This Week In Movie Posters: August 30th
Joker 2, new Jeremy Saulnier, and a horror movie dedicated to each of the five senses.
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News Hits
Trap is streaming now, for the low low price of $24.99. I haven’t wholeheartedly loved an M. Night Shyamalan movie since (*checks notes*) The Sixth Sense, but lots of people with Letterboxd links in their bios think he’s great and I do not want to argue with them. Between this (Josh Hartnett as a serial killer), Blink Twice (C-Tates as an evil billionaire), and Cuckoo (Dan Stevens as an alpine eugenicist), “Handsome Dudes Who Are Secretly Evil” is having a moment.
The director’s cut of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon has 48 more minutes of footage, and will be available on Apple TV. The movie (my review) was already like three hours long, but sure, why not. It did feel like it was missing some connective tissue.
The Crow reboot (plot recreated with reviews) bombed, not surprisingly, earning just $4.6 million domestically over the weekend. Original The Crow director Alex Proyas dunked it on Facebook. As one does.
Ryan Murphy made a Menendez Brothers series (title: MONSTERS: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story). Ryan Murphy has way too many shows, but I can’t help but be intrigued by this one. Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny as the parents?? Sure, why not. And oh yeah, it presupposes that all the molestation allegations were true.
I don’t know enough about this story to have an opinion about whether the dad was really molesting his kids, but I feel strongly that “Lyle Menendez” is the kind of name that could only happen in the 70s.
This Week In Movie Posters
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 IMPA.
Here’s the new poster for Hold Your Breath, starring Sarah Paulson. She definitely looks like she’s preparing to hold her breath in this poster, so nice work on that. Personally I think they should’ve gone with the original title, “Smell No Evil.”
Possible taglines: “There’s more than meets the nose.”
“Who smealt it?”
“Silent, but deadly.”
Ayy, it’s the trailer for Wolfs! No, not Wolves, Wolfs! I assume there will be an explanation for this in the film, a la The Pursuit of Happyness. Or maybe there won’t, a la Inglourious Basterds.
All I know is, I’m glad they lined up the faces and the names. See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Something about the lighting kind of makes this feel like clunky Photoshop. The white background looks cheap, doesn’t it? But I do like that their gun-penises seem to be having a “pissing contest.” Grr, metaphors!
Couple laurels, a pull quote, Futura font — oh yeah, it’s almost awards season, baby!
Aside from the expected elements, this poster for Exhibiting Forgiveness gives me just enough clues to be intrigued (I’m thinking mid-life crisis) while still leaving lots of room for speculation. Of course, I’d also watch Andre Holland paint a house, so you can kind of just put his face in the poster and yadda yadda the rest.
Will we find out why he’s wearing so many layers of clothes??? I’d be so sweaty in that. It looks like he’s dressed for 50 degree weather and she’s dressed for 80. Such is true for most formal settings though. Someone should get on that! Either you sweat through your clothes or your wife steals your coat. It ain’t right!
Here’s the new poster for Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy. That’s the fourth Bridget Jones movie, for those of us keeping track, the first of which came out 24 years ago. Farbeit for my old ass to criticizing anyone for aging, but that seems like a really long time to be mad about boys. If Bridget Jones is still mad about “boys” at this age we may have to get the cops involved. Maybe take up gardening or something! Bridget Jones’ Fulfilling New Hobbies. There’s your sequel idea. Colin Firth co-stars as “pickleball.”
Meanwhile, the poster follows the trends of most remakes and reboots and sequels these days, copying the style of all the older posters exactly. Are we really this dumb that we can’t be trusted with a new style of poster, or, say, Winona Ryder’s character having a different haircut as an adult than she did as a teen? You’d still have “Bridget Jones” in the title and Renee Zellweger starring, I don’t think we’d be lost. We might even be intrigued by the possibility of something new. It wouldn’t curdle our natural enjoyment of remembering stuff.
Stavros! As far as I can tell, this is the first time a Frotcast guest has been in a movie poster. AND gotten their name above the title. (David Gborie did get a split-second cameo in The Instigators). And hey, is that Clare O’Kane on the right? She’s never been on the Frotcast, but we do know her from stand-up. Sorry for all of the name drops, but this is all very cool.
Great poster too. The camera loves Stav, might as well lead with that. Nice work. When is Matt Lieb going to get his own starring vehicle? I’m thinking a Hitch-style buddy-comedy in which Joey Avery teaches him how to succeed in show business.
Here’s a new character poster for Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie á Deux. You have to appreciate the ballsiness of giving a sequel to Joker a French title. (And I’m firmly on Team Joker Was Good, Actually, so shut your mouth before you talk to me).
This is neither here nor there, but there was a Trump photo this week that looked exactly like a velvet clown painting my grandmother had. This is more like “operatic-style clown performer” than velvet clown painting, but it felt worth mentioning nonetheless.
Here’s the new poster for Seeking Mavis Beacon, which looks like one of those Everything is Terrible stock video edits, or an interstitial video at the Alamo Drafthouse. Stylish, though I kind of want more? I mean, I remember Mavis Beacon as the typing lady, but…
Rotten Tomatoes says:
“One of the most influential Black women in technology is a figment of our collective imagination. Mavis Beacon was invented by the Co-Founder of MySpace to sell the world's most popular typing software, but the real woman she was modeled after disappeared in 1995. Seeking Mavis Beacon poses critical questions regarding anthropomorphization and the consumption of marginalized bodies in the tech industry, while reimagining the legacy of a missing historical figure.”
That last sentence is a little too grad school for me, but I’m properly intrigued now.
And here’s Lady Ga-gah in the other poster for Joker: Folie a Deux. I’m fine with the Joker having a girlfriend, but I hope it doesn’t take away from the drama at the Clown Union Hall. Clown Union forever. Give me Joker: Intrigue at the Clown Union.
Question for the Gen Z readers: is Lady Gaga mewing in this? That’s a thing I learned about this week.
Here’s a cool retro poster for The Featherweight, which had its festival premiere last year but is getting a limited release this month. I keep thinking that guy in the hat in the background is Tucker Carlson. He seems like the kind of guy who would wear a little fedora cocked to the side with a stupid look on his face like that (by which I mean: someone who never went to public school).
I also thought Ron Livingston was Andrew Garfield at first, but again, neither her nor there.
Matt Dillon has a great “I’ve just learned a terrible secret” face, doesn’t he? Too bad not even Futura font can save this one from looking like it was made as part of a foreign tax incentive scheme.
“A terrific homage to the likes of Hitchcock.”
To the likes of Hitchcock? As in Hitchcock and other filmmakers like him? Which ones? Maybe just say “a terrific homage to Hitchcock” if you’re too lazy to think of even one other filmmaker like him. I award this pull quote a C minus!