Barry Lyndon (1975)

The slowest film here, which is why it comes after 2001 has trained your eye. Adapted from Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon, it follows an Irish opportunist climbing through 18th-century society, with Ryan O'Neal, then best known for screwball comedies, cast against type. Kubrick avoided electric light, shooting by daylight and, indoors, by candlelight through ultra-fast Zeiss lenses from a batch made mostly for NASA, so the interiors glow like period paintings. It runs over three hours and won four Oscars, cinematography among them. Give it an evening with no distractions; its irony and its sadness both build slowly.