In praise of long films

Late last year, Martin Scorsese’s epic Killers of the Flower Moon switched from cinema to living room on the Apple TV streaming service. An increasingly popular tactic, the move from big to small screen draws in a whole new audience, many of whom deliberately waited to see it for the price of a monthly subscription rather than spend a night at the pictures paying for overpriced popcorn, listening to other people’s conversations and not being able to check their Instagram account every five minutes.

Yet even as they relaxed on their sofas, they took to social media to complain: ‘Why are these films so long?’ KOTFM weighs in just shy of three and a half hours long and follows in the footsteps of Oppenheimer, last year’s smash, at exactly three hours in duration. But to hear the moans from those who cannot face more than 90 minutes away from staring at their phones, you would think watching anything for more than two hours requires some sort of marathon effort akin to sitting through The Ring Cycle.