The film was about how Peter Dinklage’s character was drawn out of his solitude by Bobby Cannavale and Patricia Clarkson’s characters (who have their own issues). So it’s not that nothing happens; it’s just not a thrill-a-minute adventure. Lots of films are like that.
Are you sure? It shows them leaving the courthouse, presumably after the trial is over.
It’s far from my favorite movie, but for a 4-hour film where nothing much happens but a young painter visits an older painter, and older painter ends up painting his girlfriend a bunch of times, La belle noiseuse isn’t bad. A naked Emmanuelle Béart will suffice for plot, I guess.
Who said a movie has to be a shoot-'em-up? Plot and character development makes a story. 
Sling Blade may count. Most of the action depicted is told through a story in the beginning of the movie rather than shown on screen. The vast majority of the movie doesn’t have any action. It is just about Karl reintegrating with the outside world. Dwight Yoakam plays an abusive asshole but I don’t think I would call that action. There is something big that happens at the end but even that isn’t shown on screen.
Napoleon Dynamite may also count.
Gus van Sant’s Gerry is pretty much just two guys walking in the desert for days. There is one long uninterrupted shot of them walking into the sunrise that is absolutely mesmerizing (or deadly boring depending on your point of view).
I likeThe Party, starring Peter Sellers. All he does is wander around the party and be goofy… yet it’s watchable. Far more watchable than My Dinner With Andre, in my opinion.
Friday.
They get high.
Did anything happen in The Royal Tenebaums?
I liked that move a lot more than I thought I would.
Brian
Slight tangent on Raiders: How many “Top Men” did they lose before they decided to crate it up and lose it in the warehouse?
I know I felt like nothing much happened after watching Full Metal Jacket. There was some screaming and abusiveness, some shooting and killing, but in the end, it left me feeling like that famous line from MacBeth about life being a ruckus of no consequence.
On Golden Pond
Twelve Angry Men (1990s version)
The Caine Mutiny
Stalag 17 (though there was some killing)
Hedda (1975). As I remember it, it was just a lot of people sitting around talking (it was adapted from an Ibsen play), but Glenda Jackson was riveting in the title role. Looking at IMDB, I see it also featured Timothy West and Patrick Stewart, neither of whom I would have recognized thirty-odd years ago.
An even bigger assumption is that Hitler would have been hot to get his hands on a Jewish artifact at the same time he was burning down synagogues all over Germany.
Guy slits his wrists.
Ever stop to think that all the Nazis had to do was follow the truck and wait for Indy to get wherever the hell it was he thought he was going? Or just run out of gas?
He hijacks a truck full of soldiers and they’re stupid enough to try and climb into the cab while it’s going at full speed? Where the hell is he going to go? It’s the middle of the fucking Sahara desert! Just sit back and enjoy the ride, Jungen; you can kill him when he stops!
Please, if watching people draw someone out of their solitude for and hour and a half doesn’t count as nothing happening then no movie here belongs on this list.
And I say that as a person who liked this movie.
There’s a point midway thru the movie where the subtitle reads “One Year Later”, and it gets a big (and genuine) laugh because nothing much has happened in the first part of the movie and nothing has happened in the year in between. I usually hate absurdist movies like this, but I really enjoyed this one.
Regards,
Shodan
Celeste. About Marcel Proust’s maid. Long shots of her sitting waiting to be rung for.
ELAINE Ugh. You wouldn’t believe it. My boyfriend dumped me. My friends, who I don’t even like, they won’t talk to me. All because I don’t like that stupid English Patient movie.
WAITRESS Really? I thought it was pretty good.
ELAINE Oh, come on. Good? What was good about it? (scoffs) Those sex scenes! I mean, please! Gimme something I can use!