[QUOTE=spoke-]
I thought The Girl in the Cafe and The Constant Gardener were exceptionally preachy. Neither film had any subtlety.
[/QUOTE]
I really resent this, just as I resent the criticisms of ER in Darfur. I don’t know why you think it’s “pretentious” that real life has intruded on your viewing pleasure. Why do you think it’s pretentious?
[QUOTE=well he’s back]
Gak! How could I have forgotten when I posted earlier: “Babel” . That movie certainly fits all the definitions of pretentious that have been listed in this thread. IMHO that movie was nothing but self-important pretentiousness. and boring.
[/QUOTE]
But dear god do I agree with this one. At heart the movie was nothing but a bunch of people making really, really stupid choices.
[QUOTE=Don’t Look Back in Anger]
I really resent this, just as I resent the criticisms of ER in Darfur. I don’t know why you think it’s “pretentious” that real life has intruded on your viewing pleasure. Why do you think it’s pretentious?
[/QUOTE]
I really want to see your cite for pharmaceutical companies testing dangerous chemicals on innocent Africans with tacit governmental support. AFAIK, LeCarre just wanted a spy thriller, not some overwhelming commentary on African policy (though, to be fair, I saw the movie, and I’ve only read other LC novels.)
double post. Oops
Oh, and since I’m here, I’d like to second The Constant Gardener and 2001: A Space Odyssey for all the reasons previously mentioned. The latter especially grates. It’s a movie consciously trying and failing to make a Big Point™.
Just to help the thread out, I’ll throw in a director that a lot of people find pretentious: Kevin Smith. I love the guy myself, but depending on your point of view, Dogma, just for example, is a feature-length wankfest revolving around Smith’s particular view on religion, which he feels entitled to share because he’s a moderate success of a filmmaker.
There, how’s that? 
I half-take back what I said earlier: you don’t have to preach to be pretentious, but it helps.
I hate I Heart Huckabees and I think it’s completely pretentious. What a piece of self-indulgent masturbatory crap. I actually like most of the movies that others have mentioned. I guess some of them were pretentious though.
[QUOTE=straight man]
I really want to see your cite for pharmaceutical companies testing dangerous chemicals on innocent Africans with tacit governmental support. AFAIK, LeCarre just wanted a spy thriller, not some overwhelming commentary on African policy (though, to be fair, I saw the movie, and I’ve only read other LC novels.)
[/QUOTE]
I can help you out with that:
and
Which includes this tidbit:
“Yet it turned out that Pfizer were doing human testing or experiments without the voluntary consent of patients, a violation of basic human rights”
Also, the film was dedicated to the memory of a humanitarian aid worker that LeCarre knew who had died. Link
The issue of pharma companies testing on humans in the third world with the cooperation of goverments is no secret. A number of documentaries, articles and books have been written on the subject. In fact, it is alleged that India has changed its laws to make it easier for companies to test on its poor.
[QUOTE=Darryl Lict]
I hate I Heart Huckabees and I think it’s completely pretentious. What a piece of self-indulgent masturbatory crap.
[/QUOTE]
Ooo, good choice. This shitfest did not give me one atom of enjoyment. Ebert said it was the only movie ever made that was meant to play to an empty theater. Oh snap!
[QUOTE=madmonk28]
I can help you out with that:
and
Which includes this tidbit:
“Yet it turned out that Pfizer were doing human testing or experiments without the voluntary consent of patients, a violation of basic human rights”
Also, the film was dedicated to the memory of a humanitarian aid worker that LeCarre knew who had died. Link
The issue of pharma companies testing on humans in the third world with the cooperation of goverments is no secret. A number of documentaries, articles and books have been written on the subject. In fact, it is alleged that India has changed its laws to make it easier for companies to test on its poor.
[/QUOTE]
Interesting. Thanks for the cite.
(And yes, I retract the comment.)
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
…even the most testosterone-laden straight-up action flick may actually say more than a “deep” art-house movie.
[/QUOTE]
Now that’s pretentious! 
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
Ironically, the ones I most agree with so far have all won or been nominated for Oscars: Crash, Babel, American Beauty and Lost in Translation.
