This Week In Posters: The ’90s Are Back, And So Is Madea

This week in This Week in Posters begins with… holy hell, A Madea Halloween! Man, no one knows how to keep making money off something like Tyler Perry. This is the ninth Madea movie, by the way. Even Ernest P. Worrell only had nine Ernest movies (10 if you count Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam) and the last four of those were direct to video. That’s how good Tyler Perry is at flogging the same character, better than f*cking Ernest. Not to mention, Jim Varney wasn’t getting other roles in regular movies the whole time. He had to be Ernest for the rest of his life.

Also, “Hellurween?” No one talks like that. Tyler Perry invented an entire vernacular.

With everything we have to worry about now — plagiarism, GMOs, Zika virus, Donald Trump as president, Big Bang Theory — I thought the one thing we could check off the list was the whole Cold War, mutually-assured-destruction thing. Apparently not. That too?? Damn you, Eric Schlosser! Can’t you let me enjoy my life? Oh well, maybe the bombs only affect people who can afford nice brick houses with two-car garages. Those of us who keep a bucket handy in case our roommate is in the bathroom when we have to pee are safe. “Oh don’t worry about me, I’ll be in my bunker of poverty.”

They did a great job evoking a realistic “sullen teen” with this picture and a great tagline. I mean just compare this with the overstyled turds on that Middle School poster. Wait a second, is she wearing a Big Lebowski sweatshirt? There are 16-year-olds into The Big Lebowski? Maybe I’ve been wrong about these “teens” all along.

Paul Feig shared this Ghostbusters poster the other day. It’s definitely the one they look most badassest in. I thought it was a lot better movie when it was a comedy than when it was a badass franchise action dealy, but I’ll stop there because the world seems pretty stocked on Ghostbusters opinions already.

“Based on the thriller that shocked the world.” That’s weird, most of the people I saw reading this were hanging out by the pool looking chill as hell.

I kind of feel bad for Charlie Day. Every other character in this Sundance-y dramedy-looking thing gets to react to another human person. Meanwhile, Charlie is just up there in the corner all by himself going “Is this face funny enough? Should I go bigger? What mood am I even in right now and why? Is everything I do just a joke to you? What if I was feeling real pain?”

Hope is good. And the faces in the letters is sort of a good idea, I guess. But maybe make them bigger next time? I can’t tell what this is about.

As a long-time MMA fan, I’m presumably the kind of person this movie is meant to appeal to. I even know that the title is a play on something B.J. Penn said (“The hurting game,” which was the title of an Ultimate Fighter episode). And yet…

First of all, that’s one of the worst hand wrap jobs of all time. Second of all, the need to put “the cage!” in there prominently (even beyond the need to make it inexplicably diagonal) makes me… well, wary. The easiest way to tell if someone’s about to sensationalize MMA is if they call it “cage fighting.” It never fails. If it’s on HBO Real Sports, which tries to pride itself on “serious journalism,” they’ll still slip that in there as an aside just to make it sound more lurid. “MMA, also known as cage fighting…”

Anyway, if you’re going to make a poster that appeals to people who know who Michael Chandler is, maybe have someone on the poster shoot set that knows how to wrap hands.

This is kind of a cool image — it makes my brain work to try to make sense of it. Who’s leaving this note? How did the blood get on top of the balloon? Are we watching the video from that tape or being filmed? Anyway, looks like an uncredited Purge sequel. Remember when every horror movie ripped off Paranormal Activity for a few years? Is that going to happen with The Purge? Am I going to have to make a scary mask?

Jeez, that must be a really rough neighborhood if you have to wear an entire space suit there. I usually just lock the car doors.

Cool design, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, the director of Whiplash… to paraphrase Jules Winfield, sh*t yeah, that’s all you had to say! So why waste important poster space on “featuring the song ‘City of Stars?'” Does anyone know what that is? Has anyone ever seen a movie because it featured a song? I hope that’s the director’s band.

I don’t really know what this is about, but this Let’s Be Evil poster gets my vote for coolest poster of the week. It’s hard to pull of sinister and glam at the same time. I would include the official synopsis as tribute here, but all they have on IMDb is “Evil see. Evil do.”

“What’s that? Oh, don’t mind us, we’re just a-wandering around this giant diagonal title, as one does…”

Is the title supposed to be a train? And is Vincent D’Onofrio not famous enough to get to stand in front of the letters? Wait a second, is that fat guy back there Vincent D’Onofrio? This poster is a travesty. If this movie has fat Vincent D’Onofrio in it I want to know about it. No hidesies, punks.

I’m getting a real Drive vibe from this Disorder poster, which isn’t a bad thing. Also I have a pretty big man crush on Matthias Schoenaerts. That said, “Her life, his hands” sounds very Lebowski to me. Is this an action movie remake of The Big Lebowski starring Matthias Schoenaerts? I’d watch that. Get Nicolas Refn to direct. “I’ve seen a lot of spinals dude…” (*15 minute slow motion shot of Lebowski writhing on the floor set to Sigur Ros*)

60-some years since The Wild One and “badass leather jacket rebel on a motorcycle” is still a thing. That’s pretty impressive, considering men were still wearing sock garters when that became a trope. I wonder if Emma Roberts will keep up with the tropeyness on the female end. Like maybe she’s a sensitive artsy type? I can’t tell if she’s wearing a camera around her neck, but bad boy motorcycle rebels are always falling for artsy photography chicks. Maybe this entire poster is in the style of a photo collage she made. Yep, that explains it.

