A tedious project it was totally not worth doing

I'm the listmaster, as you know.

One of the lists I keep is a list of all the movies I've ever seen. Actually, that's two of the lists.

The first movie list I ever kept was a Microsoft Word document that I would steadily add to over the years, first commissioned sometime in the early 1990s. I was still in high school then. 

At some point I transferred all that information to Excel so I could add other fields, turning it into a searchable/sortable database of sorts -- you know, year, director, whether I gave it thumbs up or thumbs down, whether I saw it in a theater or on video for the first time. Fairly rudimentary stuff for a database, dictated by how much patience I had for adding new information to every new entry I added.

I still maintain the Word document also, mind you. It's my original list. Respect. 

At some point much later -- like, last year, or maybe the year before -- I decided that running time was one of the columns I was going to add in this spreadsheet/database. I don't know why, really. I guess I thought it was useful to know the length of a movie I had already seen. 

Now, the only real reason to add a data field in a database is because you are going to either search by that data value or sort by it. And what would be the reason to sort by it, you ask?

Why, to decide the best movie I'd seen at every running time, of course.

Seriously. 

The problem was, when I first got this idea, there were already more than 5,000 movies in the spreadsheet. (There are 5,864 as of this writing.) And there was no fast way to add the running time for each movie. I'd just have to go to IMDB, search for the movie, and then enter its running time in the column to the right of the other columns -- column I, in this case. And then do it again. And again. And again. More than 5,000 times.

So that's what I did. 

It took a long time, of course. That should be indicated by the fact that I can't remember if I started the project last year, or the year before. It could have even been the year before that. 

I'd grab a few here and there in down moments, steadily making my way through the A's, and eventually, the B's. Then I got bored with the straightforward alphabetical method, and made a game of holding down Page Up or Page Down and then randomly releasing at a certain point, grabbing the running times of those ten tiles before repeating the exercise. When I ultimately decided that was too inefficient, I went back to alphabetical.

To get an idea of how tedious it was and how much it eventually wore me down, I got to within 150 titles of finishing and then took forever to actually finish. When I did finally finish, it took me quite a while to actually sort by running time and record my favorite movie from the 100+ movies at each individual running time. When I finally did that, it took me quite a while again to actually start writing this post. Which of course means that the most recent 20 or 30 movies I've seen are not even represented in the final calculation. 

See? Tedious. Not worth doing.

But now that I've done it, you better damn well believe I'm going to make you read the results.

Here was my methodology. I found the shortest running time where I had seen at least ten movies, which in this case was 72 minutes. (Remember, I only consider films of a certain minimum length to count as feature films that qualify for this list, though what that length is is not well defined. I know it when I see it.) Then I went all the way through to the longest running time where I had seen at least ten movies, which was exactly 90 minutes longer than that at 162 minutes. Then I recorded the best movie, and runner up, from all the running times in between, even if they had fewer than ten titles seen. (One of them had only two titles, but fortunately, they were both good.)

The way I'd figure out which were the best was that I used a second means of sorting the data after running time, which was alphabetical order of the title. Then I'd go through the list of the titles at each running time, choosing my two favorite. As I'd scroll down, I'd select the first movie, alphabetically, that had a realistic chance of being my favorite from that running time. Once I found the second movie, it either leapfrogged the first or came in behind it as the runner up. Then I continued down the list until the titles I'd chosen either endured in the spots I assigned them or were supplanted by other movies. Then I recorded the results.

I told you it was not worth doing.

But now that I've done it, you better damn well believe I'm going to make you read the results.

At one point I thought of commenting on why I chose each movie, telling you what other movies might have been solid contenders, or even identifying the worst movie I saw at that running time. But given how my enthusiasm for the project was almost nil by the time I finished -- and that your enthusiasm for it would likely be even less -- I've decided to spare you that. Of course, you could have just stopped reading long ago and probably should have, but for those of you who may consider yourself Audient completists, at least all you'll get from here on out is a list of titles, with maybe a stray comment thrown in here or there if it's really warranted.

First, though, a final reason this project wasn't worth doing. The reason to do any project like this is because you think the results will be revealing in some way, and these results just aren't. More than anything they resemble a revisitation of the upper couple hundred titles of my Flickchart, with which I am already pretty familiar. I suppose it's sort of interesting to realize that two movies you love, which may be very different, are the same length as each other ... but not interesting enough to have spent probably 40 hours on this over the course of a couple years.

