What Is the BEST Movie Under 90 Minutes?

 

Part One

Time is everything. Knowing we only have so much time is both a superpower and a form of kryptonite for the human race. When I am limited on time, I get stressed out, and thinking about what to do with my free time can be stressful, too. I know I’m not the only one. I suppose a moment when I was contemplating this conundrum inspired the idea to make a list of the best short movies. It then evolved from there into what I am about to embark on: a multi-part series exploring many great films across numerous genres, and pitting them against one another, to determine what movie, exactly, is the best of all-time with a runtime shorter than ninety minutes.

There are many arguments about what constitutes “feature-length” runtime when it comes to films. I have always asserted that a movie should be no less than an hour as an absolute minimum for it to count as a movie. While some believe modern feature length must be greater than seventy-nine minutes, according to many organizations that stand as “experts” in the field, such as the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, a film must only run for more than forty minutes for it to count as feature-length. That seems too generous to me, but I won’t argue. The shortest movie I can think of made in the 21^st century that I have watched is ThanksKilling, at 66 minutes—which barely counts as a real movie, anyway, and it wasn’t widely released in theatres. Usually, if a new movie is released in theatres and the runtime is on the shorter side, it isn’t less than eighty minutes.

It's a relevant question to ask: what are some of the best movies that are under 90 minutes? Lately, the problem of movies being too long has become a generalized complaint among critics and audiences. A couple related facts that are found quite easily online are, 1) the average shot length (time the camera stays focused on something before cutting to a different shot) has gone down from the old average of about 10 seconds to just about 2 seconds, meaning images move and change much quicker than they used to, and 2) the average runtimes for the highest grossing films of the year have increased in recent years. There was a study done a couple years ago published in The Guardian with this interesting result: the ideal film length was deemed to be 92 minutes. There are some movies that don’t need to be as long as they are, for sure, but I don’t feel that everything is too long now. If we look back at the 1950s and 1960s—the era of epic films like Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur and Cleopatra—those movies are too long, but they’re also great! Ultimately, a movie should be as long as it needs to be.

For me, I find the ideal runtime for action/adventure/sci-fi/drama is, more often than not, precisely two hours. Jurassic Park, Jaws, Back to the Future, Alien, and the original Star Wars are all very close in length. For a horror/thriller or comedy, 90 minutes is all you need, give or take. I’m not looking at the give part of that here, though, I’m looking at the take. Let’s take it down below 90 minutes and see what movies we are left with. The results might surprise you! 

 

The Challenge Begins

At first I thought I would just gather up all the movies I could think of that were under 90 minutes, briefly explain each one, and then pick which one is the best overall. I quickly realized that would not be possible, because there are so many movies that are under 90 minutes. Not only that, but there are so many exceptional movies, in multiple genres. How can I really pick just one over so many others in genres completely different from one another? I can’t. That is why this is going to be a meticulously arranged process. I will work my way through several different genres, identifying all the examples I think are the best in those genres that are under 90 minutes, and pick several winners from each. Then, those winners will all go up against one another in a series of elimination rounds, and I will finally crown one movie the winner: the greatest movie of all time that’s under 90 minutes!

There will be upsets. There may even be tears. Each genre has some tough competitors. There will be many movies throughout that might seem to have been forgotten. Trust the process! I verified the runtimes of dozens of movies to make sure I didn’t miss any. There may be some missing that I simply missed, or have not seen, or do not think should be considered “best” so this will not be an unbiased exploration. But, I will try to include all movies worth a mention at the very least for each genre. This is a celebration as much as it is a competition. Bias is inescapable, but I will give each film featured in each round a fair shot, with details and comparisons provided before coming to any conclusions. This might be my most challenging blog series yet, but I am going to have fun with it and stick with it until I have determined which film, in all of film history, stands out as the best one amid a very special mix of short feature length motion pictures.  

Tune in next time for part two: the first genre under examination and the first round of eliminations!

