What do you think of when you think of Jean Luc-Godard (1930-2022)?

by Nathaniel R

In the Manhattan apartment that I spent 10 years of my life in, my then-boyfriend and I chose three movie posters framed for the living room. When we were making the choices the requirements were as follows..

1. The poster had to be a color or colors that would go well with both the room and the other 2 posters
2. One of us had to be a mega fan of the movie
3. The other one had to also like the movie enough to have it on the wall.

Despite loving literally hundreds of movies we settled on the posters quickly...

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Year in Review: Best Movie Posters

by Nathaniel R

Movie posters may be an endangered artform since movies are seldom chosen from lobby posters or slapped on DVD covers anymore. Most people see only those interchangeable rectangles of movie star faces deployed by Netflix or Hulu in scroll bars. Nevertheless we still love the way posters at their best can brand or encapsulate a movie, become iconic pieces of art in their own right (rare), or cleverly tease or suggest the kind of experience you'll be having when you watch the movie.

Movie posters are often lazy so we want to cheer the good ones. Some titles that missed the following list but remain noteworthy are:  Benedetta which arranged the text in an invisible crucifix frame, Annette, which memorably placed its romantics underneath a tidal wave, the teasers for The Matrix Resurrection and Black Widow  which went minimalist and flat but impactful, Swan Song and The Eyes of Tammy Faye for the way they presented the main character's face while also obscuring it emotionally, and the graphic whatsthis? boldness of both Titane and Tragedy of Macbeth.

The best movie posters of the year after after the jump...

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Posterized: Sean Penn as director

by Nathaniel R

Dylan and Sean Penn earlier this summer at Cannes.

Former movie star Sean Penn celebrated his 61st birthday just two days ago and now welcomes his sixth directorial effort, Flag Day, into US theaters. Though Penn's name was once intoned with a kind of reverence by fellow actors and critics his film career has been curiously uneventful for a decade now (with his supporting role in The Tree of Life, 2011, his last real prestigious success... and mostly by association at that). One suspects the fading film career is more from a shift in his own interest and priorities given his political activism than a lack of opportunities but it's always hard to know given the fickle nature of Hollywood and stardom in general.

Can Flag Day serve as a kind of jumpstart for a comeback in the next few years? Does he even want that? He has two films (as an actor) in preproduction now, a drama with Dakota Johnson and a drama with Tye Sheridan.  How many of his six directorial efforts have you seen? The posters are after the jump...

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Posterized: Jennifer Hudson

by Nathaniel R

With Respect, the Aretha Franklin biopic, hitting theaters today let's talk Jennifer Hudson's movie career. Well, her TV and Broadway career, too, since she's primarily a singer even when moonlighting as an actress. She's made more movies than you probably think.

How many of her performances have you seen? The posters are after the jump...

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An automatic "yup" for "Nope"

click to see it big if you so desireApologies for two movie poster posts in a row but you know time is; sometimes you have it sometimes you don't. Oscar winning Jordan Peele's third film will be called Nope and star Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun. It arrives in almost exactly a year's time. The supporting cast features Barbie Ferreira (Unpregnant), Brandon Perea (The OA), and Michael Wincott (The Crow).

After his zeitgeist horror hits Get Out and Us, Peele is either sticking with horror for good or he's just working through a trilogy of terror before he tries his very talented hands at some other movie genre. Normally super generic and impossible to search on the internet titles make us shudder, and not in the good horror movie way. But Peele's films have thus far earned their simple titles and somehow made them ultra-memorable moments within the films. So we're hoping the "nope" scene in Nope inspires lots of yaaaaaassss from audiences. 

Questions for the comments

1. On a scale of 1-10 how excited are you for his third effort?

2. Do you think aliens are involved since we're seeing the stars and that cloud obviously ain't no natural cloud?

3. How often do you become absolutely furious remembering that Lupita Nyong'o wasn't even nominated for what should have been an Oscar-winning star turn in Us. Sorry. Maybe that's just... us.