La película dura dos horas.

Because la película means the film/movie. In this sentence, you are talking about a specific movie, so Spanish normally uses the definite article.

Spanish often uses articles a bit more than English does, especially with subjects of sentences. So La película dura dos horas sounds natural, while just Película dura dos horas would not.

Here, dura means lasts.

It comes from the verb durar, which means to last. So:

• La película dura dos horas = The film lasts two hours

Be careful: dura can also be an adjective meaning hard or tough when it describes a feminine noun, but that is not what it means here. Context makes it clear that this is the verb durar.

Because in Spanish, durar is the normal verb used to talk about how long something lasts.

English often says:

• The film is two hours long

But Spanish prefers:

• La película dura dos horas

Using ser here would sound unnatural. Spanish expresses the idea of duration with durar.

Because the subject is la película, which is:

• third person
• singular

So the verb durar must be conjugated in the él/ella/usted form of the present tense:

• yo duro
• tú duras
• él/ella/usted dura
• nosotros duramos
• vosotros duráis
• ellos/ellas/ustedes duran

Since la película = it, you use dura.

Because Spanish makes the noun plural after numbers greater than one, just like English usually does.

So:

• una hora = one hour
• dos horas = two hours
• tres horas = three hours

That is why horas has -s.

Because dos horas is functioning directly as a measure of duration.

After durar, Spanish usually puts the amount of time directly after the verb:

• La película dura dos horas
• La clase dura una hora
• El viaje dura tres días

You would use de in other structures, for example:

• una película de dos horas = a two-hour film
• un viaje de tres días = a three-day trip

So both patterns exist, but this sentence uses the durar + time structure.

Because the stress falls on lí: pe-LÍ-cu-la.

Without the accent mark, Spanish stress rules would make you stress it differently. The written accent shows the correct pronunciation.

So you pronounce it roughly as:

• peh-LEE-koo-lah

Yes, you can. It means the same thing, but it sounds more formal or more written.

Compare:

• La película dura dos horas = normal, direct, everyday
• La película tiene una duración de dos horas = more formal, more descriptive

In normal conversation, dura dos horas is the more natural choice.

A little, but La película dura dos horas is the most natural basic order.

This is the standard pattern:

• subject + verb + duration

You might change the order for emphasis in some contexts, but for a learner, the normal and safest version is:

• La película dura dos horas

Usually no, not with this meaning.

Durar means to last.
Tardar usually means to take time to do something or to be late.

So:

• La película dura dos horas = The film lasts two hours
• Tardo dos horas en ver la película = It takes me two hours to watch the film

So durar is the correct verb for the length of the movie itself.

You would say:

• La película dura una hora

Notice the changes:

• dos becomes una
• horas becomes hora

Everything else stays the same because the subject is still la película, so the verb is still dura.