What “slowly” is is of course subjective, but I’m curious about movies you thought started off slowly and made you glad that you kept watching, and those that you considered an all around waste of time. Specific spoilers in boxes, please.
Anyway, I’m asking because I watched one of the latter today: Lovely Molly. I should have bailed after the slow start…just gave up on The Eclipse right now, though maybe I’ll go back to it someday.
Which ones stick in your mind?
After the first hour of Blue Velvet I started skimming to see if anything was going to happen. All that did was the end credits.
*Solaris *is the slowest movie that ever flowed uphill in January, but if you are prepared for that, and for the fact that it’s kind of cinematic poetry, rather than plot-resolution-driven storytelling, it’s worth watching.
Life as a House. I watched it because I was sick and didn’t have the energy to turn the channel. I had never even heard of it but it turned out to be a great movie.
I haven’t watched The Following in years, but I watched it enough times in college that I know when I recommend it to someone I tell them that it’s slow and they really have to stick with it for a big payoff at the end.
Much of Tarkovsky is like that. You definitely have to be in the right frame of mind to watch films like Solaris, Stalker and The Sacrifice. They’re quite worthy if you’re in that zone but if not…zzzzzz…
Into Great Silence is one of the very slowest, yet most thoroughly rewarding films I’ve ever watched.
Disagree on Blue Velvet - I found it mesmerizing. Surreal and dream-like, but not really slow.
The house of the devil started slow and got better.
Avatar was terrible all around.
Yes, Blue Velvet is one of my favorite movies. I’ve probably watched it at least 25 times.
Adaptation bored the hell out of me at first, but it became watchable then good.
Eyes wide shut, however, landed in suck town and bought a condo.
Barton Fink starts out slowly and steadily getting weirder, but there’s no decent payoff. It’s just, “Yeah, it guess it would be this weird by now.”.
The Full Monty was hideoously slow and boring until the part at the end when I cheered.
Gallipoli was pretty slow until the end too.
Blue Velvet was worth watching to the end. But on the other hand, I thought Eraserhead started off slow, ended slow, and had no pay-off.
I thought The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was excruciatingly slow. Then it ended and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and in retrospect I really love it. So I’m glad I kept with it, but it was tough (and I know in general it seems to be really well regarded).
Yes, and Tarkovsky’s Nosthalgia as well.
I vividly remember Vincent Canby’s review of the latter in the NYTs: “Nothing happens.”
The Prime Gig is slow, but worth the wait.
Yep I always say Stalker needs to be watched at night, possibly with intoxicants.
Seven Samurai is very slow to get going but it might be the best movie ever made. I find the slow initial pace to be hypnotic, like many other Kurosawa movies.
I just watched that last week and I agree. I never got quite tired enough of it to shut it off, but there was no take-away from it for me other than “that was a couple hours of weird cinema.”