12 Movies That Aren't As Pretentious As You Think

6. Under The Skin

Slow-paced genre movies which don't explain much are always certain to be torn apart by more mainstream audiences. Often this is the fault of a movie's marketing, which sells itself on a casual-skewing concept or A-list star, despite the utterly un-Hollywood style of the filmmaker themselves.

That's certainly the case with 2013 sci-fi horror Under the Skin, which was sold largely on the appeal of Scarlett Johansson playing a sexy alien. Though her seductive qualities are certainly a pivotal part of the movie, director Jonathan Glazer's approach is much more deliberate, ambiguous - and yes, "arty" - than many ever expected.

But it's also a genuinely brilliant film composed with meticulous attention-to-detail, making the most of its grimly gorgeous Glasgow setting and serving up Johansson's best performance to date.

It has no interest in overly expository dialogue which explains the exact nature of the alien, sure, but this is a purely in-the-moment movie that's all the more alluring and unsettling precisely because we don't know exactly what's going on.

The pace may be too methodical for some, but at its core this is an incredibly simple spin on the alien invasion narrative, just most of the usual genre bells and whistles stripped away.