This Week In Movie Posters, August 22

John Cena's weird-shaped head, Gabriel Garcia Bernal as a drag queen wrestler, and lesbian werewolves who play hockey.

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. All posters via IMPAwards. This post is once again free, but thank you to all the paid subscribers for making this possible and making me want to live.

This week’s first poster, thanks to the capricious nature of Substack’s image-adding system, is BIBI, a film by Christopher Beatty. And it seems to be about… a little girl… who dreams of… the circus?

Hmm, I’m not feeling too confident in my read, let’s check with IMDB:

In the gripping psychological thriller "Bibi," a grieving woman, consumed by her own demons, must confront a relentless stalker who blurs the boundaries between nightmare and reality, forcing her to question her sanity.

Damn, I wasn’t even close! And I still don’t know what any of this has to do with Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is the only Bibi we recognize in this house. Hey, do you think Netanyahu and Matisyahu are related? I’m saying because their names sound kind of similar. Oops, my brain is leaking, gotta go!

Here’s the first poster for Maestro, starring Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan as his wife. I actually wrote up this trailer for GQ, and there was a whole round of discourse and counter-discourse about Bradley Cooper wearing a big fake nose for the role. People calling it “Jewface” and other people saying “Jewface is not a thing,” and whatnot. I’m not here to weigh in on any of that, but all I know is that if you famously play the Elephant Man without make-up and then strap on a fake nose to play a Jewish guy people are going to have questions.

(Incidentally, I got to show Brendan Bradley Cooper playing the Elephant Man on Broadway for the first time and see his reaction live on last week’s Frotcast, and it was one of the happiest moments of my life).

The first poster, obviously, focuses more on Carey Mulligan playing Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein than on Bradley Cooper and his nose. I have to admit, for all the talk of Bradley Cooper doing Jewface, the main thing I noticed about that trailer was Carey Mulligan doing the world’s most grating affected mid-Atlantic accent. Good lord, did everyone talk like a Hepburn in the 60s? Those staccato consonants are like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.

I’ll include the trailer below, but only in a very “Try this soup, doesn’t it taste just like shit??” kind of way.

Here’s the new poster for Cassandro, on Prime. I’m getting that Gael Garcia Bernal plays a gay pro wrestler in this one. Admittedly I’m not a wrestling ring size expert, but am I crazy for thinking that this poster makes Cassandro look three apples tall? That might make me care about pro wrestling, if they had an honest-to-god elf in there. And if he was gay. Just a whole hollow tree’s worth of gay elves kicking the shit out of The Miz or whatever. I’d watch that.

Awhoooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

Sorry, had to, something just comes over me when I encounter wolf imagery.

Is this one about… lesbian werewolves? Let’s go to IMDB and see how close I was:

Heather, an outcast teenage goalie, falls for newcomer Jonny, an alluring but tormented figure skater. As their relationship deepens, Heather's growing desires clash with her darkest secret, forcing her to control the animal within.

Wow, not only was I right about it being a lesbian werewolf movie, it also has hockey/figure skating angle! Talk about burying the lede!

So this is… basically The Cutting Edge, but with lesbian werewolves? Probably the greatest logline I’ve ever heard.

Here’s one of a whole batch of character posters for Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie. They’re all are like this, weak CG with AI-level plays on words. I know there are worse things, but I’m glad my toddler isn’t into this one yet. I’ll stick with Bluey, where at least the cartoon dogs are Australian.

Remember how poster designers these days love sparks? Sparks = excitement. Somewhere, some metal is grinding! This new Blue Beetle poster is like, what if sparks, but make them kinda spermy?

Spermy Sparks! Sounds like the name of an influencer, honestly.

Here we have a poster for St. Vierja Academy, utilizing a classic “framed by a lady’s legs” design. Though I guess they might not be a lady. Hard to tell without the feet. Plus he’s not looking at the crotch, which means it must be a source of stress for him somehow.

The death of a school friend forces Toño to face the ghosts of his past while at the renowned "St. Vierja Academy," one of Panama's most exclusive catholic schools for boys during the 1970s.

Ah, a Catholic School, now I know what this is about.

Damn, between this poster for The Creator and Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, we are entering a new golden age of movies doing everything they can to convince you that they’re a Star Wars movie even if they’re not. (In Rebel Moon’s case, it was apparently intended to be one). Anyway, as Dune proved, a Star Wars movie that isn’t Star Wars can be a great thing. I just hope they let John David Washington have actual facial expressions in this one. Did anyone else see Amsterdam? One of the strangest non-performances I’ve ever seen.

