Although most movies run for a couple of hours, some are just so epic that they
deserve a runtime twice as long — or more. So block out a few weeks on your calendar,
get cozy, and enjoy: these are the best films ever made that are over four hours long.
The 1963 historical epic Cleopatra begins shortly after the Roman emperor Julius Caesar
wins a massive civil war. Arriving in Egypt, he meets and falls in love with Cleopatra, daughter
of the Pharaoh — with devastating consequences for Caesar, Egypt, and the entire Roman Empire.
Over the course of the movie, Cleopatra is crowned Queen of Egypt, has a child with Caesar,
and is eventually forced to pick sides when Rome is divided after the assassination of her lover.
Initially angered that her son Caesarion was not chosen to succeed him, Cleopatra is given another
chance to interfere with Roman affairs when Mark Antony approaches her and asks for supplies in
his war against the would-be emperor Octavian. Plenty of back-stabbings and bloody battles ensue,
and, well, let's just say things don't turn out well for Antony or Cleopatra.
It's not often that you can say a four-hour film might be too short,
but that may well be the case with Cleopatra. The only real problem with this film is that
virtually every chapter of the real Cleopatra's life could fill out an entire miniseries,
and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz tried to stuff most of it into his movie. Still,
you have to give him credit for trying — and creating a straight-up masterpiece in the process.
If you were skeptical that the long-awaited, so-called "Snyder cut" of 2017's Justice League
would live up to the insane levels of hype it generated, you weren't alone. Snyder's
filmography is generally hit or miss, and although there has been the occasional bright spot,
the DC Extended Universe has mostly been something of a disappointment — especially in comparison to
the far more successful Marvel Cinematic Universe. As such, all the signs were pointing to a "Snyder
cut" that was only superficially different from, but not better than, the so-so theatrical release.
And boy, were those signs wrong. Zack Snyder's Justice League isn't exactly
Dark Knight-brilliant by any means, but it's a truly worthy superhero team-up
outing nonetheless, and a significant improvement over the original version.
"I don't care how many demons he's fought in how many hells. He's never fought us. Not us united."
It's also a triumph for Snyder and his fans, who fought tooth and nail to get this version
of the film released after years of being the butt of superhero movie jokes — and
putting up with destructive creative meddling from the studio. In the end,
the release of this four-hour epic turned out to be one of Hollywood's greatest redemption stories.
Each of the three parts of the 2010 French-German film Carlos is longer than the one before it — and
they're all the length of an entire movie. The story follows the exploits of Ilich Ramírez
Sánchez, otherwise known as Carlos the Jackal: a real-life political terrorist who committed
multiple violent acts in Europe on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Part one follows Sánchez as he fights alongside militants in the Middle East before moving
to London and then Paris, taking part in multiple killings and bombings along the way.
The chapter ends with him adopting the name Carlos and escaping capture by the French police.
Part two focuses on a single, real-life terrorist attack staged by Carlos,
in which he kidnapped multiple OPEC officials, but then released some after being unable to find any
countries in which he could seek asylum. This part ends with him becoming an agent for hire
for a number of nation states, and setting out to work within the Soviet sphere of influence.
Part three, the longest of all, follows Carlos' continuing operations in Eastern Europe,
exploiting the geopolitical instability in the region to traffic arms between various clients and
sponsor states. Perhaps inevitably, the movie ends with his 1994 arrest
by French intelligence agents. Sound like a lot? Well, it is — which is why Carlos,
which was originally a TV miniseries, clocks in at a truly impressive five and a half hours.
Gettysburg, the made-for-TV epic about the Civil War battle of the same name,
shouldn't work half as well as it does. The decision to cast reenactors with their own
uniforms and gear may sound like a no-brainer, until you realize that reenactors don't tend
to look much like the scrawny teenagers who actually fought in the battles the movie depicts.
On top of that, the action is bloodless, the cinematography felt unimaginative and dated
even in 1993, and you can very nearly see the strings holding up those goofy fake beards.
And then, of course, there's the fact that the director's cut goes on for four and a half hours.
And yet, somehow, the movie manages to be more than worth a watch.
Randy Edelman's score is one of the most underrated of the 90s, and the main cast
give career-defining performances. Jeff Daniels gives one of his best as Colonel Chamberlain,
whose regiment is forced to defend Little Round Top against seemingly impossible odds.
Tom Berenger does a winning turn as Longstreet, while Richard Jordan gives a haunting performance
as the Confederate officer Lo Armistead. In the end, against all odds, Gettysburg actually shines.
The epic 1984 crime movie Once Upon a Time in America is the final entry in Italian director
Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time trilogy. Set in 1918, it follows two petty criminals who
lead a group of youngsters from the slums of Manhattan's Jewish ghetto to prominence in the
world of organized crime. Naturally, this movie has all the mainstays of classic gangster cinema:
extreme violence, thick New York accents, drug use, unscrupulous characters, and Joe Pesci.
