This Week In Movie Posters September 5th

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.

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Fall film festival season (the prelude to Awards Season) basically started this past week, and thanks to the writers and actors strikes, there are very few stars doing press, but still lots of films. It’s kind of nice, actually! (Not that I won’t miss the occasional nugget of celeb absurdity that accompanies them, like Chris Pine disassociating while Harry Styles just strings words together at random).

Anyway, what was my point? Oh yeah, lots of movies. Lots of movies means lots of posters, so this week’s This Week In Movie posters is even longer than usual. This week’s has movies from Scorsese, Yorgos Lanthimos, Emerald Fennell, Errol Morris — we’re lousy with auteurs! Enjoy.

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Imogen Poots! I’ve missed her. She was convincingly American in Green Room, which is a trick not many English people can pull off. Also, her name sounds like an Instagram account for queef enthusiasts.

Aaaanyway, here she is in the poster for Baltimore, which is named not for the protagonist, but for the city in which the protagonist’s infamous deeds took place. Poots plays Rose Dugdale, which is almost as fun to say as Imogen Poots. “Rose Dugdale” is the rough aural Irish equivalent of “Imogen Poots.”

Anyway, Baltimore concerns... “…an heiress turned Marxist who steals several classic paintings in order to earn enough ransom for the release of imprisoned IRA members.” [via Indiewire]

Sounds pretty cool, though a big part of me is disappointed that Imogen Poots won’t be attempting a Bawlmer accent in it. Pro tip: Do NOT imagine one of the tertiary characters in The Wire pronouncing the name “Imogen Poots.”

The road to redemption is twisted indeed! One day you’re getting caught on tape yelling at your girlfriend that she deserves to be raped and the next day you’re on a poster with “Academy Award Winner” written next to your name.

(Remember Mel Gibson winning an Academy Award? it was for Braveheart, and damn it if the man didn’t deserve it).

Anyway, I’m not going to look up what this is about. I’m just going to assume it’s about how ladies can’t be trusted with guns.

Those glowing lines? Linear sparks, I assume. (Long-time This Week In Movie Posters readers know that there’s nothing action movie poster designers love more than gratuitous sparks).

Really enjoying this design for the Rustin poster, for Netflix. That’s how you use negative space, baby!

In case you’re wondering, it’s a biopic about civil rights leader Bayard Rustin (who took a more behind-the-scenes role in the civil rights movement on account of being openly gay). It’s directed by George C. Wolfe* (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and adapted by Dustin Lance Black (Milk) with Rustin played by Colman Domingo. Colman Domingo is one of those actors who always makes me happy. The man has a voice like crushed velvet. And as I’ve said, an actor’s number one job is being a cool good-looking guy you’d want to be friends with (or gal).

*I heard “C. Wolfe” was your mom’s nickname in high school.

Here’s a fun poster for Saw X, which I almost certainly am not going to see. Cool poster though. It definitely makes it easier on the designer when the movie’s appeal doesn’t rest on which stars are in it. You can just kind of spitball like this. That being said, I’m pretty sure this isn’t 100% medically accurate.

Here’s the poster for Saltburn, which I’m pretty sure gets to sock me in the shoulder now for reading the tagline off the Euphoria guy’s crotch. Damn it, did my older cousins design this? Well done.

Here’s one of a few character posters for Five Nights At Freddy’s, which is, as you may have surmised, a horror movie about a guy who has to stay the night at an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese-esque restaurant. The poster seems to convey that well, though it also kind of looks like a new character for Mystery Science Theater 3000. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

NYAD! That’s the protagonist’s name, by the way, Diana Nyad. Apparently she’s a famous long-distance swimmer. “Nyad” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? Certainly not the way, say, “Rustin” does. Maybe they should’ve taken a cue from Baltimore (about Rose Dugdale, remember) and named it after the setting instead. “Nyad” makes for a hard cheer. She sounds like she’s going to sabotage my pizza delivery.

Here’s another poster for Saltburn (don’t ask me why Substack’s image-adding system separated them). This one isn’t playing crotch tricks, just doing art with the reflections. It fits with the trailer, which had at least three shots involving mirrors.

“Because of my multiple personality theme, I've chosen the motif of broken mirrors to show my protagonist's fragmented self. Bob says an Image System greatly increases the complexity of an aesthetic emotion.” -Donald Kaufman in Adaptation.

That’s right, Meg Ryan is back, baby! She’s directing a rom-com! I’m so excited about this news that I’m going to overlook the mismatched faces and names in this poster. Snowflakes are to lady movie posters what sparks are to dude movie posters. Are you excited yet?? The city is like another character!

I think those are actually flakes of pumpkin spice. Women be shoppin!