I don’t know if it counts to add the movie adaptation of a play, but I’ll add RENT. I like a lot of the music and some of the performances were great, but I can’t stand the story. The villain Benny (Taye Diggs) is a villain because he’s going to evict 3 slackers who won’t get real jobs from a loft apartment in Manhattan where they’ve lived rent free for a year, and the reason he’s going to evict them is because they’re assisting with a major bad PR protest against his plan to revitalize and gentrify property he paid a lot of money for in such a way as to recoup his investment and {GASP!} make profit (“BAD CAPITALISM! MONEY’S SOULLESS! BAD!”) Meanwhile lots of well meaning friends decide to cheer up their friend the HIV+ unemployed musician by giving him exactly what any recovering smack addict needs: a smack addicted underaged promiscuous new girlfriend, and they all hate their parents but you can be pretty sure none have ever turned down a check from them, and working for good money for a tabloid show is beneath talentless filmmaker Mark (as evidently is waiting tables or anything else for which there’s a demand) who evidently wants to start with a 10 documentary deal for PBS while continuing to live off of the charity of Benny (who even if he is sleazy, married for money, and shagging said underaged heroin addict, nonetheless has the right to do with his property “as he pleeeeassses”) and doesn’t mind stiffing waiters or ignoring their requests not to move tables (major annoyance to food service people). In short, GET JOBS YOU DAMNED HIPPIES!
Jonathan Larson’s death just before this show opened of course cemented his own immortality and tragic fame. Had he lived he’d have made millions from the show. I wonder which is more likley: he’d have stayed in his working class neighborhood adn surroundings and given all his money to charities, or he’d have “left this cold Bohemian hell” not for Santa Fe but for a $3 million 2 BR overlooking Central Park, sued hell out of anybody who tried to stage a copyright infringing production of the show, and fired any agent who didn’t get him top dollar for any project or the use of his songs. Twer it the latter, I wonder how he’d have reconciled it with the show’s La Vie Boheme message. (Of course I have to admit a special and somewhat envious hatred of the entitled GenXers who live lives of subsidized independence but are completely ungrateful for the subsidies and contemptuous of those who provide them.)
[/QUOTE]
YES!
I have always been fascinated by the love so many of my friends give to this show. It’s a bunch of whiny artists who complain about life not giving them a fair break, but then choosing to not take those breaks when they come, all the while sticking it to “The Man.”
I had to read quite a few posts to get some idea of what movies are considered pretentious, then I realized – any movie that’s too intellectual, too post-modern or otherwise beyond the intelligence and education of virtually any viewer is considered, by that viewer, to be pretentious.
Hell, since that’s the case, I nominate everything by Disney – especially those stupid Davey Crockett movies!
The precursor to Crash, Grand Canyon, was equally pretentious crap.
[QUOTE=John DiFool]
It’s not just that-it’s more symptomatic of Tarantino’s huge ego and his attempts to trick up his movies in various ways.
[/quote]
Eh. What you’re calling “pretentious” I’m calling “stylized.” Most of the guy’s movies are genre pics, they’re just genre pics made with knowledge rather than cheap retreads.
That’s the character being pretentious, or at least melodramatic. That doesn’t make the movie pretentious.
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
Jonathan Larson’s death just before [Rent] opened of course cemented his own immortality and tragic fame. Had he lived he’d have made millions from the show. I wonder which is more likley: he’d have stayed in his working class neighborhood adn surroundings and given all his money to charities, or he’d have “left this cold Bohemian hell” not for Santa Fe but for a $3 million 2 BR overlooking Central Park, sued hell out of anybody who tried to stage a copyright infringing production of the show, and fired any agent who didn’t get him top dollar for any project or the use of his songs. Twer it the latter, I wonder how he’d have reconciled it with the show’s La Vie Boheme message. (Of course I have to admit a special and somewhat envious hatred of the entitled GenXers who live lives of subsidized independence but are completely ungrateful for the subsidies and contemptuous of those who provide them.)
[/QUOTE]
Man, Sampiro, you really need to write Rent II: Electric Bugaloo. A bunch of whiny, pretentious slackers are living in some shithole apartment. One of them writes a “rock opera” about a bunch of whiny, pretentious slackers, and makes a metric assload of money. He moves out into classy digs, while the slackers continue to whine about how the world owes them a living. At the end, the writer and the guy who was the model for his opera confront each other and sing about how their lives both suck, just in different ways.