But now that I've done it, you better damn well believe 

Here we go. Your legend: Running time (Number of movies seen at that running time): Best movie at that running time (Second best movie seen at that running time)

72 (10) - Fantastic Planet (Do Not Resist)
73 (5) - Bubble (The Living Desert)
74 (7) - Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (Surrogate Valentine) - Hey! Two movies nobody's ever heard of! 
75 (30) - The Ox-Bow Incident (Mistaken for Strangers)
76 (16) - The Cruise (The Do-Deca-Pentathlon)
77 (17) - Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (Deerskin)
78 (21) - The Emperor's New Groove ([REC])
79 (21) - The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Murder Party)
80 (48) - Run Lola Run (Invasion of the Body Snatchers)
81 (37) - Toy Story (The Blair Witch Project)
82 (44) - This is Spinal Tap (The Secret of N.I.M.H.)
83 (43) - The Dictator (Ghost in the Shell)
84 (62) - Idiocracy (Beauty and the Beast)
85 (79) - My Neighbor Totoro (The Naked Gun)
86 (74) - The Iron Giant (Once)
87 (88) - Exit Through the Gift Shop (Videodrome) - Hey! The closest I got to seeing the same number of movies as the running time!
88 (107) - Airplane! (Red State)
89 (90) - Bicycle Thief (Stand by Me) - Hey! Also the closest I got to seeing the same number of movies as the running time!
90 (179) - Your Sister's Sister (Waltz With Bashir)
91 (141) - Monty Python & the Holy Grail (Rabbit Hole)
92 (113) - Flirting With Disaster (Night of the Hunter)
93 (151) - Trainspotting (A Ghost Story)
94 (156) - Raising Arizona (Spring Breakers)
95 (166) - When Harry Met Sally ... (Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)
96 (164) - The Cable Guy (Kicking and Screaming)
97 (169) - Elf (Moon)
98 (144) - Fargo (The Princess Bride)
99 (114) - Suspiria (Reservoir Dogs)
100 (160) - Say Anything (Tangled)
101 (149) - Where the Wild Things Are (Before Sunrise)
102 (137) - Lost in Translation (Galaxy Quest)
103 (118) - Election (Ferris Bueller's Day Off) - Hey! Two Matthew Broderick movies!
104 (131) - Big (Tanna)
105 (152) - Ghostbusters (Edward Scissorhands)
106 (123) - Jesus Christ Superstar (The Graduate)
107 (125) - Dumb and Dumber (The Cell)
108 (103) - A Fish Called Wanda (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
109 (111) - Children of Men (Bound)
110 (136) - Sunset Boulevard (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
111 (80) - Ace in the Hole (Bonnie and Clyde)
112 (102) - Defending Your Life (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
113 (92) - Donnie Darko (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)
114 (81) - WarGames (Adaptation)
115 (86) - Raiders of the Lost Ark (Miller's Crossing)
116 (92) - Back to the Future (Time Bandits) - Hey! Two time travel movies! 
117 (84) - Four Weddings and a Funeral (Blade Runner)
118 (94) - Silence of the Lambs (Arsenic and Old Lace)
119 (71) - Citizen Kane (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
120 (89) - Do the Right Thing (The Social Network)
121 (66) - Star Wars (Like Father, Like Son)
122 (71) - Almost Famous (The Exorcist)
123 (63) - A Separation (All That Jazz)
124 (67) - The Empire Strikes Back (Synecdoche, New York)
125 (60) - Parenthood (Philadelphia) - Hey! Two single-word titles starting with P! 
126 (50) - Ordet (The Manchurian Candidate)
127 (52) - Ghost (Superman II)
128 (39) - Bram Stoker's Dracula (Cape Fear)
129 (51) - Starship Troopers (12 Monkeys)
130 (57) - Unforgiven (Chinatown)
131 (29) - Return of the Jedi (The Wages of Fear)
132 (36) - Die Hard (Parasite)
133 (24) - Rain Man (Creed)
134 (33) - Happiness (I'm Thinking of Ending Things) - Hey! Totally ironic pairing! 
135 (40) - BlacKkKlansman (25th Hour) - Hey! Two Spike Lee movies!
136 (27) - Vanilla Sky (North by Northwest)
137 (31) - Terminator 2: Judgment Day (The Lives of Others)
138 (26) - All About Eve (All the President's Men) - Hey! Two titles starting with the word "All"!
139 (16) - Fight Club (Jerry Maguire)
140 (26) - Apollo 13 (Dancer in the Dark)
141 (15) - Wonder Woman (Mr. Nobody)
142 (15) - The Shawshank Redemption (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) - Hey! Two movies about imprisonment! Sort of! 
143 (18) - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (The Great Gatsby)
144 (11) - Carlito's Way (The Martian)
145 (15) - Strange Days (Born on the Fourth of July)
146 (12) - Goodfellas (The Shining)
147 (9) - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Traffic)
148 (11) - Into the Wild (Inception) - Hey! Two titles starting with the letters "In"!
149 (6) - 2001: A Space Odyssey (Avengers: Infinity War) Hey! Two titles with colons! 
150 (10) - Das Boot (Contact)
151 (7) - The Departed (The Big Parade)
152 (9) - Beyond the Hills (The Dark Knight)
153 (10) - Apocalypse Now (Inglourious Basterds) 
154 (12) - Pulp Fiction (Hamlet)
155 (8) - Cinema Paradiso (Boogie Nights)
156 (4) - Downfall (The Revenant)
157 (8) - The Insider (Zodiac)
158 (5) - There Will Be Blood (2012)
159 (2) - Breaking the Waves (Eyes Wide Shut) - Hey! Only two movies! 
160 (4) - Amadeus (Topsy-Turvy)
161 (8) - Bridge on the River Kwai (Enter the Void)
162 (12) - Toni Erdmann (The English Patient)

