10 Movies You Can Never Finish
4. Come And See
Elem Klimov's legendary 1985 war thriller fits both criteria for our list: it's a stamina-draining sit at 142 minutes in length, and it's also deeply uncomfortable for the vast majority of those minutes.
Quite possibly the most emotionally devastating and richly authentic war film ever made, Come and See depicts the Nazi German occupation of Belarus through the eyes of Flyora (Aleksey Kravchenko), a partisan teenager who joins the Belarusian resistance.
Flyora's transformation over the course of the movie is intensely visceral, resembling less a teenage boy and more a haunted ghoul by film's end, aided by both Kravchenko's masterful performance and some astounding makeup effects.
Klimov refuses to flinch away from the horrors of war, with the film's traumatic depiction of a village being massacred by the Nazis sure to prove the breaking point for many viewers.
Brilliant though Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is - often cited as the greatest war movie ever - its sentimental approach feels positively treacly compared to Klimov's detached view of the subject.
If you turned it off half-way through and went to watch some cartoons instead, nobody could blame you.