What are some slow paced and minimal plot movies?
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Napoleon Dynamite
My Dinner With André
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The Wonder is pretty gentle in pace, and the plot though not entirely linear is easy to follow
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Stand by me
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wrote on last edited by [email protected]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.
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Napoleon Dynamite
Upstream Color might fit this bill.
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Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man.
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Withnail and I is a good one.
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Napoleon Dynamite
Werckmeister Harmonies (while it has a plot, it comes at you slowly)
Hard to be a God (2013) (the most minimal of plots in a sense)
The Greasy Strangler (closest movie on the list to Napoleon Dynamite in feel)
The Lighthouse (2019)
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Stalker
Waterworld? At least that's the impression I got as a kid.
My list is kinda a specific interpretation of 'slow and with minimal plot.'
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Napoleon Dynamite
- Anatomy of Hell
- Eden and After
- Je Tu Il Elle
- Liberté
And practically every movie by Jean Rollin.
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The Banshees of Inisherin
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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.
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Napoleon Dynamite
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.
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wrote on last edited by [email protected]Only Lovers Left Alive
The Man from Earth -
Napoleon Dynamite
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Brian and Charles.
The vibes are similar to Napoleon Dynamite, but the setting is rural Britain instead.
Heartfelt, kooky, a little bit bleak but ultimately feel-good.
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The Zone of Interest. Slice of life about a Nazi commandant. No real plot, not much really "happens" but I was absolutely riveted. Beautiful sound design too.
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The Thin Red Line
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It's been a long time since I watched it but I found Bladerunner very slow paced.
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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.