Part 3: Ultraviolet (2006) Retrospective - Conclusion

 

Part 2: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2026/06/part-2-ultraviolet-2006-20th.html

 

Last time, I examined the greatest strength of Ultraviolet (Milla Jovovich as the main character), as well as some of the good and the not so good in terms of worldbuilding, effects, and action, but the problem I’m going to address next is one I don’t think anyone can argue with, even if they’re a fan of the film like I am.

I don’t know if the lore made any more sense in Wimmer’s original two-hour R-rated cut, but I didn’t realize that one of the reasons I felt compelled to rewatch the movie so many times to understand it better as a kid/teen was because of how incomprehensible it gets. Too much information is clumsily spat out by three random guys after that first action scene, mere minutes after the opening credits, one of whom gets shot because he gets blood on his bare hands, and then Violet gives us a voiceover backstory for how the virus got out and started the war. Then, we get introduced to the main villain, and the story gets underway from there, but some of the dialogue is just utterly reprehensible. The theatrical cut doesn’t even provide as much voiceover explanation, making it even more confusing. There’s clever filmmaking where you let the audience discover important things for themselves and don’t spoon feed them information, and then there’s poor filmmaking where you don’t explain anything and leave the audience too bewildered to care.

This movie ricochets from cool to crap so many times so fast. In one skirmish, Daxus tells his men to switch to night vision; instead of seeing, we hear a bunch of fighting, then thermal red lights come on, illuminating all of his men, dead, and the hemophages standing there in triumph. It looks very cool, very sinister, and makes you wonder what the next move will be for Daxus. He ducks into a side room, opens a cup of sealed coffee that’s self heating (a fun enough little gag, and another example of interesting future tech), and reveals to Nerva he has his own special abilities, for he’s able to shoot Nerva’s three comrades before they can even raise their own weapons. They’re shot in ways that make them react as if they’re doing the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil thing, before individually dropping dead, leaving just Nerva standing. It’s kind of dumb and not as clever as Wimmer probably thought it was.

What many people find plainly bad about Ultraviolet I find peculiarly bad which increases its entertainment value, for me. Remember, I like movies that are so bad they’re good, and in ways, I would classify Ultraviolet as one of these, but it’s such a mixed bag, because there are aspects I find genuinely great, and aspects I find horribly misguided, and again, sometimes it yo-yos between great and garbage within the same scene! Here’s another prime example: Violet is driving with Six slouched on the passenger seat, and she says to him, “Haven’t you been paying attention? Killing is what I do. It’s what I’m good at.” Milla delivers the line pretty well—well enough they used it in the trailer, even—and I think it’s cheeky and badass at the same time. But then, she keeps talking, and the shot changes to focus on her face straight on through the windshield, and as she stares right at the audience, she says, “I am a titan. A monolith. Nothing can stop me.” That’s…pretty corny. A monolith? Like from 2001: A Space Odyssey? Milla’s delivery of this line isn’t as badass, but I mean, I don’t think anyone could’ve delivered that line straight and made more out of it than she did.

Sometimes, bad dialogue can’t be salvaged, but mediocre dialogue can be elevated by stellar actors. Milla is talented enough to at least make some of the one-liners and retorts work, but let’s branch over to some of the other cast members of Ultraviolet, and wonder, was Kurt Wimmer maybe not quite skilled enough to handle a production of this scope, and that’s why some of the performances are so stilted and strange? Sebastien Andrieu as Nerva isn’t very good; he was a model, and has no acting credits on IMDB after this film. I’ll give Cameron Bright as Six a pass because he was just a kid, and his strangeness is less to do with his acting choices and more to do with the nature of his character. He’s in constant danger and needs rescuing on more than one occasion. He’s also sick and dying and radioactive (?), so he’s slow, lays down a lot, and is nearly lifeless at points. William Fichtner is solid, but his character Garth doesn’t add too much to the story, he just gives Violet an ally in a world otherwise filled with enemies.

