Man, you poor poor people.
97% of the movies mentioned above are good movies worth the effort.
Not every movie can be Princess Bride or Little Nicky.
Yes, because finding a movie pretentious means that one only can digest pre-packaged Hollywood pablum. Sheesh. What an offensive and idiotic comment.
Speaking of pretentious…
Except Orgasmo.
"Looks like I win, nobody has mentioned The Matrix: Reloaded and Revolutions in this thread.
/K.O. punch"
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner, with a knockout in the first round…the winner, and undisputed heavyweight champion of the world as the most pretentious pieces of shit ever to be captured on film is, and remains, The Matrix and all of its spawn.
OK. If the above-mentioned movies aren’t worth the work they require, can you name some movies that ARE worth the work? Name some non “prepackaged Hollywood pablum” that are good movies. I guess that would be *enjoyably * pretentious movies?
The dancing in Talk to Her/Hable con ella IS pretty weird, I agree, but there’s really not that much of it, and I don’t think that “properly” appreciating it is really important to understanding the movie. There’s so much else there other than the dancing!
I second Gosford Park, though that may be because my friend kept telling me it was a murder mystery, which it really wasn’t.
*The Thin Red Line * deserves more than a passing mention. Dozens of famous actors all of whom seem to have demanded a poetic and touching dying speech. Gods and Generals was just about as bad in that regard. What it didn’t have was John Travolta with that teeny tiny hat perched on top of his melon. I think we were being tested to see how long we could take the movie seriously.
Thin Red Line also deserves mention for the barrage of random scenery shots. Oooh! A tree! How moving. Cause it’s like…the beauty of nature vs. the cruelty of man or something! ON WITH THE WAR, MOVIE!
So . . . it’s impossible for a tree to have any legitimate place in a war movie?
Why don’t you just watch The Green Berets? Or Shaving Private Ryan?
That’s exactly the “you don’t understand it” attitude I’m referring to in the opening post. Some of my favorite films are low-budget and independent (e.g Jesus of Montreal and Mindwalk) but just because a film doesn’t have a car chase or does have a close-up of a doormat, three dicks and a reference to Kierkegaard in the first fifteen minutes doesn’t mean it’s cerebral.
There’s also a huge overlap of people who think anything arthouse is by definition better with people who think that big budget A-list movies like Titanic or Contact are awful even though they haven’t seen them.
Another addition: Greaser’s Palace - absolutely unwatchable Robert Downey Sr. tripe about a Christlike drifter entering a western town dominated by a constipated gunfighter. Every bit as bad as it sounds.
I always thought it was “Shaving Ryan’s Privates”, myself. 
While it broke the commandment of having a large budget and stars you’ve heard of, it’s a damned good movie and the one that people who were actually there most praised for its realism.
Memento.
Really, lissener, you’re being a grade-A nimrod here. Just because folks find some “non-prepackaged Hollywood pablum” movies to be overly pretentious pieces of crap doesn’t mean they think all NPPHP movies are overly pretentious pieces of crap.
Hipster arthouse indie films are just as capable of sucking as Hollywood blockbusters, and stuffy twits who heap undeserved praise on overly pretentious pieces of crap are just as annoying as those who heap undeserved praise on the latest Bruckheimer dreck. Moreso, actually, because the arthouse fanboy’s annoyingness is multiplied by his smug sense of intellectual superiority.
FTR, I’m saying Memento is a good movie, in response to lissener’s query; I was not proffering it for addition to the list of pretentious crap.
Personally, I thought Being John Malkovich was great, Adaptation decent, and I just saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again - I love the hell out of it.
Uhh. Jacob’s Ladder! It was completely ridiculous.
So . . . I’m not allowed to say that I enjoyed them, with a little effort, or else I’m in direct violation to the OP? But what about this: I did enjoy them, and this did require effort. Why do you take this as a personal affront?
Um . . . you’re responding to what here? Certainly nothing that I posted.
I see a lot of movies, plenty of both. I saw *Titanic * twice, even though it’s not a very good movie. I saw it the second time because it’s an excellent special effects catalogue. *Contact * is possibly the single most pretentious movie mentioned in this thread so far. And I often see “arthouse” movies that I don’t like: *Irreversible * was dreck. French dreck, but dreck. House of Sand and Fog had some good performances, but I wouldn’t watch it again on a bet.
And every bit as bad as it was meant to be. Also, with a little effort, you’d see that it’s a hilarious deconstruction of the Catholic church. Here’s a capsule I wrote on it awhile back:
Definitely low art; I’m not sure where you get “pretentious” from.
Whoa. Your frothy adjectives make it seem like this is something that keeps you up nights. You got a specific accusation? These hysterical generalizations smell sourly defensive dude; the smugness is obviously a projection.
Definitely anything by Peter Greenaway. Unwatchable crap.