Saturday Night Live is a hit-and-miss show, but the crew hit a nerve earlier this year with Pete Davidson's Short-Ass Movies music video. We loved The Batman, but you don't always have time to take in a three-hour film. You want a short movie to watch before bed, something to chill with while you clean your living room--not a cinematic marathon. That's what these movies are for. Movies that hover around 90 minutes. Enough to get invested, but not so long that it feels like a chore to watch when you're busy.
This list covers the gamut of genres and reaches back as far as the 1950s for its source material, pulling in a bunch of classics along the way, from the original Rambo film to Anchorman and Eraserhead and Palm Springs. There's something in here for just about everyone, and each of these films is short enough to fit into your evening, even though time is broken here in the present. The streaming services we've pulled from include Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, and Netflix, so they'll all require subscriptions.
Of course, this doesn't even begin to cover the whole list of short movies out there; horror movies are often a good place to go for short films, as are kids movies and older action flicks.
1. First Blood - HBO Max
Running Time: 93 minutes
While Rambo would eventually be turned into a symbol of American politics and ultra-violence in later movies, his first movie is an entirely different affair. A man who lost his friends to the Vietnam War wanders, hitchhiking and going from town to town. An overbearing sheriff pushes back, and his corrupt officers spark the ex-soldier's PTSD, pitting him against the town's police force in the dark, rainy woods of the Pacific Northwest. Despite the great action, this is a movie about trauma, police overreach and how America handles veterans of war. It's a lot for a shorter movie, but it works.
2. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - HBO Max
Running Time: 94 minutes
Before the Fury Road, before Thunderdome, Mad Max was the Road Warrior. George Miller's post-apocalyptic action movie, in less than 100 minutes, basically set up the style for post-apocalypse movies and games that would follow. Games like Fallout closely follow the template Miller constructed out of cobbled-together armor, makeshift weapons, and rusty old vehicles as battle wagons. This movie is full of memorable characters and moments, and is fun from start to finish.
3. Gravity - HBO Max
Running Time: 91 minutes
Do the arms of your recliner not have enough fingernail marks in them? Gravity is the movie for you. This isn't a movie to relax with. An accident in Earth's orbit leaves two astronauts stranded with nothing but their suits and each other while a cascading ring of debris takes down the Earth's extensive web of satellites. Despite being almost entirely CGI, the feeling of being in space is incredibly convincing, and it feels at every moment like you could get sucked out into the inky void if you let go of your seat.
4. Godzilla - HBO Max
Running Time:96 Minutes
It's a classic! The original Godzilla may be a guy in a suit, but this Japanese film still works as a metaphor for nuclear war and radiation while also offering up a spectacular show of kaiju destruction. Sure, the more modern Godzilla films might be more convincing, but nothing beats the original.
5. The Blair Witch Project - HBO Max
Running Time: 96 minutes
When The Blair Witch Project hit theaters, it was a remarkable combination of low-budget filmmaking and creative advertising. Many people walked out of the film thinking they'd watched a documentary. These days, we know it's Just A Movie, but back then it felt like film and reality were bleeding together--just a little bit.
6. Eraserhead - HBO Max
Running Time: 89 minutes
Everyone who gets into movies knows David Lynch is beloved for the weird stuff he makes, but Eraserhead--even more than Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive--is still the king of weird after all these years. Whether it's the creepy baby-thing, the woman in the radiator, or the dream sequences that inspired the film's title, Lynch has created some of the most evocative, bizarre imagery put to film, and it shouldn't be missed.
7. My Neighbor Totoro - HBO Max
Running Time: 86 minutes
Hayao Miyazaki is the grandfather of anime films, and My Neighbor Totoro is both one of his simplest and best films. A father moves his daughters out into the country from the city both to give them a better life and to prepare a more relaxing, simple life for their sick mother, who ails in the hospital. As the girls explore their new rural world and try to cope with their mother's absence, they meet a big, fluffy, extremely huggable forest spirit and his buddy the Cat Bus, which is a bus, and also a cat. It's a magical, mysterious, and touching adventure of two sisters taking care of each other and growing up more than they should have to.
8. The Iron Giant - HBO Max
Running Time: 86 minutes
The Iron Giant is a perfect melding of the classic look of 1950s science fiction, anime sensibilities, and what would be a big part of Pixar magic. The Iron Giant was the first animated feature directed by Brad Bird, who would go on to direct The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and even Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. You can see the kind of heart he would later infuse into his Pixar films at work here, along with a killer voice cast including Vin Diesel as the titular character.