I just can't escape the tedious when it comes to this project. I just slavishly spent the time individually bolding 91 different running times, just to make the presentation look nice.

Some general comments can't hurt at this point.

I never had to choose a film that I actually disliked, even if it meant including a 74-minute movie that my friend was in. It was a legit movie, and hey, it was good. 

There were a few instances where I wasn't able to include a movie that was in my top 100 of all time, because there were two movies even better than it at the same length. I didn't record those, though, so I can't really tell you what they were at this point. 

For the record, the longest movie I have seen, though it was the only one at that length, was Gettysburg at 271 minutes. I knew Gettysburg was long, but I didn't think it was that long -- I thought it was closer to four hours, maybe under. That's what IMDB says, anyway, and who am I to disagree. Now you know why I picked its poster to accompany this post -- this project was the Gettsyburg of movie projects (though not as good). 

For the record, the shortest movie I have seen, though it was the only one at that length, was Un Chien Andalou at 16 minutes, and it dates back to a time when I had a slightly different definition of "feature film." I would not include that film today, but I have never been able to remove it, considering it grandfathered in. 

If we're going only according to Flickchart, my favorite running time is 98 minutes, which includes my #8 film on Flickchart (Fargo) and my #11 (The Princess Bride). Which is appropriate as that is pretty much the ideal running time for a feature.

I'm not going to figure out my least favorite running time according to Flickchart, because that's much harder.

There was one final piece of information I wanted to share that came out of this project, and this one is actually kind of cool. Having done all this, I can now tell you what the average running time of all my movies is.

I thought this would be too hard. I was planning on not doing it because I thought I'd have to multiply all the above totals, add them together and then divide by the total number of movies on this list, which was 5,840 at the time I saved a copy of the file that was sorted by running time in order to start recording the results. Then I realized -- forehead smack -- this is Excel, and it will do all that hard work for me. All I had to do was highlight all the cells in the Runtime column, and I didn't even have to do any division because Excel automatically computed a running average as I went.

You will be surprised to learn -- because I was a little surprised to learn it -- that the average came out to 106.8 minutes. That's a little long, don't you think? I expected something closer to 100, but the numbers don't lie. 

Guess there's a reason I think every movie I watch these days is too long. I've been worn down over the past four decades of movie watching.

As a side note: The median is either 116 or 117 minutes (since there are an odd number). Taken in comparison to the statistical mean of 106.8, I guess that means I've seen more movies that skew off the mean on the the shorter side than on the longer side, if I'm thinking about that correctly. Which I guess sort of makes sense, as shorter movies are easier to get made and are more easily consumed. The mode -- which is the most common number in the set -- is, perhaps unsurprisingly, 90 minutes, as I have seen 179 such films. Unsurprising as that is a nice round number and is more easily funded. 

Now let us bring this dark chapter in my history to a close and never speak of it again.