Mainstream movies you feel are pretentious bullshit

Cafe Society
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[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
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.
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Heh, that’s funny. I would say most of the people in this discussion got the movies they didn’t care for just fine; the failing was not on the part of the viewer, in my opinion. I got that “Lost in Translation” was supposed to be a clever examination of man’s alienation from his environment and other people and the de-humanizing and disconnecting effect of modern society; the movie just bored the shit out of me.

I would say a better definition for a pretentious film is one that aims for a lofty, high-minded ideal, but forgets to be entertaining while doing that. These are fiction movies we’re talking about here; if you just want to espouse high-minded ideals, make a documentary.

What does “post-modern” mean, anyway? It’s hard to describe, but you know it when you see it? Doing a little research into “postmodernism,” I would appreciate it if movie makers would label their movies as such so that I can avoid them. Calling a film “postmodern” sounds like a cop-out for the director to not feel obligated to make any sense of anything - “Those aren’t plot holes - it’s POSTMODERN.” LIFE is random scenes of crap happening; I want more from my movies.

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I did a quick read through here and it seems no one mentioned The Big Chill. That is perhaps the most pretentious movie I have ever seen. A bunch of self-indulgent yuppies sitting around analyzing why their lives are bad. And, to top it off, it has perhaps the worst movie soundtrack of all time. The songs are all good, sure, but Kasdan’s use of them is horrible. When I watched that movie I actually became enraged by the end. And I’m even more enraged that somehow the yuppie generation found so much meaning in it.

Babel and The Constant Gardner are two recent examples of pretentious crap that have received way too much praise.

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[QUOTE=featherlou]
Heh, that’s funny. I would say most of the people in this discussion got the movies they didn’t care for just fine; the failing was not on the part of the viewer, in my opinion. I got that “Lost in Translation” was supposed to be a clever examination of man’s alienation from his environment and other people and the de-humanizing and disconnecting effect of modern society; the movie just bored the shit out of me.

I would say a better definition for a pretentious film is one that aims for a lofty, high-minded ideal, but forgets to be entertaining while doing that. These are fiction movies we’re talking about here; if you just want to espouse high-minded ideals, make a documentary.

What does “post-modern” mean, anyway? It’s hard to describe, but you know it when you see it? Doing a little research into “postmodernism,” I would appreciate it if movie makers would label their movies as such so that I can avoid them. Calling a film “postmodern” sounds like a cop-out for the director to not feel obligated to make any sense of anything - “Those aren’t plot holes - it’s POSTMODERN.” LIFE is random scenes of crap happening; I want more from my movies.
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I’ll submit one of my favorites as a “counter-example.” Alan Rudolph’s The Moderns. It stars many of his “regulars” in a story about life, art, love & stuff–set in the Paris of the 1920’s.

It’s got a certain “pretension.” But it’s funny at times. Good art direction, interesting music & actors who aren’t afraid to chew a bit of scenery.

What’s not to like?

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[QUOTE=featherlou]
What does “post-modern” mean, anyway? It’s hard to describe, but you know it when you see it? Doing a little research into “postmodernism,” I would appreciate it if movie makers would label their movies as such so that I can avoid them. Calling a film “postmodern” sounds like a cop-out for the director to not feel obligated to make any sense of anything - “Those aren’t plot holes - it’s POSTMODERN.” LIFE is random scenes of crap happening; I want more from my movies.
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Broadly defined, postmodern cinema explores the hidden assumptions of narrative. We do speak of movies as standalone creations, but the fact that we can recognize genres of film (romantic comedy, chop-saki, sports movie) and that we “know” the rules for these films indicates that unspoken narratives guide the creation of the “right” kind of movies.

Postmodernism exposes and explores these rules through techniques like deconstruction (think that scene in “Clerks” where Randall and Dante discuss the fate of union contractors on the blown-up Death Star). Critics argue this is a unique product of an age where nearly any film is available for instant and repetitive viewing on DVD and modern media culture encourages data in short, digestible packets. It’s no wonder, for example, that postmodern filmmaker Quentin Tarantino worked for a time as a video store clerk. His style developed (so the theory goes) only as a result of (1) watching lots and lots of films associated with particular genres, and (2) mining them indiscriminantly–i.e. ignoring the plot or narrative structure of these reference films–to create his own works of art.