9. The Dark Crystal - HBO Max
Running Time: 93 minutes
Can Muppets be serious? You wouldn't think so if all you've watched is The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, or the countless Muppet movies. But The Dark Crystal was a much darker and more serious project for the Jim Henson Company than anything they'd done before. Co-directed by Henson and experienced puppeteer (and Yoda voice) Frank Oz, the movie was groundbreaking for Muppet and animatronic technology, with some rigs taking as many as four puppeteers to operate.
10. Palm Springs - Hulu
Running Time: 90 minutes
The early days of the pandemic were a rough time for movies, but one of the highlights of 2020 was Palm Springs, a Hulu-exclusive comedy starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti. Samberg's character Nyles is trapped in the depths of his own Groundhog Day-like experience. After he accidentally pulls Sarah into the loop, the two go through the loop together over and over again as they try to figure out a way to escape. The movie highlights Samberg's ability to combine humor and heart to make his character both the butt of the joke and a sympathetic hero, while Milioti grounds the story. J.K. Simmons' character Roy, meanwhile, shoots Nyles with a crossbow.
11. Toy Story - Disney+
Running Time: 81 minutes
It's hard to believe how long CGI has come in just a quarter century. Take one look at Pixar's Lightyear, and then rewind all the way back to 1995 for the original Toy Story. It's still a remarkably good-looking film thanks to iconic character designs and great voice acting. This film shot Pixar into the spotlight, and helped bring to life movies like Up, Cars, Finding Nemo, and a dozen others that could easily take the place of Toy Story on this list. Toy Story is the shortest movie on this list by a good five minutes, but we can forgive them, as every frame--all 114,240 frames of computer animation--could take anywhere from 45 minutes to 30 hours to render.
12. Lion King (and basically every other Disney animated feature) - Disney+
Running Time: 89 minutes
As with Toy Story, you could take just about any Disney film and swap it in place of Lion King--almost every Disney animated feature comes in under 90 minutes, because Disney knows that kids have short attention spans. Lion King is the height of Disney's resurgence in the 1990s, which included movies like The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, Mulan, and others. Lion King is gorgeous and packed with one earworm song after another, and is still a fan favorite after all these years.
13. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy - Netflix
Running Time: 91 minutes
Is this Will Ferrell's best work? Elf might give it a run for its money, but Anchorman stands apart as one of the funniest movies ever, thanks in no small part to Ferrell himself playing the classic man's man Ron Burgundy as the biggest buffoon in every scene. Along with Ferrell though, are tons of iconic comedy actors, including Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell, and Fred Willard among others. Studies show that 60% of the time, this movie will be the best 90 minutes of your day, every time.
14. Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Netflix
Running Time: 89 minutes
Of all of the Monty Python troupe's projects, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is truly iconic, pitting the comedy masters against the legends of ancient Britain. Virtually every shot and every line is a joke, meant to take the piss out of Arthurian legends, politics, movie-making, or even the viewer themselves, right up to the ridiculous last scene. This is one of the most quotable movies in history.
15. Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle - Netflix
Running Time: 88 minutes
Harold and Kumar is a top-tier stoner comedy, standing up against movies like Half-Baked, Friday, Up in Smoke, and Pineapple express. The titular characters brought some much-needed depth to Asian-American men, too, showing them not just as guys who feel familiar pressure to excel, but also as guys who have their own dreams and maybe just want to get high and chill, before Neil Patrick Harris comes in makes everything insane.
16. Jackass: The Movie - Netflix
Running Time: 87 minutes
Sometimes you just need to watch a bunch of guys punching each other in the junk. Do we really need to say more about Jackass? It's about as simple as it gets--a bunch of friends trying to push each others' limits with bonkers pranks that have as much room for pain as they do laughter.
17. A Nightmare on Elm Street - Netflix
Running Time: 91 minutes
The slasher horror films of the 1980s have one thing (and really only one thing) in common with Disney animated films: the creators knew their audiences weren't there for an epic-length story. They were there to be entertained. As such, many of the best horror films of the 1980s are under the 90-minute mark. Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street is just one of them. If you just finished Stranger Things Season 4, tune in to see Robert Englund in his iconic role as the waking nightmare himself, Freddy Krueger.
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