It’ll be great! And then we can resurrect this thread to nominate it.
Quoting Sunrazor’s post - “I had to read quite a few posts to get some idea of what movies are considered pretentious, then I realized – any movie that’s too intellectual, too post-modern or otherwise beyond the intelligence and education of virtually any viewer is considered, by that viewer, to be pretentious.”
Well. I had hoped this thread would not come to this. But since it has, I have to get the following off my chest: NO - just because I don’t like certain movies does not mean I’m anti-intellectual. Why do we have to explain this to anyone? “2001” , as well as “Babel” and some others seem really full of their own empty self importance to me. That is to say, I find them pretentious. That does not mean they are beyond my intelligence or education. And I am tired of this accusation.
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
I don’t know if it counts to add the movie adaptation of a play, but I’ll add RENT.
[/QUOTE]
(snipped for brevity)
OH LORD I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE.
I have a pair of quite young friends – nineteen and twenty at the time, I think – who LOVED LOVED LOVED the play and were all right enough with the movie to force me into watching it.
Songs? Very good, many of them, even if half of La Vie Boheme makes me cringe.
Characters? Let’s start by saying I’d like to choke Maureen with her own hair and stake her out to be eaten by wild rabid voles. I’d like to take her girlfriend gently by the shoulders, shake her violently, and say “Just because someone makes you feel like you’ve put on an electrified vest DOES NOT MEAN you want to spend forever with them.” I want to tell all of them “Gosh, you’re right, it really does suck that you can’t just be not only an artist but a non-productive artist who makes absolutely no money (but has enough cash for drugs and interesting clothing).” It’s totally uncool to work, man, you know? And it’s really harsh to make people actually pay rent and try to clean up a neighborhood clogged with prostitutes, pimps, and pushers. Those people are REAL, man! So much more real than the people who would like to live there who also want things like working heat and pipes and electricity and not having to step over the syringes.
And I liked Hair. If I sincerely hated hippies of all stripes, I couldn’t live in Austin. But the hippies I know are the people who still grow their hair long and protest McDonald’s and wear hemp while at the same time holding down a job at Half Price Books or the nearest record store. Or they make candles or knitted hats with kitty ears on and sell 'em. People who got over themselves eventually.
I like the message of “Be passionate about what you love” in Rent. I adored the sweet-but-doomed gay couple. The… oh, what’s his name, the character played by the guy from Law and Order, I liked him. But at some point or other I wanted to smack everyone involved with that production.
Now, if they were CONSCIOUSLY trying to point out “look, the real world isn’t that freaking bad. If you guys would just dip your toes in it eventually instead of assuming that your perspective is the only valid one – which is a pile of crap for any artist – you wouldn’t have so much to whine about.”
Also hated Sideways, mostly because I have a hard time liking any movie where I have nothing but pity at best and mostly contempt for all the main characters. Hell, even Sandra Oh’s character pissed me off.
[QUOTE=Don’t Look Back in Anger]
I really resent this, just as I resent the criticisms of ER in Darfur. I don’t know why you think it’s “pretentious” that real life has intruded on your viewing pleasure. Why do you think it’s pretentious?
[/QUOTE]
Resent away. It has nothing to do with “real life intruding on my viewing pleasure.” It has to do with bad filmmaking intruding on my viewing pleasure.
My finding the movies pretentious does not mean I am endorsing the conduct they are decrying. Rather, it means I think they are decrying the conduct in a really ham-fisted and sophomoric way. These films strike me as juvenile screeds. A better filmmaker could get us to see the truth without having a character shout it at us.
I’ve been following this thread for a bit, and no one has yet named my choice for “most pretentious film of the last decade”: Waking Life. It’s hard to even call it a “film”, really; there’s no plot or anything, just a series of snooty and endlessly tedious monologues about “life the universe and everything.” The worst part is, you can tell that the movie thinks it’s really clever and interesting, but it’s like being at a party stuck listening to the dull guy who can’t stop talking about how you can tell everything about a person from the nickel content of their jewelry.