Postmodernism is definitely NOT a justification for plot holes, but the plot is more like a clothesline on which hang intricate, heavily-referenced tapestries. I don’t think the filmmakers do this just to give film snobs something to wank about, but rather to give the film an authenticity with respect to the genre. Think of it this way: In many films we demand a certain amount of realism in order to accept the reality of the events portrayed; similarly, in order to believe the film is working within the genre, we demand that it clearly adhere to the classical “rules” of the genre, and the best way to do this is to directly reference archetypes. Uma Thurman wears a yellow tracksuit during a killing spree in Kill Bill I because Bruce Lee wore a similar outfit during a killing spree in (I think) Enter the Dragon. Tarantino does not include this detail because he expects you to know that, but includes it because it was done that way in what everyone would agree is an archetype martial-arts film; he’s hoping it subconsciously contributes to your thinking about the genre “rules” and considering the process by which they make art in a film.

At least that is my take on PoMo film; in developing this personal theory, I’ve come to appreciate many of the films others here have labeled “pretentious”. However, one could also read this post and think I’M pretentious, so I’m not sure it matters one way or another. Such is the power of narrative: “Pretentious” looks like a certain thing we’ve developed specific rules for, and there’s no breaking that cycle if you don’t accept the idea of PoMo.

Then again, on The Simpsons, Moe famously described postmodern as “weird for the sake of weird”. I guess there’s no arguing with that either :slight_smile:

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[QUOTE=Max Torque]
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.
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Oh, god. A friend insisted on showing that to me at 11 at night and it was all I could do to stay awake. I nearly didn’t. The payoff at the end is moderately entertaining, but it’s not worth sitting through what is effectively a 2 hour monologue.

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[QUOTE=pinkfreud]
The movie that, to me, exemplifies the term “pretentious bullshit” more than any other is What the Bleep Do We Know!? Just thinking about this crappy, smug, pseudo-scientific film sets off my bullshit detectors. I’m gonna have to replace the batteries.
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Dear god, yes. I wanted to see this for a long time. Finally I rented it, and boy did I have the wrong idea as to what it was about. I made myself turn it off after I started yelling at the TV.

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Fantastic post, CJJ*!

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[QUOTE=well he’s back]
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.
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You’re right, and I offer sincere apologies to anyone I offended.

But I disagree that “2001” is pretentious. It is referenced with symbolism and depicts the struggle of an individual to cope with a hostile environment. It is modernist (from a literary standpoint) in that it allows the viewer (“critic”) to draw his/her own conclusions and insert himself/herself into the work. Most film is “modernist” in this way simply because that’s the mode of storytelling used in the 20th century and it works well with film. To use the example of “2001” (I haven’t seen “Babel” yet so I can’t comment on it) goes beyond modernism, bringing the characters back to self-realization and reflection.

High-falutin’? Mebbe. But I think they succeed; perhaps not like “The Graduate” or “Network”, but much better than “Eyes Wide Shut”. I’d agree that “Eyes” falls short of its “lofty goals” because it tries to cram too much into one movie, and the viewer isn’t allowed enough time to digest any of the visual symbolism. It’s been several years since I saw it, but my recollection is that everything kind of shot past and I was constantly being fed new images before I could assimilate the old ones.

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[QUOTE=Charger]
This is so weird to me. I really enjoyed the movie and never interpreted Forrest’s good fortune as anything more than dumb luck. If anything, I thought the film was saying “Look at the dunce actually believing God answered his prayers.” Even they way they cut to him singing in the choir presents, as a joke, his tendency to follow a suggestion to the fullest.
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I agree with you. I mean, if you look at the life Forrest Gump lived, you see that (through dumb luck) he was a part of almost every significant event in American history since the fifties, and he also discovered the Watergate bulglary, inspired John Lennon to write Imagine, invented the smiley face (!), contributed to the success of Apple Computers (some fruit company, as he says! :rolleyes: :D) and made a fortune. And all that through sheer luck! I think that in the book, which I didn’t read, he even became an astronaut. I’m sure this was also through sheer luck.

Forrest Gump’s life is so unbelievable that there’s no way I can imagine the writers and director intending it as anything else than a parody. What BrainGlutton beileves was the point of the movie, I believe is what the movie actually parodied. I take the movie to mean the opposite of what he takes it to mean.

As for Quentin Tarantino, I haven’t seen quite all his movies, but I agree that he’s pretentious and probably overrated, but I still think that he’s a quite good filmmaker.