This Week In Movie Posters, December 11

Welcome to The #Content Report, a newsletter by Vince Mancini. I’ve been writing about movies, culture, and food since the aughts. Now I’m delivering it straight to you, with none of the autoplay videos, takeover ads, or chumboxes of the ad-ruined internet. Support my work and help me bring back the cool internet by subscribing, sharing, commenting, and keeping it real.

—

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.

This Week in Movie Posters

We begin this week with this poster for The Seeding (possibly THE SEEDING, one can never tell with all-caps fonts). The fact that it’s “seeding” and not “seedling” seems important. That little L denotes the difference between something deliberately planted and something that just grew, regardless of provenance. Is it about killer plants?? Human plants? Evil human plants???

Anyway, cool poster. It seems like more or less just an accurate depiction of the composting process, but cool nonetheless.

Totem! Cool picture, I suppose, though it doesn’t tell me much about the movie. Poster kind of just looks like a medium-tasteful tattoo. I need more.

IMDB says…

Seven-year-old Sol is spending the day at her grandfather's home, for a surprise party for Sol's father, Tonatiuh. As daylight fades, Sol comes to understand that her world is about to change dramatically.

Hmm. A spirit journey, perhaps?

Let’s see… a big red flower that’s gaping in the middle… could this be about… SEX???

(*looking up IMDB*) Oh, I see it’s actually about the Holocaust. Specifically a garden next to Auschwitz. You can see how I would’ve thought that though, right??? …Guys?

I really don’t think I was crazy to assume this was a movie about sex. I thought the “zone of interest” was like the crotch or something.

Here’s a poster for Breakwater, which seems to be about… wait, a ghost submarine?? Oh hell yes. I’m always saying that there should be more submarine movies, I suppose it only follows that they’d eventually make a horror movie about one. I’m for it!

Not cool that they left Mena Suvari off the poster though.

This Hideo Kojima guy seemed really important based on the poster, and I felt ashamed when I had to Google him. Turns out he’s a videogame guy, which explained a lot. Anyway, uh… cool poster!

I’m a little sad that I wrote about the vanity biopic trend before One Love came out. This one looks like the mother of all vanity biopics. (Not a good sign when a biopic opens in February, traditional studio dumping ground, rather than November or December, when they usually release the movies they think will contend for awards).

“First he changed music… then he changed the world” feels like a tagline ChatGPT would’ve come up with.

Is it… true? True… enough? So broad that it doesn’t really matter? Possibly all three! I think it’d be cool if they made a movie solely out of things Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos misremembered Bob Marley saying.

I remember years ago seeing that Jaden Smith (Will’s son) was only following one person on Twitter. That person was Bob Marley, and it was a verified account, even though Bob Marley is dead.

Speaking of the tell-tale signs that a movie is bad, here we have a movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode about Sigmund Freud that I had never heard of before this morning. And the poster has a massive pull-quote from Pete Hammond at the top. A curiously-obscure, but clearly star-studded film that could only find Pete Hammond to praise it? Look, I’m not saying the movie is bad because I haven’t seen it, but the signs are certainly there.

This is one of a batch of new character poster for The Color Purple. They all have purple backgrounds, get it? Exciting stuff. The other ones look like this, but with different people on them.

I’m calling it, this here poster for Mayhem! is the official #Content Report “Poster of the Week!”

The diagonal horizon line stuff usually looks lame, but in this it totally works, since the confused horizon line is kind of the whole point (in a word? “mayhem”). And the title looks like a blood smear. Anyway, it’s working for me.

Alex Garland has a new one coming out? Count me in. I like that they conveniently left Men out of his filmography, not that I blame them. Still, if that’s your worst credit, you’re way ahead of the game.

See how the Earth is all on fire back there? Subtle, I didn’t even notice at first. I guess the tagline “the war on Earth will be decided in space” does the heavy lifting there, but they left the font on that pretty small too.

ISS comes from director Gabriela Cowperthwaite which is one of those last names I can’t believe is real. It makes me sound like I have at least three different speech impediments when I say it in my head. Daffy Duck-ass name.

Apparently God & Country is the movie and WWJD is just the tagline. It was a little unclear from the poster. (Also, did we need to work the cross into the title twice? In case people didn’t notice the first one?)

From director Dan Partland and producer Rob Reiner, GOD and COUNTRY looks at the implications of Christian Nationalism and how it distorts not only our constitutional republic, but Christianity itself. Featuring prominent Christian thought leaders, GOD and COUNTRY asks this question: What happens when a faith built on love, sacrifice, and forgiveness grows political tentacles, conflating power, money, and belief into hyper-nationalism? Directed by Dan Partland. [IMDB]

Well, it doesn’t sound like a fun watch, exactly, but…

Hey, they got the names all mixed up! Someone should tell them.

Anyway, between the picture and the title I’m getting that this is some kind of funeral-based comedy set somewhere cold.

I’m all for people having fun and laughing at my funeral, but the all-the-way open mouth like the lady here has seems a bit much! I unpin my cravat in disapproval, keep your mirth respectfully subdued!

I don’t know what it says about me that I actually chuckled audibly at “from blunts to runts.”

Advertising the R rating as a main selling point of the movie is another bold choice, but honestly I think it plays. You think I don’t want to see Snoop Dogg swearing at a bunch of child actors? Sorry, I’m into it.

The craziest thing about this poster is that they basically already made an underdog football movie starring a famous West Coast rapper, and it was directed by Fred Durst. I think I’m cursed to be one of the 100 people in the world who remembers The Longshots.

I have to say, this is a strong poster. Something about dressing your ghouls up like Civil War photographs makes them scarier. I never saw the director’s other movies, The Bot or Orphan: First Kill, but with a title as good as “Orphan: First Kill,” does one really need to? That’s sort of the same way I feel about this poster.

Whoa, DJ headphones and a skateboard? He’s totally in my face!

I’m ashamed that I haven’t seen this Sam Esmail movie yet, even though it’s right there on Netflix. Anyway, there’s a thing with Ethan Hawke where he can have basically any facial hair and still looks exactly the same. Goatee? Mustache? Chinstrap? Giant beard? Still looks like Ethan Hawke. Can’t fool me, man, that’s Ethan Hawke. It’s like he’s immune to disguises.