This Week In Movie Posters, June 25th

Marvel's latest whatsit, Zach Galifianakis without a beard, another Elvis movie, and more! Plus, my cocktail of the week.

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.

We begin this week with the poster for The Deepest Breath, which isn’t making us work too hard to guess what it’s about. “A heart-pumping documentary!” Oh, I see what you did there!

I’ve always been far too anxious to win any breath-holding contests, and the people who do these free dives regularly black out in the middle of the ocean while training. Lunatics. They make me sick. Of course I will watch this.

“One dive. One breath. One chance,” feels unnecessarily wordy as a tagline, especially when everything else about the poster is doing the work already. It makes me think there’s going to be a free diver in a hoodie shadow boxing in the corner of the boat. Mom’s spaghetti.

Ooh, I like this poster. It’s like they used mirrors to trick Ben Whishaw into kissing that girl, Excel Sarcophagus.

Decent poster, but I feel like his abs need work.

On a serious note, I get the feeling Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s abs are meant to distract us from the fact that his fur shawl thingy doesn’t actually attach in the middle. Come on, man!

IMDB says:

Russian immigrant Sergei Kravinoff is on a mission to prove that he is the greatest hunter in the world.

Ah, great. I can’t wait to see how this ties in with Black Widow or whatever.

Hey, lady, could you move, please? You’re blocking your costar. (I also like to imagine that she’s six foot five).

I guess the sparks are there so that you know they’re afire.

Wow, two close-eyed headbutts in a row! That’s the poster format that bespeaks deep love and yearning. This one, obviously, seems like a bigger deal, it being a movie about the Presleys, from Sofia Coppola (with Priscilla listed as co-writer). It stars Cailee Spaeny (whose name you can barely see in this) and Jacob Elordi as Priscilla and Elvis, respectively. Apparently it was important enough that their names be listed in this precise order, to the point that they that they couldn’t correspond to the actors, but not important enough that the first-listed name be actually legible. Go figure! The ways of the poster are mysterious indeed.

I loved Elvis for what it was, and I’m a little sad that we probably won’t get any crazy Baz Luhrmann stuff in this one, like Tom Hanks playing an evil Dutch carnie with a fake southern accent or whatever.

It is Sofia Coppola and A24 though, so we might get a different flavor of bold artistic choice. Like an Elvis movie set entirely to Depeche Mode and Joy Division or something. I welcome it.

Wow, it’s like the designer for the this poster was listening to my complaints about the previous one and tried to give me everything I thought I wanted. They say be careful what you wish for, but honestly? I’m pretty happy about my wish here. This is much better this way, isn’t it? The names and faces lining up makes them look iconic, rather than just a group of actors with a mess of names slapped on there in no particular order.

Galifianakis without a beard is obviously a little jarring, but I dig the bright colors and provocative poses. It’s making me intrigued, even in spite of my natural wariness of movies based on documentaries that I feel like I just saw. Though apparently this one is actually based on the book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, so maybe it’s unfair to compare it to the doc.

Deadline:

Based on the book by Zac Bissonette is inspired by the story behind one of the biggest speculative crazes that blazed through American culture in the 1990s. It pulls back the curtain on the absurdities and injustices of the American Dream — particularly the female relationship to it. It’s a celebration of the women who helped power Ty Warner’s success, whose strengths and good instincts shaped and amplified the phenomenon, but whose names are not on the Beanie Babies’ heart-shaped tags.

Movies about successful business people, so hot right now.

(*The Clash voice*)

Phony beanie mania… has bitten the dust…

Aw, it’s that guy! The one from that movie! Remember him? I ‘member! Love to remember stuff online.

Anyway, I’m still not letting you take my kids camping, dude.

I probably don’t need to reiterate my staunchly anti-child acting stance here, but I’m saying it anyway. All child acting is a form of child abuse. Get some 20-year-olds and stick them in Fortnight shirts and pigtails, no one will complain.

Anyway, this poster looks like an ad for a hair volumizing product.

What an excellent poster for Rub, from the A+ tagline (“not all endings are happy”) to the way the title frames her cleavage, to the bizarre and intriguing guy in his underwear running with a shotgun. What’s he running from? Why is he in his underwear? They say you’re supposed to shoot off at the end, but not like this.

IMDB:

Meet Neal. He's lonely, gets bullied at work, and is unlucky in love. At the suggestion of a co-worker he decides to go to a massage parlor and in the process his life changes in ways he never would have imagined.

I don’t know any of the people involved, but points for a great poster. Researching this, I discovered that there was actually already a movie called Rub & Tug, made back in 2002:

Posters sure were a little more on the nose back in 2002, weren’t they?

Three beautiful masseurs are committed to their upstanding clients and their jobs. But their new manager is trying to run an honest business. Will he be able to stop the girls from giving their customers a little something extra?

I sure hope not! Dang manager, let the beautiful handjob givers live their lives! Fascist.

From a poster featuring the principals covering their boobs and vaginas we go to this poster for Drive-Away Dolls, in which the car-driving-into-the-crotch imagery seems downright Victorian by comparison. Which is probably for the best, I don’t know how much more excited I could be for a movie from one of the Coen brothers with Pedro Pascal and Bill Camp. Say less.

Maybe I’m dense, but I actually don’t know what that red silhouette is supposed to be next to the I. Is it a missile? A chess piece? A pen? They all seem equally plausible. But as long as the movie has a little guy running I’ll be okay. At their heart, the Mission Impossible movies are all about a little guy running.

Cocktail I’ve Been Enjoying Of The Week: The Tequila Old Fashioned

One of my last few articles for Uproxx was a Don Julio ranking, which left me with some nice tequila lying around. I was looking for a nice summer cocktail to make with it, and stumbled across this one, which I got to experiment with a little.

To make it, you’ll need:

• Some decent Añejo or Reposado tequila (it doesn’t have to be fabulously expensive, but the aged kind does taste distinctly better than white or silver tequila in this one, which isn’t true of a lot of tequila cocktails).

• Agave nectar (straight out of the bottle, no need to bother making a special syrup)

• Cocktail cherries (nice cherries are a necessity for any bar cart, treat yourself)

• Orange peel

• Angostura bitters

• Muddler (the butt of a wooden spoon works just fine if you don’t have a real muddler)

• Cocktail shaker

Directions:

Peel about a 2” length of orange rind, avoiding as much pith (the white part) as possible and put it at the bottom of your cocktail shaker. Add a few dashes of bitters and then muddle (just bruise up the orange rind a bit to release the oils). Then add:

• 2 ounces tequila

• 1/4 to 1/2 ounce agave nectar

Fill the shaker with ice and stir it up real good, until the shaker is cold to the touch and foggy on the outside. Strain it into a glass with a big ice cube and garnish with a cocktail cherry.

I’ve only become a cocktail guy recently (used to prefer straight spirits, beer, and wine), but these are nice, refreshing, crowd-pleasers that don’t make you feel like you’re going to get diabetes from drinking them. That hint of orange goes wonderfully with aged tequila. Try it out! (No refunds).