Post Examples of "Pretentious" Movies

I'm interested to see what people consider to be "pretentious" movies and why. Please, post examples.

One's decision to create a movie is built on the pretense that one's movie deserves to exist, therefore every movie ever made is pretentious.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Okay, my selections:

Well this is easy for me.

Werckmeister harmonies is the most pretentious thing I've ever seen.
There is a shot that's like 5 minutes long of nothing but a car approaching.

The whole movie is like that.

I hope this doesn't end up being everyones' favorite film on this forum
but to me one that immediately pops into my head is The Holy Mountain
Watched it when I noticed a few critics putting it up on there top lists, and I was left extremely extremely disappointed.
The director tried to be as profound as he could the whole time, but in the end you are left with the shittiest self referential scene of all time that just defeats the purpose of watching any bit of the movie at all

What's pretentious is assuming that shot's pretentiousness and refusing to engage with it

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Mubi

I rather liked Werckmeister Harmonies. The Holy Mountain was not my taste, but I can't call that pretentious anymore then say El Topo. And Alejandro gave use midnight movies for it. So he is cool with me.

Tree of Life on the other hand....

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Fear and Loathing in MoFo... The Gunslinger 45's Top 50 Favorite Films

In the 10 Ring: Gunslinger45's reviews

Yeah, I didn't finish that one.

I swear to God this has to be the most used argument against any film someone didn't enjoy. Well, as long as it's artsy. It's almost as easy to use as 'boring' argument, because it's only one word. It's really hard to get more info from a person who used the word, so you're probably never gonna know why that guy thought a movie about grapes, testicles and ballerinas you love so much is pretentious.

Malick's 2011 feature Tree of Life is nothing more than pretentious piece of junk. I already didn't like his previous one The New World, but in spite of Tree of Life it at least had a plot. Infantile, but still... Tree of Life is pretentious. Dinosaurs are pretentious. Space is pretentious. Brad Pitt is pretentious. Sean Penn is pretentious. Lubezki's cinematography is pretentious. The soundtrack is pretentious. Jessica Chastain is pre... no, I'd actually hit that. Anyways, what did I... Ah! Everything is pretentious in this arthouse movie wannabe. Don't watch it. Pretentious.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

PS: I'm being pretentious... I mean I'm joking. I loved Tree of Life.

I see I just got another MoFo on my ignore list! What an ignorant mainstreamer!

kidding too

When a movie seems to be aspiring to be sophisticated, yet a viewer finds it shallow, that's when the label "pretentious" might be used. If a movie is critically acclaimed, yet lacking popular appeal, it automatically becomes a target for such label too. Unpopular Oscar nominated movies especially.

It's a fair question. I can't think of any pretentious movies right now, but I know one when I watch it.

(500) Days of Summer

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You cannot have it both ways. A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer. Never. (The Red Shoes, 1948)

The MoFo Top 100 of the Nineties Countdown

Take a gander.

It has some good qualities, I don't dismiss it entirely.
I'm just calling it what it is

This. While there are pretentious movies out there for sure, I do think the word is waaaay overused. When people do what you described, and can't elaborate upon the one word, all I hear is "I'm pissed off that I didn't understand it."

Ghostbusters 3.

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I thought of one, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), at least parts of it seemed pretentious to me.

Using 'pretentious' as a form of film criticism is just plain lazy.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

That movie that I thought was boring because I didn't understand it.