This Week In Posters: Liam Neeson’s Crotch And Daniel Day-Lewis’s Giant Head

This week in This Week In Posters, we begin with All The Money In The World, Ridley Scott’s give-no-f*cks-I’ll-replace-you-a-month-before-release-if-I-have-to story of the Getty family, formerly starring Kevin Spacey, now replaced by Christopher Plummer. At first I thought Christopher Plummer was related to Charlie Plummer, and that maybe they just replaced Kevin Spacey with Charlie Plummer’s real father. But apparently they’re not related, so they just happened to replace Kevin Spacey with a guy who has the same last name as the kid who plays his son in the movie. Is that more or less of a weird coincidence? Maybe they did it for SEO purposes? For the record, Christopher Plummer’s only kid is Amanda Plummer, who played Honey Bunny in Pulp Fiction. I’m glad we could all go on this journey together.

I love Kevin Spacey (AS AN ACTOR!), but I’m just going to say it: Christopher Plummer seems like a better casting choice anyway. Not many people can play “grouchy robber baron” like Christopher Plummer. This poster really brings out the grouchy rich guy in him. Are grouchy rich guys always depicted in front of fireplaces? This reminds me of the BigLebowskii from The Big Lebowski.

True story: I mainly knew of J. Paul Getty from an Aerosmith song before this.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Phew, okay, I’m collecting myself. I’m very sorry. I actually like Mark Wahlberg a lot as an actor. But I think part of the reason is that when glamorous Hollywood actors play the blue collar tacky folk actors love to play, it usually feels like a big game of dress up, whereas Mark Wahlberg is one of the few who seems right at home and plays those characters from experience. Conversely, when you give him a rich guy hair cut and a three-piece suit and fancy man glasses, it’s hilarious for some reason, like a dog wearing a hat. It reminds me of that picture of Kevin Connolly from Reach Me a few years back that destroys me every time I look at it:

Whoa, is that telephone smoking? You might want to let that cool down a little before making any more calls.

Golly, look at that fascinating logo. This is actually a really apt poster because I have a feeling The Avengers: Infinity Wars is going to be the narrative equivalent of staring at the Marvel logo for two hours. Actually that’s unfair, it will be more like two and a half hours.

I don’t know what those words say on this Black Panther poster, but I like to think it’s “Meee-oww.”

Honestly, does the diagonal improve this at all? Why do they do this?

Whoa. I don’t know that I’ve seen “between two legs” poster cliché employed so minimally before. Is this sexual? Phallic? Why is Liam Neeson silhouetted in front of the Japanese flag? Is the red dot some other kind of symbolism? Did the legs just have their period on Liam Neeson? I don’t understand all this Freudian stuff.

This one feels very Murder On The Orient Express. Somehow I doubt this is going to be a mystery though. FYI, Non-Stop was about a plane. You think there will be a Liam-Neeson-In-A-Car movie to complete the trilogy?

Is Aardman the only non-CG animated movie company around anymore? Thank God for them.

This poster is very good. Usually the “girl with her tongue out” is used in service of “ladies having a ca-raaazy time!” movies, so it’s nice to see it getting the artsy fartsy treatment.

This French poster for I,Tonya is just fantastic. It’s always great when the designer can boil the movie down to a hyper-specific image like this.

If there are tiny helicopters flying in the background of a poster, there’s an 86% chance The Rock is in it.

OH HELL YEAH. 2017 was going pretty terribly until I realized that we’ll be getting a new Maze Runner movie soon. I really can’t get enough maze running. Maze running is my life. I have a license plate frame that says “I’d rather be maze running.”

*to the tune of Poison* Evvvvvvery maaaaaze has its end….

Perfect poster. This one definitely needed a diagonal.

If I’ve learned one thing from all these Paddington 2 posters it’s that Paddington really likes marmalade.

Everyone loves “glowing neon text,” this year’s hottest poster trend. I like the hypersaturated look for this. And I know I’m on the record as someone who hates tilting his head sideways to look at posters, but I think the full 90 degrees works here. It’s like she’s staring off into the abyss.

Wow. Well, if you’re going to make a “giant head” type poster, make sure they know it was a specific choice. This reminds me a little of that Goya painting. Except instead of Saturn devouring his son, he’s admiring his daughter’s tasteful gown. Anyway, I’m very excited for a new Paul Thomas Anderson film and I hope to find out why the title sounds like a Star Wars prequel parody about millennials.

So Saturday Church is about… dancing… or something? Huh, okay sure.

This is the first of a giant batch of new Star Wars: The Last Jedi posters. They’re very nice and Japanese minimalist style. Do I really need to narrate all of these?

Is there anything in the Star Wars #ContentUniverse that isn’t exhaustingly thorough?

I still say that logo looks like a pear-shaped flour de lis.

It’s a porg! Porgs porgs porgs porgs. I haven’t even seen this movie and I already know what a porg is. I guess they’re sort of just penguins with baby owl feathers and mouse eyes and no beaks? That was a good move. Birds are much more sympathetic without the beaks. Less dangerous too.

Okay I give up, what is it? Does the new Star Wars have butt plugs?

I hope this is a new BB-8 space heater design. I’d buy that. It’s like a little Roomba robot that rolls around the house in winter.

Well I’ll be, it’s the new RUDE BUOY TWO-TONE SKA TROOPER! Pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup pickitup…

*Sigh* Are we done with these yet?

These posters all acknowledge a fundamental truth: Star Wars is so popular largely because of the cool gear.

You know what a true Jedi wears under his cloak. Nothing.

Didn’t… uh… didn’t she die before the last one?

Yes, yes, it’s an R2-D2 that rolls, it’s all very cute.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. More reviews here.

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