10 Ridiculously Overrated Foreign Films

5. The Seventh Seal

Another film that's considered sacrilegious to slag off, Ingmar Bergman has made many masterpieces, but his vastly overrated The Seventh Seal is not one of them. To be fair to it, the film is visually stunning, and has an aesthetic that has been parodied in everything from cartoons to comedy films, but that doesn't make it a particularly good film, just a memorable one ripe for satire. And while the film has potent themes about death, alongside a fine performance from Max von Sydow, it's a shame he wasn't given more to work with, because in all honesty, The Seventh Seal is pretty freaking boring. It's a case of Bergman having a visually lavish, intelligent concept, and then failing to really go anywhere with it until those haunting final moments. It's further troubling because Bergman has broached far more troubling and challenging ideas than this in other films with far greater success; that this film is heralded as a classic, and is to many his best film, is absolutely baffling.