Your preference: Director's Cut vs. Theatrical Cut

I finally got around to watching Amadeus last night on Netflix, after putting it off for quite some time now. I'll be honest, despite the high reviews & praise, a 160-minute, 18th century period piece about Mozart just didn't sound appealing to me.

I'm glad to say I was wrong about my preconceived notions - I really enjoyed the movie & realize it was more about Salieri and his character's emotional & mental reaction, jealousy, envy, and saboteur-like demeanor.

I loved the acting, especially F. Murray Abraham, and of course the music/score was great. The movie had some really awesome moments in it, too. I loved when Salieri was going through Mozart's music and could've believe it was the original copies with no corrections. When Mozart played back Salieri's piece - and improved it - having only heard it once. Salieri's admission to the priest that even God robbed him of the slight satisfaction of killing Mozart, making him suffer for 30-some years. Just so many outstanding moments really brought to life by F. Murray Abraham and the music to back it.

However, I felt that at a few separate spots in the movie, it was dragging just a touch. Not even the operas so much, but it would seem that 8, 9, 10 minutes would pass and not much had unfolded. This happened a couple times and made the movie seem even longer as the pacing was jarred just a bit.

It wasn't until afterwards that I noticed the Netflix edition was 180 minutes long, 20 minutes longer than the original release. It was the director's cut, which I confirmed after the fact (somehow I missed this denotation in the opening credits). Granted, twenty minutes doesn't sound like much, but in the scale of a movie that's 2 hours, 40 minutes long as compared to a full 3 hours, depending on the parts that have been omitted, it might make all the difference.

I gave Amadeus a 7/10 but in my mind it feels like a very high 7, and I really want to give it an 8/10. Because some of those scenes and moments are worth 9's and 10's but I felt like some of those slow parts drag the movie down as a whole. I want to watch it again, but I was thinking about giving the theatrical cut a shot, and seeing if the shorter 20 minute runtime can fix the pacing.

For those of you who have seen both versions, which do you prefer? Is it possible that I'll prefer the pacing in the theatrical version? For the record, I felt a movie like Barry Lyndon, despite also being 3 hours long, had a more consistent pacing than Amadeus. It was generally slower to develop overall, but the pacing was consistent, so that it never seemed "slow". Amadeus's highs are... "higher", which I think works against it slightly, in that the slower parts seem exaggerated and slower than they really are.

Anyway, just saw this movie and wanted to talk about it. Hopefully I can find the theatrical release somewhere; maybe I'll get it on Blu-Ray if it includes both cuts.