I still can’t believe this is a real movie. Forget Benghazi, forget emailghazi, forget Melania Trump plagiarizing speeches, I want a congressional hearing to determine who okayed spending eight figures on Kevin Spacey turning into a goddamned cat. And against all odds, the poster manages to be even worse than the premise of the movie. Like, if the cat can write and spell, wouldn’t that make 85% of the movie unnecessary? Has there ever been a film this openly disdainful of its audience?

I get the sense the cave outline/silhouette is supposed to be this Louis Drax, which is cool. But it also kind of reminds me of one of those terribly-drawn portrait tattoos you see on the internet, where the baby looks like a gremlin.

Power Rangers?! This is why the headline is “the ’90s are back!” Also, with the “Jason” right there, at first glance I thought I was looking at Jason Priestley. Then I realized Jason Priestley died in 2001 (metaphorically speaking). IMDb tells me this guy’s name is Dacre Montgomery. Dacre bleu!

Aw, remember when our teen heartthrobs had good strong names like Jason and Dylan? Now everyone’s named Dacre or Kodi or Jaidhan or McKonkleigh. Damn shame.

I had to make sure this actress wasn’t Asian before I was comfortable referring to her as “The Yellow Ranger,” so thanks for not forcing me to make that choice, Power Rangers movie.

These lightning bolts are cool and all, but should we see them morph or something? I guess that comes later.

Beauty marks are back too?! Well I’m going to embrace this. (*puts on ska CDs, skanks around in cargo pants*)

Is it just me or does Zack seem like he’s trying the hardest to have sex with me with his eyes? Chill out, Zack, we haven’t even morphed yet.

I’ll be honest, Star Wars has looked better than I had any idea was possible. That said, how many more f*cking times are they going to use the Death Star as a plot point? It doesn’t help that like 85% of sci-fi movies since 1980 have had their own version of the Death Star. Let it die.

Warren Beatty is back, baby! I enjoy that even with a cast of heavy hitters, Warren Beatty was like “Sorry losers, I get my name above yours, on its own line, above the title, and my entire resume at the bottom. Bulworth does what he wants.”

Anyway, I don’t know what this is about, but with Alden Ehrenreich and Lily Collins being the focal points, it makes me think this is going to be an entire movie of Ehrenreich’s character from Hail, Caesar!, which I would watch in a heartbeat.

Remember what I said last week about dirt and sparks and sh*t being the new coolest trend in action movie posters? Yeah. Does this even have explosions, or is there just dirt and coal and grime in the air?

Also, the dude third from the top sort of looks like Peter Dinklage shooting a submachine gun, and now I just want to watch that.

Johnny Knoxville and Jackie Chan?! Once again I can’t tell what year this is. Also, Jackie Chan’s badge looks bigger than an iPhone 6 Plus. Carrying that thing around all day must make him feel like Flavor Flav. That jacket with the plaid liner is pretty sweet though. Okay, gotta go.

Look at that subtle ass lens flare! I see what you did there.

Here’s the first of this week’s posters for 31, Rob Zombie’s movie about… uh… a Satanic Baskin-Robbins? Starring a guy in a colonial wig? I don’t know. Maybe this one is also The Purge?

Also starring blood spatter and Bat Lady!

Clifton Collins Jr. looks perfectly ridiculous in a cowboy hat. You can’t put him at the top of a poster like that, he makes everything else in it invisible.

Continuing with the “the ’90s are back!” theme, it’s a set of character posters from Trolls (that was the ’90s, right?). I didn’t even understand Trolls as a trend, let alone understand how they’re going to turn it into a movie. What were the trolls, anyway? Someone saw Norwegian troll dolls and thought, “What if instead of scary, these were cute things you stuck on the end of a pen?”

Uh oh, looks like they found a Dreamworks troll.

You can tell this is the Gwen Stefani troll because it has cat’s eye make-up and it’s wearing headphones. I wonder if she’s listening to ska? Remember when Gwen Stefani used to do ska?

Is that a troll with a minion in its hair? What’s happening here.

“Find your happy place.” Oh, so the trolls are happy? Surely that’s worth an entire movie.

This is a poster for War Dogs, in case you can’t read whichever Slavic language this is. In the first one of these posters, I was enjoying Jonah Hill’s transition into Tony Montana. This time around, I’m getting more of a Jewish Tony Soprano vibe. Either way, I find Jonah Hill mimicking a flamboyant Tony more pleasing than I ever could’ve predicted. I barely even notice Miles Teller’s face.

Vince Mancini is a writer, comedian, and podcaster. A graduate of Columbia’s non-fiction MFA program, his work has appeared on FilmDrunk, the UPROXX network, the Portland Mercury, the East Bay Express, and all over his mom’s refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here.

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