Simple, effective, I know sort of what it’s about, but not exactly. Just enough to be intrigued. Yep, I’m going to say that this is the poster of the week.

This is just one of many new character posters for A Haunting In Venice, but I didn’t really see the point in posting all of the others. Once you know it has Kenneth Branagh in a silly mustache, what else do you need? His mustache has a part in it! Oh my.

Nice to see that Michael Peña is taking a break from playing cops and security guards for once in order to play an astronaut. Still pretty cop-like, I suppose. They wear uniforms and everything. Astronauts are basically space cops when you think about it.

Wait, I just scrolled down. Holy shit. Was that really the only way to depict a young Mexican boy wanting to become an astronaut, to have him hold up an ear of corn? If he wanted to be a sailor would it have been a taco?

Oh man, I can’t wait to see this get the biopic origin story treatment. Gosh dangit, José! What’d I tell you about space shipping your corn! Ain’t no space gonna put no tortillas on no table!

Here’s the poster for Orca, one of the wildest riffs on Free Willy I’ve ever seen. It’s gotta be about… a girl… who dreams… of being a whale? I have to look this one up:

Elham, a young divorced Iranian woman, seeks to find herself after being nearly beaten to death by her husband. Elham finds solace and salvation in the water, and soon makes her mark as a formidable endurance swimmer. In the fight of her life, Elham faces political, religious, and personal obstacles in search of her goal: the Guinness record for swimming the longest distance with her hands tied.

…I’m not sure what I was expecting. My guess was somehow close and way off at the same time.

DOGMAN! Hell yes, give me more Dogman. I don’t know what it is about Caleb Landry Jones, but he’s the perfect Dogman. He was born to play a dogman.

Once again a poster gives me the opportunity to bitch about poster designers not lining up the faces with the names even when it seems so obvious to do so. I guess I can forgive it for the snakeskin-textured design for a movie called Reptile, with the tagline “Shed the lies.”

Points for adherence to the metaphor! Movie like snake! I got a snake, mang!

And clearly it’s a metaphor for… uh… hold on, it’ll come to me… Ugh, I give up. Tell us, IMDB!

Nichols, a hardened New England detective unflinching in his pursuit of a case where nothing is as it seems, one that begins to dismantle the illusions in his own life.

Shit, man, that’s not even a complete sentence! Oh well, points for randomness of cast, I suppose. Benicio Del Toro, Alicia Silverstone, and Justin Timberlake is not a combination I ever would’ve predicted.

I’m on the record as being staunchly anti-sequels to comedies, even ones I liked, like Vacation Friends. But if you were looking to convert me, you could do a lot worse than putting Steve Buscemi in it. Buscemi is one of those veteran character actors where it’s hard to tell whether he’s better at drama or comedy (John C. Reilly and Walton Goggins come to mind) because he’s so good at both. Weirdly, Adam Sandler seems like the only one to have recognized it. I’m shocked that Buscemi has never been in a Danny McBride show. It must’ve been a scheduling conflict.

What lives inside though? Is it a demon? I bet it’s a demon. There’s a demon inside that jar! Don’t open the demon jar, lady!

Damn it, she’s going to open it, isn’t she. You can’t just hand a demon jar to a lady with that many arms and expect her not to open it.

I have to begrudgingly hand it to John Cena. After Fast X I thought I’d never want to see him and his giant, weird-shaped head ever again. And yet, between Vacation Friends and Peacemaker I think I’ve been converted. Hell, I like Dave Bautista too. I guess I can accept all these crossover pro wrestlers, as long as I don’t actually have to watch pro wrestling.

Here’s another Vacation Friends 2 poster with Yvonne Orji. One of the reasons the first one worked was because you imagine she was going to play the “disapproving wife” character, but then she got onboard with befriending John Cena and Meredith Hagner pretty fast. That should be lesson to all you writers out there! Everyone hates a character whose whole deal is “disapproves with the central plot conceit.” I don’t care how “realistic” Skyler from Breaking Bad is, I just want to watch the science teacher become a meth kingpin! She can stay in the dang pool for all I care.

Plus no one is going to buy that kind of reticence to making friends coming from someone named “Orgy.” (I’m going to contact her rep to find out if I’m the first person ever to make an Orji/Orgy pun. Probably.)

Shoot, now I’m right back to hating John Cena’s Easter Island-ass head. Maybe stop giving him a flat top and a frown? I also thought “Alison Brie in a soaking wet white shirt” would’ve been more exciting than this Photoshopped disaster.

On the other hand… sparks! Guaranteed excitement! I can’t wait to find out where the metal is grinding.