10 Overly Pretentious Movies We Should've Walked Out Of

7. Shadows And Fog

Woody Allen has been known on more than one occasion to venture too far up his proverbial backside in his movies, betraying an overzealous intellectualism which renders some of his films dry, overbearing and loaded with self-importance. He's often at his best when he's playing light and loose with his material, rather than when he's obviously trying to emulate the master directors of old, most notably Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini. Shadows and Fog, his 1991 homage to the expressionist silent film masters F. W. Murnau, Fritz Lang and G. W. Pabst, is perhaps the epitome of this tendency for Allen to stretch homage to the point of no return and render it utterly redundant. Despite a fantastic cast including Jodie Foster, Kathy Bates, John Malkovich and, erm, Madonna, Shadows and Fog misses the spot at every turn - a tepid patchwork affair whereby few other Allen movies have felt quite so undercooked and overblown. Audiences tempted to indulge themselves in Shadows and Fog would do far better to go straight to another source of his inspiration and pick up an omnibus of Franz Kafka's writings - at least there the broody, moody imagery is supported by the kind of intricate plotting and complex characters Shadows and Fog can only dream of.