This Week In Movie Posters, August 29

'Cat Person,' new David Fincher, Ben Mendelsohn, and Ridley Scott's not-four-hour 'Napoleon.'

Welcome to the This Week In Movie Posters, the feature in which we go through all the week’s new movie posters and read way too much into them. Blessed are the paid subscribers, as without them, none of this would be possible.

All posters via IMPAwards.

Remember Cat Person? It was the short story everyone was talking about in 2017. And to this day, probably the last “short story everyone was talking about.” Well, now it’s a movie, and the poster for it seems to capture precisely that feeling of cringe that compels you to share. “Oh my God, this is so embarrassing, you have to try it.”

The poster probably doesn’t work as well if you haven’t seen the trailer (included below), since it depicts the trailer’s centerpiece moment: Nicholas Braun (Cousin Greg!) kissing like a dead fish. Oh man, what a terrible kisser! It’s very exotic for me to have such feelings, speaking as the world’s greatest lover.

*nudging date in Australian, pointing at Ben Mendelsohn*

Oi, that’s that Maahsh King.

I feel like Ben Mendelsohn has been playing some kind of swamp man his entire career, and that was his appeal. Good on them for making it official.

I never know what “From the producer of…” is supposed to make me feel. The title of producer is so amorphous that it could mean the entire movie was their brainchild, or it could mean that they just showed a few times to sign some checks. Like, oh, this guy paid for different cool thing? Big whoop, if I had money I’d buy a lot of cool things.

This poster for Bibi is clearly doing a lot of art. Torn paper! Torn title! Festival laurels! It even has that font that screams “important indie darling you pretend to have seen.”

I know I’m meant to see this shadowy, foggy imagery and assume “big drama,” but I don’t think it quite hits that level of coherence required for intrigue. Why do you think her hands are all soapy, anyway? She lose a ring down there?

Here’s the poster for The Creator (one of the two not-Star Wars Star Wars movies, this one being the not-Zack Snyder one). The design cleverly gives John David Washington a Renaissance Art halo. And a sort of full-body glow from the background sun. Wait, does that mean he’s… the creator??

*whispers to date*

That’s the creator.

Adam Sandler has two movies coming out on Netflix this year, this one, Leo, about a class’s pet lizard, and You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitsvah, starring his wife and daughters. I have to assume he tried a lot harder on the second one, but I can’t help but love the character design on the lizard here. Loogit his lil pot belly! I wanna rub it. All animated movies should be about animals.

*most annoying facial expression in the world* Gee, gory much??

Points for aggressiveness, I suppose.

This week Ridley Scott announced that he had a four and a half hour cut of his Napoleon movie. That raises a lot of mixed emotions for me, as someone who hates overlong movies but will watch endless hours of Napoleonic era content.

3 hour movie: God this sucks.

5 hour version of Master and Commander: YES. Oh fuck yes.

Anyway, I love this new poster for Napoleon because it makes me feel smart. That’s right, I even know the basis for the red signature across her neck design. As I explained in my trailer write-up for GQ, the scene in which Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) meets Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix):

…seems to be set at one of Paris’ bals à la victime (victims’ balls), supposedly celebrated in the days following the Reign of Terror. As Transcript described them, “The balls were something of an urban legend in Paris, with very little to no first-hand accounts of the events remaining today. Functioning as a tribute to the dead, the rumored gatherings had a specific dress code. Many women wore red chokers or ribbons around their necks, to symbolize the slice of the guillotine’s blade. Men and women alike had their hair cropped short at the neck, as the victims did before execution to ensure the blade would sever the head without any complications.”

I can’t wait to mansplain all this in real life sometime. Now you can too!

The Napoleon marketing team really seems to understand their brand: Movies For Dads Who Read Books About Ships.

Here’s Jason Statham in one of the big batch of character posters for The Expend-Four-Bles released this week. Dang, The Stath looks like he’s as bored with this concept as I am. “Oi, oy should be out knobbin’ fit birds an’ droivin flash sazz wagons, shouldn’ oy, Tommy. Instead oy is heah fitted out loike an undah takah in front uv dis focken green screen, ain’ oy. Da fings oy do fa quid, Tommy, da fings oy do…”

I love these Black-themed rom-coms. They always cast white actors who are like parodies of white actors. That’s Jonathan Bennett down there, aka Aaron Samuels from Mean Girls (who also apparently hosts a show called Cupcake Wars). Incredible eyebrows on that guy.

I don’t know who that lady is, but I don’t think that’s how you hold a champagne glass.

Cedric the Entertainer is doing that Stephen A. Smith thing, where the hairline stays straight but the barber just keeps moving it back as the sides recede.

*whispers to date* That’s the reptile.

“Don’t let him slip away” is a pretty good tagline. I heard it was either this or “they say he flip you.”

Last week I commented on the randomness of Alicia Silverstone, Benicio Del Toro, and Justin Timberlake in the same movie, and someone reminded me of Excess Baggage, starring Silverstone, Del Toro, and Christopher Walken. Touché! Consider myself chastened.

Anyway, I hate that they started with a reptile-related tagline and then just sort of punted on this one. “Fear the truth?” Okay, sure, man, but what does that have to do with snakes?

Who do I trust? Not a reptile, that’s for sure! Mammals are the only truly trustworthy animals, followed by amphibians. Birds? Don’t even get me started.

“Hi, hon, how was the baptism?”

So, is it The Exorcist: Believer, or The Exorcist Believer? IMDB tells me it’s the former, which makes me a little sad. I kind of like The Exorcist Believer, which in my head I say like a Tweet. “The Exorcist Believer has logged on…”

It implies that the exorcism isn’t the extraordinary part, it’s that someone believes it. Is that her? Is that the Exorcist Believer right there?

I think it’s nice that Sly still gets to play dress up with his friends.

I keep staring at this wanting to understand, but I have nothing. It feels like a deliberately inscrutable iPod ad. Any guesses before we go to IMDB?

Last chance…

It follows Flora, a single mom who is at war with her son, Max. Trying to find a hobby for Max, she rescues a guitar from a dumpster and finds that one person's trash can be a family's salvation.

“One person’s trash can be a family’s salvation” sounds like something an AI came up with. When you go from “at war with her son” to “one person's trash can be a family's salvation” within two sentences maybe it’s a sign that your metaphor machine is malfunctioning.

*whispers to date*

That’s Bono’s daughter. (Okay, I’ll stop with this now).

The Ki.ller? The K_.ller? Nope, it’s just The Killer, according to IMDB. David Fincher and Michael Fassbender? Yes, I will see this. Even if I can’t believe that the poster applied creative punctuation to the title, and not to the most obvious target, Michael F. Assbender.

This is the poster for Foe. I know, I thought it was FOB too. Anyway, I kind of wish this one and the poster for Cat Person had been back to back. They’re a lot alike, only in that one, the woman clearly hates that man, and in this one, they’re both so horny for each other that it ends up ruining their lives. Or something like that.

IMDB says:

Hen and Junior farm a secluded piece of land that has been in Junior's family for generations, but their quiet life is thrown into turmoil when an uninvited stranger shows up at their door with a startling proposal.

Is it a sexual proposal? I bet it is. There’s too much caressing in this poster for it not to be sexual.

Society of the Snow? Did someone give Alive a new title? You can’t fool me, man, I know the movie Alive when I see it. A plane crash, the mountains, snow, based on a true story… that’s Alive!

Fine then, what does IMDB say?

The flight of a rugby team crashes on a glacier in the Andes. The few passengers who survive the crash find themselves in one of the world's toughest environments to survive.

Okay, that’s definitely Alive. I feel like I’m being gaslit here.