The 50 best 3-hour-or-longer movies, according to Rotten Tomatoes

For some people, a 3-ish-hour runtime is an automatic mark against a movie — especially if they’re sitting in a theater with no chance to press “pause” for a bathroom break. For other people, an especially long runtime might help justify the time and money required for a movie theater excursion in the first place. And as CNN explains, it is the massive franchise spectacles and superhero films — the types of movies that do well at the box office — that seem to be trending longer these days. 

That said, lengthy flicks are nothing new. On Rotten Tomatoes’ list of best movies that run 3 hours or longer, 33 of the top 50 were released before the year 2000. The first-place finisher, Akira Kurosawa’s 207-minute epic “Seven Samurai,” premiered in 1954. Other classic epics that made the list include “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), “Spartacus” (1960), “Ben-Hur” (1959), and “Gone With the Wind” (1939).

Kurosawa is far from the only internationally acclaimed director known for lengthy cuts. In third place is Ingmar Bergman’s 1982 period drama “Fanny and Alexander,” which clocks in at 188 minutes (and a 512-minute version aired as a miniseries in Sweden). Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and David Lean all have two films apiece in the top 50. 

The climaxes of a couple beloved movie franchises garnered enough critical praise to rank high as well — namely, 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” and 2003’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” And it wouldn’t be much of a list of long movies if “Titanic” wasn’t on it somewhere: The 1997 pop culture phenomenon came in 35th place.

See if your favorite flick made the top 50 below, and check out Rotten Tomatoes’ full 100 here.

1. “Seven Samurai” (1954) // 100 percent
2. “O.J.: Made in America” (2016) // 100 percent
3. “Fanny and Alexander” (1982) // 100 percent
4. “Schindler’s List” (1993) // 98 percent
5. “The Leopard” (1963) // 98 percent
6. “Children of Paradise” (1945) // 98 percent
7. “The Godfather, Part II” (1974) // 96 percent
8. “An Elephant Sitting Still” (2018) // 96 percent
9. “The Right Stuff” (1983) // 96 percent
10. “The Last of the Unjust” (2013) // 96 percent
11. “The Irishman” (2019) // 95 percent
12. “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India” (2001) // 95 percent
13. “Short Cuts” (1993) // 95 percent
14. “Hamlet” (1996) // 95 percent
15. “Andrei Rublev” (1966) // 95 percent
16. “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) // 94 percent
17. “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) // 94 percent
18. “The Best of Youth” (2002) // 94 percent
19. “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003) // 93 percent
20. “Apocalypse Now Redux” (1979) // 93 percent
21. “Carlos” (2010) // 93 percent
22. “Spartacus” (1960) // 93 percent
23. “Norte, The End of History” (2013) // 93 percent
24. “Kwaidan” (1964) // 91 percent
25. “Eureka” (2000) // 91 percent
26. “Gone With the Wind” (1939) // 90 percent
27. “Reds” (1981) // 90 percent
28. “Blue Is the Warmest Color” (2013) // 89 percent
29. “The Deer Hunter” (1978) // 89 percent
30. “The Last Emperor” (1987) // 89 percent
31. “Malcolm X” (1992) // 89 percent
32. “Barry Lyndon” (1975) // 88 percent
33. “Giant” (1956) // 88 percent
34. “Napoleon” (1927) // 88 percent
35. “Titanic” (1997) // 87 percent
36. “Winter Sleep” (2014) // 87 percent
37. “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984) // 87 percent
38. “Mysteries of Lisbon” (2010) // 86 percent
39. “The Ten Commandments” (1956) // 86 percent
40. “JFK” (1991) // 85 percent
41. “Gandhi” (1982) // 85 percent
42. “Ben-Hur” (1959) // 85 percent
43. “King Kong” (2005) // 84 percent
44. “Grindhouse” (2007) // 84 percent
45. “Doctor Zhivago” (1965) // 84 percent
46. “Magnolia” (1999) // 83 percent
47. “Dances With Wolves” (1990) // 83 percent
48. “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971) // 83 percent
49. “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013) // 79 percent
50. “The Green Mile” (1999) // 79 percent