[Toy Soldier]

Spoilers ahead...

I thought it was OK in parts, I think key to not finding it overly-pretentious is the fact that the point is that it's overly-pretentious; the guy is a janitor who wanted to be more, and in his head thinks of himself as more, and so his imaginary conversations are supposed to be pretentious wankery; the theme of the film and the central (only) character is, literally, pretension itself. It lost me a little in the final act but I thought the car conversations were fascinating if you take them for what they are (a big ol' display of affected intellectualism).

My main issue with the movie however, was that the key "twist" (that she does not exist, or rather, that she is a manifested combination of his failed romantic hopes and his own intellectual self-image) is really obvious within the first 20 minutes for anyone who knows basic story structure. That's not necessarily a problem in itself, it's OK to know that, the problem is that the movie continues right up until the final act seemingly on the assumption that the viewer will NOT have already figured this out. Or maybe it is supposed to be a "known unknown", but if so, it doesn't do a good job of illustrating that... it still unfurls like a "twist" at the end when by that point it just isn't one.

I'd give it 7/10. There's something there but it wasn't well executed.