3. Jean-Luc Godard
Werner Herzog had it right when he said: "Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung-fu film." Surely the famed French-Swiss filmmaker is one of the most overrated directors in the history of the medium, given the fact that he's constantly lauded as some sort of pioneer of cinematic invention, breaking down the narrative barriers and what not? But really, is it possible to truly enjoy a Godard film that isn't Breathless (if even that)? Does Godard verge so far past the realms of pretentiousness that we need to come up with a new word to describe his filmmaking ventures? Perhaps. Die hard Jean-Luc Godard fans will tell you that you need to see "ten or fifteen" of his pictures to truly appreciate his genius, which doesn't make a lot of sense: if you have to immerse yourself so deeply into a filmmaker's canon in order to see what he's getting at, what's the point? Life is much, much too short for that level of futility, surely? So the problem with Godard, really, is that the "intelligent" aspects of his films are so arrogantly rendered and free of life and entertainment value that they're merely dull. His films feel like they've been made just for critics. We'll leave you with Ingmar Bergman on this one, who said of the "great" filmmaker: "Ive never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt constructed, faux intellectual and completely dead. Godard is a f*cking bore."