Napoleon Dynamite
Most of these are just slow by modern standards, MTV changed film editing for good
Into the Wild is pretty minimal once he moved to Alaska
The Master is very minimal of plot but the opposite of relaxing
Coffee and Cigarettes
Clerks (but just the first one)
I don’t know if I would call Clerks a slow-paced movie, like the plot barely advances at all throughout the entire movie, and I get that, but the movie is not really about the plot, it’s about a series of seemingly unconnected events that happen in an average, nondescript location in New Jersey, and getting to people watch as the weirdness erupts around the one seemingly normal person in the entire film.
I used to love Clerks when I was a teenager, but after rewatching it as an adult (along with a few other Kevin Smith movies), I feel like I outgrew it. It’s edgy and the characters have good chemistry and was shot well, but end of the day, kinda just juvenile and the dialog pretentious. I get why it was criticized as such.
kinda just juvenile and the dialog pretentious
You literally just described Kevin Smith…
I think I like these movies because I’m also juvenile and pretentious.
Naqoyqatsi was the first thing that popped into my head from the prompt, though I’m not sure if these would be classified as “movies” by some audiences. Cheers.
Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man.
My Dinner With André
Withnail and I is a good one.
I enjoy these types of movies. The most recent one I watched was Terry Gilliams Days of Heaven. I saw it described as a visual poem (This is accurate) about a boy running from his past with his girlfriend and sister, arrives to work as a farmhand on a Texas farm during harvest season.
I enjoy Tarkovskys films, those are generally quite slow but philosophically dense. Stalker, Solaris, and Andrei Rublev. I haven’t seen the rest.
I also enjoy abstract documentaries. Baraka is a dialogue-less epic showcasing the alienness of human culture. Amazing visuals and music. Life changing for me. In this genre, I also love Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil – a directors reflections on memory and time. A more serious, focused documentary following several men responsible for the mass execution of communists in Indonesia in the 60s as they act out their atrocities for what they believe will be a great action movie, called The Act of Killing directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, is also powerful and surreal. These three films had a drastic effect on me personally are the greatest documentaries I’ve seen, though not much happens in them.
More recent slow movies I’ve enjoyed: Past Lives, about childhood love. Scored by Daniel Rossen of the indie band Grizzly Bear, it is a beautiful and different outlook on love. Very touching. Not much happens.
The other is The Brutalist, an epic about a Jewish architect escaping the Holocaust and moving to America, seeking the American dream. Haunting, looming.
Edit: Richard Linklaters films generally have very loose plots. I’ve only seen School of Rock and Boyhood though. Love Boyhood.
The Banshees of Inisherin
Upstream Color might fit this bill.
Oh wow I completely forgot about this movie. It definitely fits the slow-burn category.
Pelíšky
The Brutalist is slow as hell, nothing really happens you would care about, it goes on for fucking ever and then it skips ahead 30 odd years and ends. 100% not recommended.
For pace, it’s basically directly correlated with the movie’s age.
I have no idea how today’s young screen-addled audiences would even begin to approach the idea of watching basically any movie from the 1970s, let alone the 40s.
It’s been a long time since I watched it but I found Bladerunner very slow paced.
It dat noir, baby!
The Thin Red Line
This is part of my top 3 war movies. I’ve heard it criticized as “artsy,” but it is and it’s great.
