8 Long Movies That Warranted Their Runtimes

1) The Wolf of Wall Street

With fewer lengthy year-end movies this past year to complain about, time-sticklers seemed to focus their attention almost entirely on The Wolf of Wall Street, which ran for just shy of 3 hours. Yes, that’s nearly the same amount of time it would take to watch Gravity and Philomena back to back, but this shouldn’t be a big surprise to anyone familiar with the progression of Martin Scorsese’s career and work.

After nearly 40 years of honing his craft, establishing himself as a master of American cinema, Scorsese seems to have mastered the skill of determining the proper duration in which to tell a story. His early work produced shorter films, but since the 1990s his most celebrated films also happened to be his longest ones: Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

The quality of these movies speaks volumes, but for Wolf in particular, the story being told is not only tackling a big subject in Jordan Belfort but is also precisely about excess itself. The repetition of party and orgy scenes to the point of near boredom is essential to Scorsese’s depiction of a world plagued by monstrous greed and no sense of moderation.