This Week In Posters: ‘The Death Of Stalin’ And The Rock’s Photoshopped Arms, It, And More

This week in This Week In Posters, we begin with Pixar’s Coco, featuring little Richie Valens over here rocking out for all the townsfolk, those both alive and dead. As always, the dopey doggy is stealing the show getting a tongue full of street corn. I still don’t know why we even bother with human characters in animation, but otherwise it’s a pretty good poster. Lots of mustaches.

[all posters via IMPA]

This poster didn’t come out this week, but I thought it was worth including, for obvious reasons. Look, the director of Snitch knows what he knows, okay?

This is not only a strong poster for The Death of Stalin, it’s also a power move. It says “I can put Buscemi, Palin, and Tambor in my movie and the director’s name and concept will still be more important.”

I’m sure we’ll get some terrible floating head designs closer to release, but for now this is awesome.

I honestly couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on with this poster for The Foreigner until I saw the next one with Jackie Chan. Apparently both faces are Pierce Brosnan’s, one angry and one… uh… content? You know, it turns out emotions this subtle don’t really play in posters. His right side kind of looks like Bryan Cranston.

I was so busy trying to figure out what I was looking at in the last poster to notice the debris exploding out of the characters’ heads, which is admittedly pretty boss. It’s like the designer of The Foreigner poster took two of the most pervasive poster clichés — the pointlessly diagonal horizon line and action movies have lots of debris flying everywhere — and combined them into something much stranger and cooler.

“Rock out with your glock out” sounded so familiar (kind of an obvious pun) that I Googled it. Turns out it’s not only been put on a t-shirt but was the name of a special edition DVD of Cop Out. Which is not especially something you’d want to remind people of, but that’s assuming the writers of Gun Shy‘s tagline thought about it for more than five seconds, which I doubt. On another note, what the sweet hell is going on with his left hand up there?

Ah, the old inverted poster design, a la Doctor Strange and The Dark Tower. It’s rare to see in what looks like an arthouse movie. Beyond that all I can tell you is that the worst part of being a film critic is when someone at a party finds out and wants to talk about Fellini.

It is going subtle with all its marketing, which is probably a wise choice when you’re a movie about a scary clown.

I think The Ninjago Movie has given up and is just releasing the actual Lego box art now.

The LEGOs are pretty cool though…

Wait, does someone have to fight a giant spider in the third act?

I don’t quite understand the “put everything into tiny, washed-out yellow squares” approach to this Logan Lucky poster.

Jennifer Lawrence is a cracking doll in this Mother! poster. I’m not sure what the hell is going on with this one just yet, but I assume that’s kind of the point.

Anyone else getting a Dali vibe from this one? Anyway, I like the font and I’m happy to see the faces lined up with the names.

Come see Mudbound, it has the jauntiest hats. Also, Garrett Hedlund is in so many period pieces that I’m starting to believe he actually lives in the 1930s.

Due to a mix-up down at the poster factory, a Simon and Garfunkel song accidentally got printed on top of a collage of unlabeled actors I don’t recognize.

Sweet Jesus, I thought that last poster was bad, but this, this is terrible. Behind every period piece is a GIANT FLOATING HEAD. And behind every movie about a famous book is RANDOM LETTERS AND WORDS FLYING TOWARDS THE CAMERA. I hope the letters are in 3D, like The Great Gatsby.

Having one of the pull quotes for Spettacolo be “spectacular” seems a little onna the nose-a, no? Shame, I kind of like the curtain design.

This is the poster for Thor: Ragnarok, in which Cate Blanchett plays Lady Gaga.

“Get ready to meet Auggie Pullman.”

Hmm, is he a precocious child wearing unorthodox headgear? Hard pass. I already met a few of those kids and they sucked. “Wonder” really is the laziest possible title for precocious wondercore nonsense.