Nick Chinlund as Daxus ranges from appropriately evil to campy to annoying to dull, but like Jovovich, he makes the most of some of his bad dialogue. His character is a germaphobe, which fits for this disease filled world, but I really don’t find the twist that he also happens to be the same scientist who unleashed hemoglophagia in the first place necessary or logical. His character at no point acts or feels like a former man of science. The final battle between him and Violet is a bit brief but, again, topped up with cool ideas, from flaming swords in the dark to Violet slicing him in half at the conclusion. Another reason I would’ve loved to see the original R-rated cut: it definitely feels like the action could’ve (and should’ve) been bloodier at multiple points, but it isn’t the most egregious PG-13 censoring of a sci-fi/action film I’ve come across. 

There are a few supporting roles, but the cast isn’t really that big, which makes some of those minor characters stand out worse. Even though she only says like three lines, the courier woman who shows up after Violet has already infiltrated the “Blood Bank” has some of the worst line delivery I’ve ever heard. Apparently, she was played by one of Milla’s stunt doubles, but still, couldn’t they have overdubbed her lines or rerecorded them or done another take? Something, anything? Violet frequently fights ArchMinistry soldiers who wear all black tactical gear and say nothing. At one point she faces down hundreds of them, reminding me of future criticisms of comic book movies like The Avengers and Justice League with the heroes defeating faceless armies of stock enemies. I’ll at least give Ultraviolet credit for having the Stormtrooper-esque soldiers played by real stuntmen/actors, as well as having Violet defeat all of them singlehandedly. What a badass!

In many ways, Ultraviolet comes off as a 2000s product for teenage boys, and for this teenage boy, it was a thrill. I was so into it that I showed it to all my friends, watched all the DVD special features, including the commentary by Milla Jovovich, and went on to watch the Resident Evil movies (at that time, there were only three), but for as awesome and action-packed as those movies were, to me they still weren’t quite as unique or as thought provoking as Ultraviolet. Even twenty years later, I can’t say I’ve seen anything quite like it, but I certainly can see the influence of the aforementioned zombie video game adaptations, as well as The Matrix, Underworld, and even Aeon Flux, which came out the year before. I probably haven’t sold anyone who didn’t know anything about this movie on watching it, and I don’t know whether or not I would wholeheartedly recommend it to just anyone, either.

As I wrap up this epic retrospective, I’ll say this: Ultraviolet is a concept rife with possibility wrapped in an incomplete package stumbling along, and for all the nostalgia I have from watching it at a formative age and forming my first celebrity crush, I find it deeply flawed, yet still entertaining as hell. Who cares if it doesn’t always make sense or if the action is sometimes derivative or if the quality of the effects varies? I find it fun in a way that only something produced in the 2000s can be. It took risks, and even if they didn’t all pay off, that’s worth commending, especially from the perspective of our modern cinematic landscape where the effects-heavy-mid-budget sci-fi/action film has basically gone extinct, and every superhero movie is a pre-existing IP. Who knows? Maybe one day, somehow, Ultraviolet will return...

Part 2: Ultraviolet (2006) Retrospective

Part 1: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2026/06/ultraviolet-2006-20th-anniversary.html

 

In part one, I uncovered a bit of the backstory of how I came to discover this forgotten film and explored not only the its origins and setup, but its failure to engage audiences and its disownment by the lead actress and writer/director. Unlike a film such as Alien 3, which was also a troubled production that was ultimately disowned by its director, Ultraviolet doesn’t seem to have developed a notable cult following or to have been reappraised by many in the years since its release. Maybe it just needs more time, or maybe I really do have awful taste and there’s nothing redeemable about either the theatrical version or the unrated version. I don’t believe the latter is true. I also believe Alien 3’s assembly cut is closer to what director David Fincher wanted to put in theatres originally in comparison to Ultraviolet’s unrated cut, which doesn’t add or change quite enough to make the same kind of impact.