Here’s a poster for All Of Us Strangers, featuring the characters separated by the walls of their apartments. They’re so close, but still separated. Because all of them are strangers, get it? It’s really a good thing that I’m here to explain art to you.

Here’s the poster for Saturn Bowling, whose title is presumably a riff on Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son.” (See? Liberal arts education coming in clutch yet again). The design is smart but the font and background still make it seem low budget. A shame, because this is one of the few pull quotes that actually describes the movie and adds something to the poster. Usually they’re just random adjectives and interchangeable superlatives, like “Brilliant” and “Psychologically taut.”

“Shows the other side of a patriarchal society uncovering its grotesque underbelly” is certainly a lot more evocative than the usual drivel. That being said, if I wanted someone to uncover their grotesque underbelly I’d call your mom.

I don’t usually dig “face inside silhouette” style posters, but this poster for The Equalizer 3 makes me feel like Denzel Washington is joining Black Flag. That’s such a wonderful mental image in and of itself that I’ve no choice but to support it.

I’m surprised this is the first Five Nights At Freddy’s poster to put Blumhouse above the title. Probably should’ve led with that. I like the idea here as well, though I feel like they could’ve done better than “Can you survive” for a tagline. How are you going to give us that specific a premise and then stick it with that vague and interchangeable a tagline? No pizza pun? C’mon, man!

Here’s a very cool poster for The Nun II, which, again, I almost certainly will not see. Love this design though. This is one of the few sequels that I really wish had a subtitle. The Nun II: Nun II Pleased. Reminds me of Mitch Hedberg’s joke about Easy Cheese. You made two feature-length films about a scary nun, let’s not act like you’re above a pun title.

Get it? She’s a fashion designer and she fashion designed all those people. I wish someone would fashion design *me*. Mostly I just move stuff around until I can look at myself without puking.

Here’s a new poster for the latest Aardman claymation sequel to Chicken Run. Hard not to love, those Aardman animations. I’m hung up on the “pop sucker” though. Is that a fake brand they invented for the movie or is it one of those bizarre names British people have for everyday things? Did you know British people call “slingshots” “catapults?” This is why we had to have a revolution.

Oh shit, Leonardo DiCaprio vs. Robert De Niro, WHO WILL WIN DE POUTING CONTEST???

This looks like a movie where neither guy wants to eat their vegetables.

Here’s the latest poster for Poor Things, starring Emma Stone in her famous Puking Dress.

Great poster, no notes. This is my “Shut Up And Take My Money” of the week.

And here we have the *other* poster for Killers Of The Flower Moon (again, blame the capricious image adding bots for the arbitrary separation). Unlike Poor Things, I’ve actually read the book on which this one is based. Scorsese directing the movie adaptation almost makes a poster irrelevant. We don’t need a hook here, just periodic reminders that it exists.

That’s Lily Gladstone, who’s already getting awards buzz for her performance as Mollie Burkhardt. Here it looks like she’s praying to God to let her stay 24 and a half forever.

Pretty wild that Kelsey Grammer and JB Smoove are in a new show and the focal point of the poster is… Beck Bennett? Nothing against Beck Bennett, it’s just that he has one of those faces destined to be confused for at least five other guys.

My first week in LA, Beck Bennett asked me to move tables at a restaurant. I saw the guy who played Noho Hank outside and got excited, because what are the odds that the first celebrity you see in a new city is going to be as cool as Noho Hank? And then I went inside, and Beck Bennett came in and he and Noho Hank chatted each other up and pretty soon Beck Bennett was asking me to move so his party could fit there. Cool story, right?

I know Mercy Road is going to be good, and do you want to know why? SPARKS! Looks like he’s driving towards the rain to extinguish all those sparks. That’s just common sense.

I feel like “Luke Bracey” is the most Australian possible name. Like in America we name our unknown dead “John Doe,” but in Australia they probably call them all “Luke Bracey.”

Here’s the poster for Errol Morris’s latest doc about the author John Le Carré, The Pigeon Tunnel. Morse code! Pigeons! Tunnels! Very cool design. I don’t know to what “pigeon tunnel” refers, and I don’t want to look it up. I’m hoping it’s like “rosebud” where I have to watch in order to find out.

I love Errol Morris, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to see his name again without immediately hearing him honk “The soundtrack of Chipotle?!” from that commercial he did.

I know these movies are for kids and I should just let them have them, but this does not change my basic position that child actors should be illegal. This looks like the family made this at a booth in the mall.

Here’s a brilliant combination of imagery and tagline. What is The Mission about, exactly? I have a general sense, and I almost don’t want to spoil it with specifics. That’s how you poster, baby!