This Week In Posters is back! As you may have noticed, it’s Tuesday instead of the usual Friday. I think I’m going to be changing this to a Tuesday feature, because half of you are out the door already on Fridays, and I have reviews to finish that day anyway. But hey, enough about me and my dumb life/hopes/dreams, let’s get into it.
First up, by alphabetical order, we have All Relative, which appears to have been adapted from a Land’s End catalog. In fact, that half-committed “mischievous face” (horrifying, by the way) and a couple of kayaks are the only thing separating this from a Valtrex ad. I don’t think I’ll see this. I just couldn’t handle the disappointment if the Barefoot Contessa never showed up.
This should really be a horror film. “They had white wine, fresh flowers, teak patio furniture, and grapes in a bowl. It was… Your Worst Whitemare.”
He looks pretty humble for “the most lethal sniper in US history.” Also, isn’t this based on a memoir written by the main character? “Oh no, please, you’re too kind, no rewards for me. Hero? Oh no no no ha ha ha. I’m just a humble guy doing what he has to do, like chopping down a birch tree with my penis and punching bad guys over the moon.”
We’ve already seen the surprisingly not-that-Burtony-looking trailer, and now we have a poster. Aside from the hope that this will be Tim Burton stepping out of his comfort zone, I’ll do anything Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz tell me to. As long as the little girl in the painting isn’t haunted, I am IN.
Hey, Waltz, get your brush out of that girl’s crotch. You Germans, jeez.
Enough with the Big Hero 6 posters. I want to live in San Fransokyo already, are you happy?
The greatest trick Birdman ever pulled was making the average moviegoer forget that it’s an Iñarritu movie. That poster kicks a lot of ass. I don’t have much else to say.
I’m torn between being impressed that Jennifer Lopez is still playing the sexy damsel in distress at 45 with two kids, and feeling bad for her that she’s gone from A-list actress to starring in some glorified Lifetime movie. Side note, I think it’s a real shame that the only place they could think to stick this dude was in front of her privates. Sell the sizzle, guys, c’mon, that’s job one.
This poster brings up an important point: this awards season doesn’t have nearly enough Slaine.
BRING BACK SLAINE!
I could never abstain from Slaine.
Ah, our lives are made of code, you see. Code embedded in the poster is the new drawing equations on a window. Anyway, I hope Poitras and Soderbergh did a good job with this. Snowden’s is a story that people should hear, and Glenn Greenwald’s book about it is, unfortunately, pret-tay, pret-tay dull.
Boy, they’re really letting that “awesome” portmanteau do all the heavy lifting, aren’t they? “Bankstas, get it? It’s like banker gangsters!”
Also, this guy has “bling bling,” “past due,” and a pot leaf tattooed on his knuckles? I’m so confused. This looks like… well, it looks like a movie that would star Alan Thick is what it looks like.
That’s a very cool poster for a movie with such a dumb title.
“Translated into German” sort of feels like Dumb and Dumber To in its natural state, doesn’t it? It looks more interesting as something you’d flip through on German TV.
Nic Cage can look pensive to his left, Nic Cage can look pensive to his right. Even when he’s being chased by assassins. Say what you will about Nic Cage, he’s certainly an ambi-brooder.
So, uh… are they trying to make the football stitching a visual metaphor for a dude’s zipper? Thus making this poster a metaphorical crotch close-up above the words “Happy Valley?” Because damn, that’s edgy. (I don’t know if they needed “Penn State” on the sides of the football though.)
Oh look, it’s my favorite film, Girl Talking On The Phone Painted Pink. You know, if I was marketing an indie movie, I think I’d want to try to refute the notion that the film was just average white people doing mundane things with arty camera work added, but that’s just me.
Oops, did I say white people doing mundane things? My mistake, here’s a shaggy-haired guy staring off into the distance.
Oh God, does someone die? Please tell me someone dies. Nothing ever happens in these repetitive goddamn movies.
“Thank you for finally dying, Gandalf.”
Oh man, I bet this will be a definitive battle, the real deal, once and for all, not like the other five battles in all of the five other Lord of the Rings movies that never decided anything.
For a movie that so many people are so excited about, they’re sure marketing it like a direct-to-DVD heist movie from 2003. Chris Pine sure seems happy about being kidnapped.
See what I mean? A coffee mug with a dollar sign on it though, that’s some edgy imagery.
I just finished reading this book and it was pretty great. As the poster indicates, it is indeed about a big-ass whale. 80 feet, in the book. Though it looks more like 800 in the poster. It’s kind of a shame that they didn’t go with “there once were some men from Nantucket…” in the tagline, because how often do you get an opportunity like that?
“There once were some men from Nantucket. They saw a whale’s blow hole and…”
I’m not sure it sells me on the movie, but the poster is cool as hell.
It looks like they shot the Jurassic World logo in front of one of those portrait booths at the mall. Get excited, everyone! Jurassic World got glamour shots by Deb!
“Yo, so there’s this cat with people hands who steals the moon and tries to cuddle it while an anthropomorphic spider screams.”
I’d forgotten how much I’d missed the kids-movies-that-are-awesome-to-watch-on-drugs genre.
I’ve never seen any of these movies, are they good? I’m going to guess no because I’ve seen other Shawn Levy movies.
Who needs an Angry Birds movie when you’ve got penguins? From, uh… Madagascar.
Dreamworks is kind of like that relative who always buys your kid some obnoxious toy that won’t stop beeping and blinking and annoying the hell out of you.
Those are certainly names typed behind that guy with a type writer. I’m simultaneously annoyed that the poster doesn’t tell me much and just annoyed enough to find out for myself. So I guess that makes it effective in some way.
See? Seems a lot more intriguing now, doesn’t it? I still don’t know how the guy with the typewriter comes into play.
I don’t know how you squeeze the story from Unbroken into a single image, so I suppose this is a valiant effort.
I really hope this is a faith-based movie, because that’s the only excuse for a poster this boring. Or for casting Josh Duhamel.
A drama centered on a classical pianist who has been diagnosed with ALS and the brash college student who becomes her caregiver.
Ahh, so it’s a Nicholas Sparks clone, now I get it. They got the sunset and the boring white people right, but to really drive it home, they needed the man to cradle the woman’s jaw. Like so:
Nicholas Sparks is a crushing douche by most accounts, but I do wonder what it would be like to have so effectively found your niche in life. Do you think you get bored repeating the same formula, or do you impress yourself with your ability to constantly write the same story slightly differently? Do you eventually come to despise your fans or are they validation? These are the things that I wonder.
Anyway, that’s all for this week, folks. Until next time, keep your text yellow, your horizon lines diagonal, and your faces mismatched.
[all posters via IMPA]