This Week In Movie Posters, September 18th

Peter Dinklage is a sad, grizzled tugboat captain looking for love in this week's most intriguing movie poster.

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.

We begin this week with a poster for A Haunting in Venice, which came out this past weekend and received better-than-expected reviews, from what I could tell.

All the other posters made it look like a star-studded murder mystery toplined by Kenneth Branagh’s elaborate moustache, whereas this one is just blatantly pretending it’s a horror film. Feels like a bait and switch to me! That being said, it’s a very cool poster. I’m pretty sure A Haunting In Venice isn’t the movie this poster is advertising, but I think I’d rather see this one. I never noticed the undercurrent of menace in a boisterous Italian singing “Volare” to me on an old-fashioned boat plying a canal, but, much as with clowns, it may have been there all along.

I’d never heard of Dark Harvest poster, and this poster mostly looks like it was generated by AI, but as far as taglines go, “evil stalks” is pretty solid. Who can resist a double meaning like that?? Not me!

Probably the biggest revelation here is that this was based on a novel. That novel?

The novel is set in an unnamed Midwestern hamlet, where each year, all of the young men take part in a yearly ritual in which they hunt a giant pumpkin-headed creature that arises from the corn, known as both "Sawtooth Jack" and the "October Boy.” [Wikipedia]

I love it. It sounds like The Wicker Man meets Heathers. (*snorts line of cocaine the size of a magic marker*)

(cocaine jokes aside I am genuinely intrigued here)

I loved the first Aquaman, which basically just reimagined the character as Jason Momoa and threw in an octopus playing the drums for good measure. This latest poster feels more like the wave planet from Interstellar, but is anyone else seeing the trident as the male symbol? It’s shaped like an arrow and it’s even pointing the same direction! I always love a subtle boner motif but mostly I’m just hoping for more octopi playing drums.

I can’t tell you how much I love a poster in which the faces are actually lined up with the names. You have to read this feature every week to know what a rare treat that is. All they had to do to make this poster really sing was not make it look like the character backgrounds were removed with an iPhone. Alas.

According to the tagline this involves an art dealer, a hitman, and a baker. Who do you think is what? Samuel L. Jackson’s clothes make him feel like the obvious choice for art dealer, and Joe Mangienello is sure scowling like a hit man, which I guess would make Uma Thurman the baker. She definitely doesn’t look like a baker though. Way too much layered hair and dangly accessories. You don’t want those around when you’re baking! If this was your baker you’d probably find a long ass hair in your croissant and bite into a bracelet charm.

They’re really going for it with that HULUWEEN font, aren’t they? I guess the whole poster is like that. It makes me think of Malignant, which is always a fun time.

This poster for She Came To Me looks like it’s one of those pictures you fold to mean different things. Just fold the outer sides back and boom, it’s a poster for a movie about a sad, grizzled Peter Dinklage on a tugboat. Me and all the dads who love books about ships will be thrilled about that. And then if you just refold those sides so that they stick out and fold in the center, now it’s a movie two beautiful strong women looking for love and fulfillment in the big city. Moms love that stuff.

The only problem with that is that the sad grizzled tugboat movie would still say “Marisa Tomei” on top, and that’s why you line up the faces with the damned names.

Interesting Dolby poster here for the Expend-4-Bulls (hey, man, if I wanted to expend four bulls I’d call your mom, am I right?). Most of the posters for this one have sold the massive roster of action legends, from Dolph Lundgren to Tony Jaa, but this one cuts it down to just Stallone and Statham. Interesting.

I don’t think that’s either Statham or Stallone’s hand, but as a veteran Stallone watcher, I would bet my whole savings account that he actually owns that ring.

The dirty south? Come on, you can’t tell me that girl’s not Canadian.

Also, isn’t the south warm? Every one seems like they’re overdressed. Then again maybe the layers are meant to shield them from all the dirt.

Sheesh, how many of these The Creator posters are they going to make? Fine, I’ll see it. You had me at Ken Watanabe scowling. No one can scowl like Ken Watanabe.

I know only a film critic would probably focus on this, but there’s no way those pull quotes weren’t coached. I’ve been writing movie reviews for 15-plus years and I don’t think I’ve ever described a movie in the format of “Adjective! The movie things in this movie are adjective emotion! Adverbly adjective!”

“Shaky Shivers” is a hell of a title. Hell of a poster all the way around, really.

Two young women find themselves at an abandoned camp in the woods with a book of magical spells surrounded by classic monsters in this comedic send up of '80s horror films. [IMDB]

Eh? Oh well, we’ll always have the poster.

Here we have the other poster for The Kill Room, which looks like it’s selling a completely different movie than the other poster. Is “the city like another character” in this one? Also, SPARKS!

Also, I know I keep saying this, but it’s disturbing how much Joe Mangienello looks like Elijah Wood in these.

This latest poster for The Marvels (which is a movie, I had to check) looks like the successor video to the famous Nicole Kidman AMC pre-roll. I actually think that would be the perfect Brie Larson role.

Here we have the poster for Paramount+’s Pet Sematary: Bloodlines. The Neil DeGrasse Tyson in me wants to pedantically point out how ridiculous it is to put ears on a dog skull. Skulls don’t have ears! Obviously dogs’ ears aren’t made of bone!

It still looks kinda cool though, I admit. Mostly I wish I could just give it a new title. PET SEMATARY 3: A SEMATARY FOR PEOPLE!

You know, I never would’ve bet on the Trolls movie getting a sequel, but this is why I’m not a movie executive.

And finally, the poster for Prime Video’s Totally Killer proves that the TOTALLY RAD commoditization of 80s nostalgia continues apace. I wish there was a time machine that could take us back to 1987. Not in order to relive it, but just to see how far the popular conception of 1987 has diverged from the actual 1987.

I bet it’s a lot. That being said, I was born in that decade which is probably why I can’t help but acknowledge that the poster is pretty cool.

When the infamous "Sweet Sixteen Killer" returns 35 years after his first murder spree to claim another victim, 17-year-old Jamie accidentally travels back in time to 1987, determined to stop the killer before he can start. [IMDB]

Welp, maybe everything I just thought is baked into the plot. Totally rad.

Other Stuff

-Netflix just bought Richard Linklater’s Hitman, starring Glen Powell (Everybody Wants Some, Top Gun 2), for $20 million, in the biggest deal out of TIFF. Some people are unhappy with this, because it’s Netflix.

I’ll never forget my press screening for Roma, which was at Netflix’s studio in LA for some reason even though the movie was going to be streaming. I showed up at the gate and waited for a good 15 minutes while the gate guard and I tried to figure out who was supposed to be in charge of putting the screening invitees on the list to be let in. Finally they figured it out and let me in, and I made my way to the screening room at two minutes past the listed start time. When I opened the door the movie had already started (screenings generally start anywhere from five to 25 minutes after their listed start time), apparently right on the dot. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness inside, I looked around and realized that this screening had only one other attendee. This guy (who I didn’t recognize) fell asleep about 20 minutes into the movie (which I did enjoy). All of which is to say that in the past, some movie people have found Netflix’s commitment to actually promoting the big films they buy a little lacking. On the other hand, it’s very convenient to be able to watch a great movie from your home theater. This is the basic dilemma of modern media in a nutshell.

-Our first episode of season four of Pod Yourself The Wire, with guest Pete Blackburn is now up on the Pod Yourself A Gun free feed (see, Pod Yourself The Wire is actually the latest season of Pod Yourself A Gun…). Definitely subscribe to that, and you can also become a Patron at Patreon.com/Frotcast to listen early and ad-free.