'Pretentious' is a Pretentious Word

Whenever I hear a critic or someone criticizing a film using the word 'pretentious', lava starts bubbling my stomach and I become furious. Furious enough to make a blog post about it! It's not that it can't be used as constructive criticism, but I think people (and of course I'll be generalizing in this article, so I don't claim to speak for everybody) who have used the word are really trying to say something else and I'll explain why.

The definition of pretentious is to "attempt to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc, than actually possessed." That could hypothetically apply to a movie, yes, but don't most filmmakers aspire their movie to be important? That it will stick with people, either by being incredibly entertaining or thought provoking? You're essentially saying that the movie failed to speak to you. Which happens. But you could hypothetically say that about any movie you didn't like. Batman & Robin just wanted to be entertaining to people, and it failed. Is Batman & Robin pretentious?

No, people use this word for a specific type of movie. These movies are slower paced, often long shots, less dialogue, less action, moments of surrealism, typically more focused on cinematography than story or characters. It's these movies that I always see people call pretentious. Why is that? I'll tell you why, and you're gonna hate me for saying such a cliche and annoying line; they just didn't understand it.

Make no mistake, I am not claiming to be super intelligent (or of average intelligence, for that matter) or suggest that those who thought these movies were pretentious are stupid, but they usually don't understand what the movie was trying to do. It's not that these movies are 'too smart' for them but that it's basically a whole type of 'genre', often arthouse, experimental, surreal, or any movie that is has a slow-burn pacing, that a lot of people just simply aren't into. They usually are under the assumption that the slow pace and the lack of dialogue and the surrealism and all that must be there because the underlying themes of the movie has to be important, super-clever, and worth the trouble. When they learn that sometimes the themes and messages that these movies just aren't that amazing, they feel they've wasted their time watching something they thought was boring. But you see, if you found it boring then you found it boring, not pretentious.

Some people just don't find these types of movies entertaining and that's perfectly fine. I, however, enjoy movies that a bit more slower paced and has surrealism. Movies that get weird and hypnotic are just what I'm into. I like movies that focus on cinematography and trying to give off certain emotions through visuals rather than a standard narrative and I'd recommend people open their eyes to what's entertaining. That especially goes for people who believe 'movies don't have to be entertaining!', because I believe they do. It's just how broad is your palette of entertainment is. Art, no matter how depressing, disgusting, or puzzling it is, should give you enjoyment, enjoyment that a film was good enough to make you feel the way the movie intended you to feel.

Could you trust those beady, evil eyes?

But, hey, maybe these movies just aren't your cup of tea, you're fine and there isn't anything wrong with that. Maybe you see movie fans who claim to have superior knowledge because they watched The Master and all of Christopher Nolan's filmography. Those people are pretentious. A director asserting that his movies are the best movies in the world, that's a person who's pretentious. But you see a film that you thought you understood and didn't like because the underlying themes weren't worth the bore? You were just bored, so why not say it as it is?

And of course I'm not speaking to everyone who uses the word, some undoubtedly use it correctly. But this is what I've seen over and over by people. Feel free to agree or disagree, but I hope you'll have an open mind about it because, in truth, it often comes across to me as an insult to a filmmaker, essentially calling that person a show-off idiot, than anything else.

Review- Insomnia (2002)

Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Written by: Hillary Seitz

Starring: Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hillary Swank

Synopsis: Two Los Angeles homicide detectives are dispatched to a northern town where the sun doesn't set to investigate the methodical murder of a local teen.

Nolan is both one of the most overrated and the most underrated directors of all time. He was praised initially, and then when it became a stereotype that those who liked Nolan were fedora-wearing obese teenagers who pretend to know a lot about film, people began to criticize his movies. After The Dark Knight Rises came out, it had (despite still being very good in my opinion) enough flaws for people to assert that he wasn't just overrated but also bad in general. Interstellar became incredibly polarized and furthered this Nolan fanboys Vs. Nolan-haters fight on the internet. Personally, I think he's pretty good. He's one of the top mainstream working directors, to be honest. He's not amazing and his films don't have the intellectual prowess some of his fans believe, but he's never made a bad movie and that's always something to appreciate.

Insomnia is a perfect example to describe Nolan, because it's just good. It's not great, it's not bad. It's just good. It's a remake,  so I can't exactly praise the story or it's originality, but from what I've read it seems to be have adapted the story properly to take place in America. I've never seen the Norwegian film, so I don't know if Nolan's version is the weaker version, but the director of the Norwegian version did express that he liked it, so there's that.