To elaborate on Ultraviolet’s post-production problems, it’s pretty clear to me that a somewhat more coherent, more character-driven version of the film existed in an earlier cut, and the studio pressured the director to deliver a product more akin to Resident Evil: increased action, decreased emotion, and quicker, not longer and slower. Somewhere along the way the powers that be took the film out of its creator’s hands and packaged it as a doomed lite version. It’s evident in the slight-yet-significant changes from the theatrical cut to the unrated cut. Wimmer’s original cut was around two hours, which probably would have felt less like a music video (for better or for worse, we’ll never know), but I don’t know if it would have been any worse overall. I highly doubt we will ever see his original vision completed and released, but there is plenty I genuinely love about the version that I am most familiar with.

What I should begin with is the face of the film: Milla Jovovich herself. Many say she’s a bad actress, and…look. I understand the criticisms of many of her performances, but I truly believe she is more capable than many films (this one included) lead people to believe. Skills of hers that cannot be argued against: her physicality, primarily in action sequences, her ability to deliver dialogue with the utmost sincerity (even if it’s absolutely ridiculous), and, contrastingly, her comedic delivery (often forgotten, as she’s done more action than comedy over the course of her career; citation: The Fifth Element). There's also that serious-yet-seductively-intense expression of hers, which she pulls off many times throughout this film. In Ultraviolet, she not only excels in doing the many stunts with grace, but she looks insanely good while doing them. Jovovich is up there for me, in terms of performance and looks combined, with the greatest action heroines in cinema history, even if her films themselves are not classics.  

Speaking of Milla Jovovich’s face…what’s with the way people’s faces look in Ultraviolet? In fact, what’s with the way everything looks in this movie, with uncanny digital clarity yet frequently texture-less environments? What’s with the wonky visual effects, too? It seems the computer-generated parts of the film, particularly during the motorcycle chase at the end of act one, were unfinished, as a result of Kurt Wimmer being locked out of post-production and the studio hastily completing the film to meet its intended release date. I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but the CGI does look like a video game a lot of the time. This film was also shot digitally, and a soft focus was used on the actor’s faces to make it appear more like a comic book. I think it’s a cool idea, but also, it looks very odd most of the time, as if the actor’s have no definition to their skin.

Moving on past just her face, I don’t think Milla has ever looked better in any movie than in Ultraviolet. Having worked as a model prior to starting her acting career, she’s absolutely stunning as Violet, but again, she isn’t just there as eye candy. She fits into this high-tech world well enough, yet also stands out in every shot, in a very superhero-esque way. One shot that I think captures her sexy/serious vibe the best is during the final battle as she’s infiltrating the ArchMinistry to save Six and kill Daxus, when the doors open and the camera moves up from her feet to her face. Milla herself cites this as one of her favourite shots in the film during the DVD commentary.

The design of this futuristic world is based largely around real locations in China, particularly Shanghai, with buildings quite unlike what’s seen in a typical North American skyline, but it’s the way the technology in this world works that I find so interesting. Flat space technology provides a story mechanic for how Violet is able to wield multiple swords and so much firepower while still wearing that skintight leather outfit, for the tech is “dimension compressing” and allows a person to store many items in something as small as a bracelet—or, in the case of the suitcase containing the weapon, store a whole human child. It looks like Six is floating in a weird digital pool, and I didn’t get it the first time I watched it, but as I rewatched it, I started to understand how this fictional world worked, and I dug it. But, I find it frustrating that cool ideas like flat space technology are thrown at the audience with such little explanation and included primarily for the sake of being cool, without much consideration for the kind of impact tech like that would have. There’s a throwaway line about it being “very rare” but that’s not really a good enough excuse, especially when Violet and Garth seem to have unlimited access to it.  

