, please cease what you’re doing and go watch probably the greatest movies of the ‘70s, and the foremost inspiration behind Kill Invoice. Toshiya Fujita’s 1973 movie is just about the blueprint for feminine revenge thrillers. After 4 males sexually assault a lady and kill her husband, she has a daughter for the only function of making an murderer to someday wreak vengeance upon the lads. Yuki, aka Girl Snowblood (Meiko Kaji), and her sword will cease at nothing to just do that. Gushing with each blood and stylish magnificence, Girl Snowblood is a scrumptious, violent deal with.

watch: Girl Snowblood is now streaming on HBO Max.

3. Transient Encounter

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David Lean’s Transient Encounter is the quintessential romance, and, dare I say, probably the greatest movies ever made. A married girl (Celia Johnson) and a married man (Trevor Howard) meet by likelihood at a prepare station. They stumble upon one another once more and shortly a quietly ferocious love affair begins. However that love can solely exist one Wednesday per week on the railway station the place their paths collide, miles away from their loving but dim marriages again dwelling. Whereas an extremely easy romance components, every body of Transient Encounter, potently shot by Robert Krasker, carries the burden of 100 hearts breaking and falling in love . It’s the cinematic encapsulation of simply how superb and torturous love can really feel while you’re not even in search of it.

watch: Transient Encounter is now streaming on HBO Max.

4. Start

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It’s been a decade since the one that you love husband, Sean, died and also you’re lastly prepared to maneuver on and marry a pleasant man. Then, abruptly, a 10-year-old child walks into your own home and tells you he’s Sean, reincarnated. [Insert baffled Nicole Kidman laughter] Insane, proper? How foolish! The brilliance of Jonathan Glazer’s Start is how its solid of stuffy Manhattan elites method such a infantile proposition with matter-of-fact maturity. Kidman’s widow Anna, alongside along with her mom (Lauren Bacall) and fiancé (Danny Huston), at first dismiss it as foolishness, but stay curious as they permit the boy to hold round. However Anna’s curiosity quickly turns to conviction in a efficiency that’s without delay delicate and a surge of great emotion, typically unfolding with out dialogue. It’s a movie of staggering capital ‘A’ appearing, and one which leaves you questioning, feeling a bit disturbed, and perplexed.

watch: Start is now streaming on HBO Max.

5. Finest in Present

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There might not be a single unfunny second in Christopher Visitor’s Finest in Present. A mockumentary about canine present contestants and their valuable pups, Visitor’s movie is a chef’s kiss of satirical comedy that options an all-timer solid of comedic actors at a few of their easiest. You’ve bought Parker Posey (in braces) and Michael Hitchcock as an uptight suburban couple who go to remedy to course of their canine watching them have intercourse. There’s Jennifer Coolidge because the spouse of an previous millionaire and her lesbian canine coach Jane Lynch. Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins are the epitome of Palm Springs older-younger gays. And naturally, we get Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy magnificently riffing off each other as a Florida couple. If this Starbucks bit makes you chuckle, Finest In Present is for you.

watch: Finest in Present is now streaming on HBO Max.

6. Desert Hearts

Credit score: Desert Coronary heart Prods / Kobal/Shutterstock

Earlier than the lesbian romances of the New Queer Cinema motion, and lengthy earlier than the present streak of lesbian interval dramas, there was Donna Deitch’s 1985 movie Desert Hearts — which, sure, is technically a interval piece itself. Set within the late ’50s, Vivian, a New York English professor who wears tailor-made skirt fits and pearls, strikes to Reno to break up. She stays at a close-by ranch the place she meets Cay, a troublesome, freewheeling cowgirl kind who unabashedly wears her queerness on her sleeve. What follows is an extended courtship of brewing sexual stress and tender exchanges that can make any Carol fan swoon.

watch: Desert Hearts is now streaming on HBO Max.

7. Blood Easy

Credit score: River Highway Prods / Kobal / Shutterstock

When you can match a pleasant, tight homicide plot into 96 minutes and make it percolate with suspense, drip with bursts of violence, and ooze with type, then you have got a rattling high-quality film in your fingers. The Coen brothers positive did that with 1984’s Blood Easy, which occurred to be their (improbable) directing debut and Frances McDormand’s appearing debut. It has all the things you’d need from a neo-noir and is the kind of movie that’s fortunately brief sufficient to look at time and again, and nonetheless get a thrill from.

watch: Blood Easy is now streaming on HBO Max.

8. Within the Temper for Love

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Wong Kar-wai’s masterpiece isn’t a film that you simply watch, however one that you simply really feel. It’s a romance that emphasizes the will and longing tucked inside quiet glances, beneath temporary moments of contact, in between phrases. Set in 1962 Hong Kong, we watch the well mannered interactions of neighbors Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) and Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) as they cross paths of their shared condo constructing and all through city. They quickly be taught their spouses are having an affair with one another, and in time, Chow and Su start to develop a deep love for each other. Within the Temper for Love’s magnificence comes from Cheung and Leung’s aching performances, the beautiful, affected person cinematography of Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-Bing, and a swooning soundtrack that dares you to maintain a dry eye. Each second of this 98-minute movie is pure perfection.

watch: Within the Temper for Love is now streaming on HBO Max.

9. Beetlejuice

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I imply, it’s Beetlejuice… what extra is there to say? It’s at all times a pleasure to revisit — or go to, if you happen to’ve in some way by no means skilled this Tim Burton traditional — Catherine O’Hara lip-synching for her life to the Banana Boat Tune, child goth Winona Rider pouting round in a black veil, or Michael Keaton in an limitless gross-out competitors with himself. When you want some fantastical kooky enjoyable, or only a fast 92-minute throwback to the times of excellent ol’ Burton imaginative world-building, you may’t go incorrect calling within the bio-exorcist.

watch: Beetlejuice is now streaming on HBO Max.

10. Persona

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When you get pleasure from a psychological chamber piece about crumbling identities with nice actresses actressing, Persona is basically the GOAT. Suppose alongside the traces of Black Swan, The Clouds of Sils Maria, Mulholland Drive, or Queen of Earth, all movies that owe a bit of one thing to Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 traditional. After actress Elisabet Vogler (performed by the always-excellent Liv Ullmann) has abruptly gone silent, she arrives on a distant island along with her nurse, Alma (the additionally at all times wonderful Bibi Andersson). What follows is a cinematic exploration of the human psyche fractured, dismantled, and imploding in on itself. When you benefit from the experience of Persona and are new to Bergman, fortunately most of his different movies at present on HBO Max additionally clock in at slightly below 100 minutes.

watch: Persona is now streaming on HBO Max.