This week’s This Week in Movie Posters begins with Alice: Through the Looking Glass, but only because it starts with A. If you just saw this poster, would you know this was a live-action movie? I wouldn’t. Also, how much cooler is the original John Tenniel illustration than this? This looks like it can’t decide whether to be cute or creepy. It’s just a regular cat with giant eyes. Bah humbug.
Is that the guy from Coldplay? Also, I admit I haven’t been to a chariot race in a while, but don’t the racers generally stand with their shoulders facing forwards, not sideways? This guy looks like he’s wakeboarding. Get off the wakeboard, Coldplay, it’s time to chariot race.
OH SNAP KEVIN COSTNER GOT A CRAZY HAIRCUT, Y’ALL! Costner’s ‘do reads “Russian” to me, so I had to look it up. But all IMDb tells us is that Costner’s character’s name is “Jericho Stewart,” which doesn’t sound very Russian at all, so it looks like I was wrong. This has a hell of a cast for a movie with a director I’ve never heard of. Anyway, the poster looks… serious. Very, very serious. Tommy Lee Jones up there on the left looks like he just got chastised for not being serious enough.
First thought: Aren’t all superheroes basically vigilantes? Second thought: Time out, Terrence Malick is making a movie about a vigilante priest superhero? That sounds bizarre, but I am intrigued. Also, who is this actor? Fine, Almost Holy poster, you’ve won yourself a synopsis:
Gennadiy calls himself “Pastor Crocodile.” He’s known throughout Ukraine for his years working to rehabilitate drug-addicted kids. But he’s also a vigilante who uses any force necessary to carry out his moral vision. Gennadiy believes he has made Mariupol a better place, but now, the violence in Ukraine threatens everything. [IMDb]
Ohh, it’s a documentary. Now it’s starting to make sense…
The “goth retelling of a classic fairytale” thing should’ve gone out of style years ago, but I have to give this poster credit. It’s hard enough for a movie to create a unique look these days, let alone for just a poster to create one in a single image. I mean, it still looks like a goth fairytale, but the look has me interested.
And this one’s even weirder than the last one. “The fairytale was only the beginning” feels like a hacky tagline, but on the plus side, at least it’s not an origin story. Promising to tell the next part of a story is always more interesting than promising to tell the first part.
Pixar used to have the best character designs. Remember Wall-E? Remember Ratatouille? So awesome. And now? Well, the octopus down there looks pretty great, but what the hell is going on with that whale shark? It looks like someone stuck googly eyes on a bath toy.
Oh good, a documentary about the fashion industry. Finally! And Anna Wintour too?! Why, it seems like I hardly ever get to see her dumb sunglasses and pixie cut and hear about her legendary persnicketiness. So tasteful. Much class. Bangs. Wow. I hope this one finally addresses all those unanswered Anna Wintour questions, like what her poops look like and what the world ever did to deserve someone so brilliant and tasteful and perfect.
Is “blackway” a word or a term for something? It sounds like a word that I should know what it means but I don’t. All I’m getting from this is “forest” and “revenge.” It looks like the forest did something to these people and now they’re off to shoot up some trees. That said, it’s cool that they lined up the faces with the corresponding names.
That neck thing Anton Yelchin’s doing is kind of an actor move. Alexander Skarsgard does that for the entire movie in War on Everyone. Does that happen in real life? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone do that with their neck. Anyway, it looks cool.
Once again, High-Rise continues to have the coolest posters of the year. Loki scares me.
Ha, “astro nut.” I get it. Because he’s an astronaut, who’s a nut, but there’s also a nut, in outer space, like an astro nut. It works on a lot of levels.
It really annoys me that they thought they needed to put a hat on the kitten to make this seem wacky. Also, why dirt? Are they running in cleats? And on whose poor turf? Bad. This poster is bad.
I didn’t like this movie very much, but this is a very good poster, mixing American Gothic with The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, looks like. Dali, because the movie is surreal, get it? All good things, but at the same time it’s pretty hard to go wrong with Mads Mikkelsen holding a chicken.
“Outshines Good Will Hunting in almost every way!”
So you’re saying… there will be even more equations drawn on windows? Count me in! Also, that pull quote seems directly at odds with “highly engaging performances by Patel and Irons.” That doesn’t really sound like a compliment. It’s kind of like putting “definitely made from cows” on the side of your milk carton.
“This Summer, from visionary director Tim Burton, comes Pale Kids Do Supernatural Stuff featuring the hit song by British Lady.”
Is it just me, or does the kid with the lady kite kind of look like a Fred Armisen character?
Money Monster is that movie where George Clooney plays a thinly veiled Jim Cramer character who gets kidnapped. That seems like an intriguing idea that the poster could sell. This one’s all generic symbolism and all-purpose drama. Sort of makes it look like Important Oscar Movie #724.
Kristen Wiig’s hair looks like someone put her scalp on crooked. Do you think they meant for it to look like that, right next to the words “off-kilter?” Fitting. Also, I couldn’t possibly have less of a clue what this is about. Right now I’m assuming it’s a futuristic comedy in the vein of Her, only instead of high pants everyone wears stiff coats, and there’s a cat there for some reason and Kristen Wiig has a thing in her pocket. Cool! Count me in!
I just saw War on Everyone, John Michael McDonagh’s action comedy about two wisecracking buddy cops (Alexander Skarsgard and Michael Peña) who are corrupt and irreverent, which seemed sort of like a funhouse mirror Shane Black movie. Amazingly, seeing that did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for an actual Shane Black movie starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling that seems to feature the same elements.
[Sung to the tune of your choice.] Stripes and stripes and cities and everybody’s looking in a different places because they’re suspicious of each other….
Who can you trust with the truth? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say “not Damian Lewis.”
It’s amazing how spread legs are automatically provocative and intriguing. I don’t even know what the monster is in this, but I want to wait around and see if it eats that person’s testicles and/or vagina.
I think it’s a little weird that Hollywood is making a big-budget adaptation of a famous eugenics parable that stars the most Aryan-looking actor they have, but the poster designer was right to focus mostly on the water beading on Alexander Skarsgard’s vascular biceps. That’s definitely the draw here.
Okay, so I get that the eyes and the mouth are leaves, but what the hell is going on with the title? Is that supposed to look like it’s carved into tree bark? At first I thought it was nail polish on the sidewalk.
This was also my face when I heard they were making a sequel to a movie that felt like it was stretching three-fourths of the way through. Also, Zac Efron has a good DreamWorks face. You think that’s why he gets cast in everything? Discuss.
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.