I still think Wimmer had a lot of great ideas crammed into the story, with others being the projection phones, used twice by Violet to thwart her pursuers, and the gravity bending, which allows Violet to flee from enemies on the ceiling and ride her motorcycle up a building. Her machine guns with daggers coming out the handles are so badass, and that’s the key to the design of the film: everything is badass, and you could say it’s all just for the sake of it, but the fact that it’s also threaded into the purpose of the tech makes it even better. Violet being able to change her hair and outfit colours is also a unique and entrancing feature of her character. Much of it feels very Japanese-inspired, in a similar way to how the Wachowski’s were inspired with The Matrix.

It can’t be argued that Ultraviolet is a very stylized film, but stylization is not an excuse for a lack of logic. Why, exactly, are there so many layers of security for getting into the facility to retrieve the weapon, but then it’s relatively easy for Violet to escape? Don’t think about that—look! Big flashy explosions and gunfire and kicking! How is Violet able to hide away with Garth in his trailer-turned-lab with no problems? Daxus just…can’t find it?  How infectious, exactly, is hemoglophagia? Some characters wear full masks, others wear just nose filters, and some wear nothing over their face. It depends on the scene, I guess. Who are the Blood Chinois? They’re an example of something that just pops into the film for one scene; this gang-like group of fighters seem to have some cool lore that never gets explained, and then they never show up again. Teenage me: very cool, I enjoyed that scene and their addition to the worldbuilding. Adult me: as cool as that was, it was also completely unnecessary and added almost nothing to the story.

A major criticism of Ultraviolet that I don’t condone is the action. Many call it tacky and derivative, and while I wouldn’t call myself an aficionado or anything, I think I have a pretty good idea of what makes an action scene work, and what works for me in most of Ultraviolet’s action scenes is the variety of shot choices and creative ways for Milla to take down the bad guys. It’s not like when Alice is just mindlessly gunning down zombies in Resident Evil; when Violet's gun runs out of ammo in her first big action sequence, she disassembles it and beats the enemies to bits with the pieces! Later, when she encounters the Blood Chinois and gets completely surrounded by dozens of armed men on a rooftop while she herself is unarmed, she uses “gun kata” to dodge every single bullet they fire and force them to get into the paths of each other’s bullets, resulting in all of them killing each other and her walking away without a scratch.

The first time I saw this bullet dodging scene, I had never seen anything like it, and I was blown away. Looking at it now, I recognize many of its shortcomings, but I still think it’s shot in a pretty innovative way. There are ultimately too many shots of people’s eyes and sunglasses and shots going into glasses throughout the movie, but in this scene, the camera is very dynamic, and we can at least tell what’s going on, in terms of the action, even if it is pretty cheesy and totally unrealistic. I haven’t mentioned yet that Violet also has super speed and agility, but unlike some films that botch the quick speed superpower, I don’t instantly laugh or roll my eyes when she starts moving ultra fast. I think the quick movements are handled well, there’s an effective amount of slow motion used (it never gets into Zack Snyder territory), and you can tell Milla did many of her own stunts—not just here, but in many other instances, as well. 

I’ll admit, some of the action scenes are lacking compared to others. I’ve already mentioned the unfinished CGI in the motorcycle chase, but a later fight with Violet’s former hemophage ally, Nerva, ends when she impales his head on her sword, and the shot always looked goofy to me, especially with the sound of his stupid little whimper coming out as the blade goes in. The action may get repetitive at times, but for how much of it there is, I find most of it is cool, fun, and has forward momentum. The opening, with soldiers being deployed like bombs and smashing into the side of a skyscraper, then rolling in and infiltrating a lab, is an awesome way to kick things off…but then, the second the action stops, the movie trips over its own untied shoelaces, and those shoelaces are, unfortunately, the pages of dialogue.

Next time, in the wrap up of my exploration of this deeply flawed film, I’ll get into some of the overarching problems that define Ultraviolet as a project that may not have been doomed from the very start, but certainly was doomed to fail in the end just the same. 

 

Part Three: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2026/06/part-3-ultraviolet-retrospective.html