What are the best movies where most of what takes place is talking?
I just watched Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, two excellent movies where it’s just two characters talking throughout the whole movie.
Can anyone think of any other movies like that?
ETA: Can someone fix the title? It should be “Best talking movies”.
My Dinner with Andre is very popular, not my style, but it fits your description.
There’s a whole group of directors who I have referred to as “the children of Woody Allen.” They are, more or less, a generation younger than Allen. They all write and direct movies that resemble Allen’s in the way that much of the action of the story takes place in the dialogue. The directors in this group are Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith, Whit Stillman, Nicole Holofcener, and Noah Baumbach. Another director who uses a lot of dialogue, but who is different enough that I don’t think of him as part of this group, is David Mamet.
There’s a really great Australian independent film I saw called The Interview that is basically just a detective interviewing a suspected killer in an interrogation room, with a few scenes taking place outside. The battle of wits between the two men (Hugo Weaving and Tony Martin) is electrifying to watch.
Then of course there’s 12 Angry Men and Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
nvm
Yeah, Richard Linklater’s pretty much the master of this, with Slacker, Waking Life and the Sunset films. My Dinner with Andre is the closest to his stuff that I’ve seen (and I quite enjoyed it).
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Mike Leigh is another big name “talking movie” director.** Naked** and **Secrets and Lies ** are the obvious choices for his best movies, but I’ve enjoyed every movie of his that I have seen.
Wendell Wagner already mentioned Woody Allen, but to be more specific, I think ** Husbands and Wives** may be one of his most conversation centered movies.
a Man for All Seasons – There’s lots of movement and pageantry, but it’s really all about the dialogue. And Thomas More gets all the best lines
Sleuth – Anthony Schaffer tried mightily to give us visuals for the play, and the movie strove to move out of that confining set, but this is also a dialogue-driven film. The remake, with its script by Harold Pinter, even threw out the visual slapstick of the clown suit.
**Long Day’s Journey Into Night. **
Not to be confused with Interview which is about a journalist (steve Buscemi) interviewing a soap star. It is an ok movie though, with only talking, based on the dutch version by Theo van Gogh, which is better.
Good talking movies I’d like to mention Clerks and Don’s Plum.
The Man from Earth
Mindwalk
Clerks was the first to come to my mind, as well. Of the follow-up films, Chasing Amy is probably the closest to being as dialogue heavy.
A lot of David Mamet films would probably work: Glengarry GlenRoss, “About Last Night…”, State and Main. A lot of plays turned into movies would work… Wit, Night, Mother.
Perhaps not what the OP was requesting, but they certainly fill the request: interview-heavy documentaries (Harlan County USA, the Up series, most of Errol Morris’s films, like The Fog of War and The Thin Blue Line), monologue films (like Swimming to Cambodia), and stand-up comedy films.
Barry Levinson’s Diner would fit well here. Not much action or plot, just a group of friends in '59 Baltimore discussing what everyone goes through at some point, all the assorted fears associated with growing up.
The Big Kahuna, with Kevin Spacey and Danny Devito as veteran salesmen and some young guy who I’ve never heard of & my brain backfilled in Matt Damon in Ocean’s 11 as some kind of young corporate type from the same company - the whole of the action takes place in their hotel room.
12 Angry Men!! That movie blew me away with how riviting and dramatic it was while 98% of it took place with 12 men in one room.
Just for contrast, I also liked **the Naked Prey ** with Cornel Wilde in which after the first segment there is very little dialogue throughout the movie.
I see your A Man For All Seasons, and raise you The Lion in Winter. Eleanor of Aquitaine gets all (well, most of) the best lines.
I’m not sure why, but “Tin Men” with Richard Dreyfus and Danny DeVito jumps to my mind.
Another title for this thread might be “Best character-driven movies”, which isn’t exactly the same, but has an a lot of overlap with “talking movies”.