Unfortunately, studio meddling undermined Once Upon a Time's chances at the United
States box office. The Ladd Company, which produced and distributed the movie,
was spooked by the initial six-hour, two-part release that Leone had premiered in Europe,
and trimmed it down to 139 minutes without his consent or involvement. Inevitably,
critics and audiences alike disliked this shortened release, and the movie pretty much
bombed at the box office. Nowadays, at least, the full version of Once Upon a Time in America
enjoys a much more favorable reputation with critics and audiences — leading to
this film becoming yet another cautionary tale of the perils of unwelcome studio interference.
Kenneth Branagh's adaptations of the works of William Shakespeare are some of the most
popular and critically-acclaimed to date — and one of the best of all is 1996's Hamlet.
A word-for-word recreation of the original play, this movie's cast is by far its finest asset.
"Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio."
Branagh's turn as Prince Hamlet is obviously the heart of the movie, but Derek Jacobi's performance
as King Claudius, killer of Hamlet's father and the story's primary antagonist, is just
as memorable. In fact, pretty much every actor in Hamlet has a good go at stealing the show,
although perhaps the most surprising is a young, pre-Titanic Kate Winslet, who plays Ophelia.
Branagh has made a handful of tweaks and alterations to the original play, of course;
most notably, the 19th century setting and the inclusion of a number of flashbacks — but Hamlet
still manages to pull these off without losing any of the magic of Shakespeare's
original play. Overall, this movie more than justifies its four hour runtime.
The long-running artistic collaboration between Hungarian director Béla Tarr
and novelist László Krasznahorkai came to a head in 1994 with Sátántango. This seven-hour,
12-chapter behemoth of a film follows the exploits of the slick-tongued Irimiás,
who arrives at a small farming commune in the final days of communism and,
after promising them good fortunes in a wondrous new land, ends up making off with all their money.
It would be nigh-on impossible to even go into the many, many characters and
plot developments that feature throughout Sátántango. All you need to know is that
it's widely considered one of the best films ever made, boasts a rare 100% on
Rotten Tomatoes, and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of eastern European cinema.
The 2003 Italian historical drama The Best of Youth follows Nicola and Matteo Carati,
two brothers from Rome who are forced to navigate the difficulties of life in post-World War II
Italy. After a flood in Florence, Nicola marries Giulia, a pianist and political extremist,
before entering into the field of psychiatry. Meanwhile, Matteo joins up with the police and
tries to right society's wrongs with brute force, before meeting and falling in love with Mirella,
a starry-eyed photographer. Over the course of the film's six and a half hour runtime,
these four characters survive floods, violence, and extreme political turbulence as they discover
all kinds of truths about themselves and each other.
Like many other super-long films, director Marco Tullio Giordana
originally wanted The Best of Youth to be a TV miniseries. Instead, it was given a theatrical
premiere at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where critics overlooked its punishing runtime
to give it widespread acclaim — as well as the coveted Prize Un Certain Regard.
If there's such a thing as a Holocaust movie for the faint of heart, it's probably not
worth watching. Still, few of them are quite so gut-wrenching, haunting, terrifying, enraging,
and unforgettable as Shoah, French director Claude Lanzmann's nine-hour documentary. In his movie,
Lanzmann examines every last detail of the Holocaust in eastern Europe, beginning in the
Warsaw Ghetto, a tiny district where that city's Jewish population was corralled by Nazi occupiers
before being shipped off to concentration camps. Shoah's story also delves into the
horrors of the labor and extermination camps themselves, the millions of Jews,
communists, Roma, and other so-called "undesirables" who were imprisoned and
killed in them, the administrators and soldiers who ran them, and the civilians who lived nearby.
Perhaps most shockingly of all, however, is Shoah's exploration of the banality of the evil
that characterized the Nazis' crimes. Although the movie doesn't really touch on Holocaust denial,
many of the people interviewed for the documentary still refuse to take responsibility for their
roles in the Holocaust. It's moments like these that help make Lanzmann's movie not just an
incredibly uncomfortable watch — to say the least — but a truly essential one, too.
As if its 11 Oscar wins weren't proof enough, 2003's The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King is one of the most critically-acclaimed and popular movies
of all time. It's one of those films where each rewatch makes you fall in love a little harder;
in which every last scene is shot, performed, and scored to perfection.
"You bow to no one."
As for the film's finest moments — where do you even start? There's the tragedy of the fall of
Osgiliath, in which Faramir leads his remaining men on a chaotic retreat back to Minas Tirith.
There's Pippin's song, performed for a feasting Denethor as Faramir rides back to Osgiliath on
a suicide mission. There's the lighting of the beacons, Gandalf's recollection of the afterlife,
Eowyn's battle against the Witch King, Frodo and Sam's climb up Mount Doom, the Battle at the
Black Gate… and, perhaps most famously of all, the ride of the Rohirrim, which might just be the most
fist-pumping, beautiful, edge-of-your-seat battle sequence ever put to film.
The theatrical version of The Return of the King only actually runs for about three and
a half hours, but the extended edition adds on a whole heap more, including the death of Saruman,
Gandalf's confrontation with the Witch-King, and the heroes' confrontation with the Mouth
of Sauron. Some may say this version of the film is overstuffed — heck,
some people think the theatrical release is. But the truth is that the extended version
of The Return of the King represents the very best of Peter Jackson's momentous,
beautiful, and epic Lord of the Rings trilogy.
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