"No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough"

Roger Ebert captures a simple truth about how art feels in time: when a film works, minutes melt; when it doesn’t, seconds grind. A great movie seems to breathe with the audience. Its length becomes part of its rhythm, and the viewer’s curiosity supplies the oxygen. Characters deepen, conflicts unfold, jokes land, silences matter. You stop checking the clock because the story answers the only question that matters, what happens next? By contrast, a weak film has no pace to sustain; it hurries and stalls at the same time. Even a brisk running time feels padded when scenes repeat beats, dialogue lacks subtext, or stakes never cohere. The mind looks for exits when the heart isn’t engaged.

Ebert’s line is also a reminder that runtime is a poor metric of quality. Studios and platforms often treat minutes as math: more showtimes, more streams, more “completion rates.” Yet the experience of time in cinema is elastic. A three-hour epic can feel airy if it’s purposeful, while an eighty-minute comedy can drag if it’s shapeless. The difference lies in attention: careful structure, meaningful transitions, and tonal control compress perceived time; sloppy storytelling stretches it. Editing isn’t just removal; it’s the art of choosing what to dwell on and what to release.

There’s an irony in modern viewing habits: people will binge six hours of television but balk at a long feature. That contradiction proves Ebert’s point. We accept duration when immersion is strong. The real question for filmmakers is not how long, but how alive. Every minute must earn its place, not through spectacle alone but through movement, of plot, of emotion, of thought. When a film truly connects, you want to live in it a little longer. When it doesn’t, no amount of brevity can make the time feel well spent.