The film is executed very well. It's got that Nolan-esque lighting the dark colors seem to pop out. It's a bit like David Fincher lighting except a bit more high contrast and less 'smooth'. Like in all his movies, it looks fantastic. Al Pacino and Robin Williams give amazing performances. When watching the movie, I wasn't constantly distracted by the recognizable faces, it wasn't 'Al Pacino and Robin Williams in the same movie', I took them seriously as the characters they played. That's a hard thing to do if you're a big-named actor. The film makes great use of the Alaskan (and possibly Canadian, as it was filmed there too) scenery as well, giving the film a haunting atmosphere.

I think the movie had some editing problems, though. I think this is Nolan's greatest flaw and I see it in every one of his movies. The way scenes transition, the way shots change from one to the other, don't always flow right. I also think, and this isn't a criticism but an observation,  that The Machinist is a much better movie, which came out two years later, with the same idea of having a character who can't sleep because of a guilty conscience. I like that Insomnia is a bit more subtle with it, but The Machinist, to me, is a much better movie overall.

I'd recommend this movie if you're into noir, detective films, crime thrillers, or just a Nolan fan who hasn't seen his earlier films. It's one of both Robin Williams's and Al Pacino's best performances as well, so I'd recommend it for those reasons alone. I'd also recommend it to those who need to be reminded that just because a director has a fanbase you might not like, or is seen as 'entry-level', doesn't mean the director makes bad movies.

7.5/10

Review- The Monster Squad (1987)

Directed by: Fred Dekker

Written by: Shane Black

Starring: Andre Gower, Duncan Regehr, Stephen Macht, Stan Shaw, Tom Noonan

Synopsis: Members of a monster fan club meet Count Dracula, Wolf Man, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Gill-Man.

Sometimes movies like these can have a charm factor that's irresistible, Army of Darkness for example. What drew me to watch The Monster Squad was that it had Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, and the Wolfman teaming up. Seemed like B-movie inspired fun. It wasn't.

It didn't have self-awareness to have the charm factor. I thought that they were trying to embrace the cheesiness of older films with a similar premise. It embraces nothing and ends up being almost as bad as the B-movies but less entertaining. The intro text at the beginning of the film, which is part of the few moments of exposition that lets you know what's going on in the movie, implied a full on comedy and I was excited, but then it just turned into a mess. I will say though, that all the elements were there to make this movie good. It had competent actors (what's with 80s films and good child actors?), good production value, cool costumes, but it was written poorly. It had completely the wrong script.

Often, the movie went for a Spielbergian look. Cinematography mirrors ET and other Spielberg films, and many moments feel like they were trying to imitate Spielberg scenes and failed. I'm not sure why that's the angle they tried to go with either. Other times, they imitate Star Wars (Dracula's silhouette looking like Darth Vader) or older movies like the original Frankenstein, and those moments were neat.

As for why the story is bad, there are two major reasons. The first is that the film doesn't seem to really care about what the end goal for these monsters are. They just seem to be there to do something with a green talisman or something. They didn't really seem to have a plan other than to slowly walk towards the children (which, by the way, we never figure out why the monsters are attacking specifically the children.) The second is that the children jump the gun and try to save the day before they know anything bad is going to happen. They were ready to kill even before they met Frankenstein and asked the Holocaust survivor to translate his book he got randomly. It doesn't help that neither the monsters or the characters are interesting. The most characterization comes from the little girl and Frankenstein, but even that was just bare minimum. The lack of care in the made me not care or understand what's going on and I just wanted the movie to end about 20 minutes into the movie.

Also, there is a disturbing scene in this movie in which the kids need a virgin to say a ancient spell that well get rid of the monsters. They find a teenage girl and ask if she's lost her virginity, and she becomes frightened and wants to leave their treehouse but they threaten to share photos that they took of her while she was undressing by her window. And this scene was intended to be funny. I don't know if I can actually consider this a criticism because, as they say, times have changed, but it's funny of how unintentionally creepy this scene is.

It's riddled with bad stuff like Burger King product placement and the fact that the 'Wolf Man and Gill Man' are rip offs of The Wolfman and The Creature of the Black Lagoon, which are owned by Universal (this film was made by Tri-Star Pictures), but it's not worth mentioning them all. The movie is bad. I would recommend it if you're a big fan of the Universal monsters and B movies, or maybe if you want children under 7 to watch it. It's not really made for anybody else.

3/10