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What makes a movie pretentious? These days, it seems like many viewers jump to call anything slightly avant-garde pretentious, whether it be a quirky French film or literally anything by Yorgos Lanthimos. Sometimes, people are right – a movie that tries too hard to say something profound while using cinematic cliches or cheesy metaphors certainly deserves the label.

Some movies are truly innovative and captivating, yet viewers often label them as pretentious simply due to a lack of understanding. We inhabit a society where films can create significant divides among audiences, and the rise of the internet has only added to this complexity. It’s perfectly reasonable to consider a film pretentious if you feel it fits that description, but there are certainly cases where certain films are undeniably more pretentious than others.

Frequently, filmmakers try to mask their pretentiousness by employing dramatic cinematic methods that mislead audiences into believing they're experiencing something deeper than it truly is. We've identified ten films that exemplify this phenomenon—showcasing themselves as intriguing and subversive works when, in truth, they are merely pretentious and rather shallow.

From Barbie to Contempt, here are ten pretentious movies everybody thinks are smart but are actually stupid.

10 absurdly self-important films: 

Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023)

Greta Gerwig was once an indie darling known for great performances in movies like Baghead and Frances Ha. When she transitioned to primarily being a director, Lady Bird and Little Women demonstrated real talent and an obvious appreciation for cinema. Then, the marketing sensation Barbie came along, which felt like a champion of capitalism (ironically enough, one of the main systems that oppress women) rather than a nuanced look at women’s issues.

Scraping the surface of feminism with its plastic pink sets, cheesy musical numbers, and dramatic monologues that state the obvious, Barbie was loved by many and hailed as a necessary piece of cinema. In reality, it’s nothing more than a vehicle for excessive merchandising that treats the audience like they’re genuinely stupid.

Men (Alex Garland, 2022)

When are men going to realise that it’s not their job to explain, especially through the medium of cinema, the plight that women go through simply for being female? With his 2022 film Men, Alex Garland highlighted the abuse and manipulation faced by many women at the hands of men in a way that added nothing to the conversation other than pointing out a very well-known fact.

Using Rory Kinnear to play every creepy man in the film, even editing his face onto a child’s body for one strange encounter, might seem like a bold artistic choice, but really, Garland was biting off far more than he could chew. The filmmaker simply failed to make a strong point besides mansplaining sexism, yet we get the impression that Garland believed he’d delivered a feminist masterpiece. Sadly, many viewers fell for this trap when, in reality, the film has nothing interesting to say.

Saltburn (Emerald Fennell, 2023)

There was a lot of discourse surrounding Saltburn when it came out in 2023, but that didn’t stop it from earning five Bafta nominations and various other nods from prestigious institutions. The movie truly thinks it is saying something interesting about class, using gothic tropes to convey themes of mystery and suspense while drawing parallels to pre-existing pieces of media. However, the finished result is a messy, overly-stylish, and tone-deaf take on privilege from an extremely well-off director.

There are various eye-roll-worthy moments clearly intended to shock, like the infamous bathwater scene, but nothing the movie does feels truly subversive or transgressive. It’s as though Fennell saw Pasolini’s Teorema and decided to dilute everything interesting about it into a cringe-worthy, vapid, and lazy take on early 2000s-era Britain. It’s not clever, and it’s not groundbreaking, even though it apparently seems to think it is.

Antiporno (Sion Sono, 2016)

Antiporno is one of those films that some people herald to an unusually high degree, seeing it as a visionary, experimental piece of cinema that dissects female sexuality. While it’s beautifully shot, with bright colours that engulf the screen, this is a mere facade that hides the fact that Sion Sono really has nothing to say. The film tries to make a commentary on sex, objectification, porn, and femininity, but really, Antiporno is just a shallow mess of nudity and exploitation.

Like Men, the film makes you wonder why so many male filmmakers think they’re the best-suited storytellers to explore themes that are so focused on female issues. At the end of the day, a stylish and well-shot film can’t make up for a lack of substance, which is Antiporno‘s fatal flaw.

Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)

Jean-Luc Godard made many great films throughout his career that have been called pretentious by some, but they’re still revered, and his contributions to cinema are highly influential. Contempt, on the other hand, remains a divisive piece of art that we can hardly blame people for calling pretentious. Despite featuring French icon Brigitte Bardot, the movie has her do little more than argue or appear naked.

It comes to feel like a lot of wasted potential, with the movie’s debates on art, relationships, and the human condition drawing out over painfully long conversations that we feel like uneasy voyeurs to. While many people will continue to herald the movie as one of Godard’s best, we’d argue that he’s made plenty of other films that convey their messages in a much more interesting and captivating way. Contempt isn’t a bad film, but it definitely shouldn’t be held to untouchable heights.

Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson, 2021)

The shine has come off Sam Levinson significantly after The Idol, which underlined that just because he created one massively popular HBO show, handing him almost complete creative control to indulge himself, didn’t mean he would deliver another one. Far from it, in fact.

In an effort to make the most of his free time during the pandemic, Levinson chose to create a monochrome romantic drama that aimed to delve into the themes of life, love, and solitude. However, he also included a scene that turned out to be a comically blunt tirade against film critics, overshadowing the film's deeper intentions. As a product of Hollywood's pervasive nepotism, he utilized characters from his own script to lament the struggles of affluent creatives. It's neither bold nor particularly insightful.

Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

A huge part of Christopher Nolan’s persona as a filmmaker is that he’s been embraced as a director who engaged the brain while working on a blockbuster-sized budget. It’s largely worked, although he did come close to disappearing entirely up his own arse with Tenet.

Can’t hear the dialogue properly over the deafening sound mix? Fuck you, he doesn’t care. Need your handheld while agonising exposition explains everything in nauseating detail? Nobody did, but he wrote it anyway. Tenet was heralded as a reinvention of action cinema and Nolan’s latest masterful deconstruction of the concept of time, but the entire story unfolds as such: it starts at the end, meets itself in the middle, and ends at the beginning. Hardly revolutionary, and his weakest film by far.

Don’t Look Up (Adam McKay, 2021)

There are few things more pretentious than highly paid Hollywood types thinking themselves the smartest people in the room, using an extravagant budget to try and prove it, and climbing on top of their soapbox to yell it for the world to hear.

That’s Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up in microcosm, which seems to exist largely because Netflix has a lot of money to spend and a lot of A-listers wanted to join the director on his lofty pedestal. Assuming that nobody would understand the messaging if it wasn’t framed through a blockbuster disaster comedy, how it earned a ‘Best Picture’ nomination at the Academy Awards beggars belief. It unfolds over a nauseating 138 minutes, but the theme is thus: climate change is bad, and something should be done on a global scale before it’s too late. Well, no shit.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniels, 2022)

The winner of seven Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Actress’, it can’t be denied that Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is a deliriously enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.

It's a film that's hard not to enjoy, but that doesn't necessarily mean it showcases exceptional cinematic brilliance. To avoid being overly critical, it's somewhat reminiscent of a Marvel film, but executed better. The narrative revolves around themes of reconciliation, confronting the past, and tackling generational trauma directly—ideas that remain significant and relatable, though not particularly innovative. While it’s a thrilling genre piece with plenty of flair, there may not be as much depth beneath the surface as many viewers might assume.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

Self-indulgence and Quentin Tarantino go hand in hand, which helps explain why Once Upon a Time in Hollywood scratched the itch for everyone who was desperate to know what would have happened had Sharon Tate not been murdered and Brad Pitt had saved the day instead.

A heartfelt letter to himself, shrouded in the warm haze of 1969 Los Angeles—a time when a young Quentin Tarantino, a local boy, first discovered his passion for film. In this narrative, the auteur takes creative liberties to reshape history, meticulously crafting a fantasy world where no detail is overlooked. Figures like Tate, Bruce Lee, and George Spahn, alongside popular television shows and era-appropriate music, blend seamlessly into the filmmaker's personal universe, created solely to appease his singular audience. It’s a lavish exercise in wish fulfillment, steeped in superficiality and cloaked in a narrative of male empowerment.

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