This week in posters is back, and as you may have noticed, Will Smith’s CTE drama, Concussion (easy title) is hitting the web today in a big way. In the film, from director Peter Landesman, previously of Parkland (which was a hokey exercise in “serious acting!”), Smith plays Nigerian Dr. Bennet Omalu, and with that accent, I kept hoping that at some point in the trailer, he’d say “in the NFL, it’s bling bang.”
No such luck. As for the poster, all I can think about is that story about Will Smith turning down the lead role in Django Unchained because he didn’t think the role was heroic enough. And thus we have him staring seriously off into the distance, pondering becoming the eventual savior of football and by extension, America. Tagline: “Even legends need a hero.” He’s so God-like he doesn’t even have pupils.
I guess that’s how you follow up playing the lead in I Am Legend, by becoming a hero to legends. “Look, I have to keep moving up the ladder. In my next film, I’ll need to play some kind of demigod to legend heroes. Perhaps the champion of titans, or the king giant.”
Well well, isn’t this the risqué poster. I didn’t know it until this very second, but I could watch Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel check out naked ladies all day.
Fred and Mick, two old friends, are on vacation in an elegant hotel at the foot of the Alps. Fred, a composer and conductor, is now retired. Mick, a film director, is still working. They look with curiosity and tenderness on their children’s confused lives, Mick’s enthusiastic young writers, and the other hotel guests. While Mick scrambles to finish the screenplay for what he imagines will be his last important film, Fred has no intention of resuming his musical career. But someone wants at all costs to hear him conduct again.
HARVEY KEITEL: So, do I get naked now?
DIRECTOR: What?
HARVEY KEITEL: My nude scene. Are we shooting it now?
DIRECTOR: Mr. Keitel, please put your robe back on– oh god dammit not again.
This film is so dramatic and beautiful and full of indie spirit that I have no idea what it’s about. This is like the art movie version of one of those inspirational posters with a Bible quote and a random stock photo of a sunset.
A few weeks back, a crazy drunk lady in the front of a comedy show wouldn’t shut up, and at one point she was babbling about all these movie stars she’d supposedly slept with. When the comic onstage asked “Like who?” She said “Bruce Greenwood!” True story. I don’t think people knew who Bruce Greenwood was, but I sure did.
Hmm, do you think this movie will be about tough broads? Interesting that Carey Mulligan is playing the lead, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in a movie where she cries less than three times. Also, Helena Bonham-Carter reminds me of Fred Armisen as the punk queen Elisabeth for some reason.
Neither here nor there, but I was happy to discover that Anne-Marie Duff is not one of the Disney Duffs.
Isn’t Stonewall about a riot? Because this looks like a musical. In fact, if there isn’t music playing, these people would surely be insane.
Get it? It’s a movie about the Apple founder and they’ve designed the poster like an Apple product. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help explain. He’s also very pensive, because he’s a tortured genius, you see.
“It’s Steve Jobs, like you’ve never seen him before — wait, no, sorry, check that. It’s Steve Jobs, exactly as he’s always been depicted. In fact, imagine a Steve Jobs Halloween costume. He basically looks like that for the entire movie.”
Here’s an exclusive clip from the film:
You know, you don’t have to draw a giant yellow arrow on Alison Brie’s boob for my eyes to be drawn there.
I’m sick of zombie movies, and this one looks especially lame, but I enjoy the new twist on the between-my-legs poster trope.
Interstellar, Elysium, The Martian… Hollywood really seems to like the idea of Matt Damon being trapped on another planet. Truth be told, I can’t wait for this.
Putting Michael F. Assbender in filthy Mad Max makeup might be the only way to get me interested in a movie version of a Shakespeare adaptation. So… well done, poster designer, well done.
Another surprisingly good poster for MacBeth. I really hope this one has lots of sex and swordfighting and goes light on all the fancy talk. Basically, I wish this was Game of Thrones.
At first glance, I thought Keanu was getting Fifty Shades‘d pretty hard, until I realized the lady wasn’t biting her lip, she was tearing off some duct tape. Are you going to tape Keanu? You’ll ruin his strangely-shaped beard!
When a devoted husband and father is left home alone for the weekend, two stranded young women unexpectedly knock on his door for help. What starts out as a kind gesture results in a dangerous seduction and a deadly game of cat and mouse. A sexy new thriller from director Eli Roth and written by Eli Roth, Nicolás López and Guillermo Amoedo, KNOCK KNOCK stars Keanu Reeves as the family man who falls into temptation and Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas as the seductresses who wreak havoc upon his life, turning a married man’s dark fantasy into his worst nightmare. [Official Synopsis]
Movie rule: If a character playfully gets cake shoved in their face in the first act, something really bad is about to happen to them.
This movie is about equality, but also the fulfillment of a lot of Ellen Page fantasies.
Here’s an old-school poster for Editor, starring everyone’s favorite wild woman, Paz De La Huerta. Can you guess what the selling point of this one is? I’m not quite sure, the poster is a little ambiguous…
See, it’s a razor, that’s also a film strip (which gets cut with a razor), that’s also a bloody lady (who gets cut with a razor). It works on so many levels.
By the way, does film editing seem like too boring of a job to be the basis of a slasher film? All I can think about is Charlie Kaufman’s pitch for “The Deconstructionist” from Adaptation.
CHARLIE: Here you go. The killer’s a literature professor. He cuts off little chunks from his victims’ bodies until they die. He calls himself “the deconstructionist.”
DONALD: That’s kinda good. I like that.
CHARLIE: See, I was kidding, Donald.
DONALD: Oh, okay. You got me. … You mind if I use it though?
Here’s a good movie-poster drinking game: Drink every time a critic pull quote includes a play on “adverbingly adjective.”
“Heartbreakingly moist. Staggeringly cromulent. A triumph of strenuous indigestion.”
Here’s one of a series of character posters for The Program, in which Ben Foster plays evil Lance Armstrong and Chris O’Dowd the journalist who exposes him.
These posters do an amazing job of trying to make people look tough and important while wearing cycling gear, the least tough-looking of all sports gears. Also, this movie is going to have to be pretty amazing for me to forgive it for trying to steal its title from the most awesomely cheesy ’90s football movie. There is only one The Program, and it stars Craig Sheffer as misunderstood quarterback Joe Kane.
Nice try, putting a dog on the poster to try to distract us from the fact that this is a Christmas movie with a family’s last name in the title. Has that ever worked?
Michael Clarke Duncan died in 2012, so it stands to reason that this one has been on the shelf for a while. Also, another white boxer movie? What’s the original twist on this one?
The Challenger focuses on a struggling auto mechanic in The Bronx trying to save himself and his mother from homelessness. After he meets a legendary boxing trainer (Michael Clarke Duncan), he embarks on a pugilist career that might be his ticket out of poverty.
Kent Moran writes, directs, and stars, as “Jaden,” according to IMDb. That someone sort of remade Rocky, but with a guy named “Jaden,” is like the perfect satire of 2015.