It’s the end of the month, so it is time to reflect, relax and rewind our way back through the one-sheets, banners, promotional artwork and posters released in the last calendar month, highlighting some of the ones we though were noteworthy. It’s a little section we like to call Best Posters.
Let us know in the comments below if we’ve missed your favourite, we got it wrong, or better yet, if we got it very right. Now to kick things off a little differently.
BABY DRIVER (Japan)
Edgar Wright’s new film has the web swooning with glee. While we felt that that it didn’t consistently live up to its own style, this Japanese poster is minimalist style defined. Part of a series (with another featuring the iconic iPod), this poster is style defined. Speaking of high-speed vehicles…
CARS 3
…here’s more cars! We weren’t the biggest fans of the third film in the cars franchise (we do like movies, we promise!), but we have to admit that this poster is like the dark nightmare in the wastelands version of Cars. The kind where we find out that the vehicles inherited the Earth after devouring the humans in an orgy of blood as they drag down the fury road towards the lightning scattered skyline. Now that is a movie we want to see.
CASTLEVANIA (Netflix)
The highly anticipated new Netflix series, written by the legendary Warren Ellis, comes with a sweepingly illustrated poster. Now we just want to know why the guy at the top is so angry. Is it because he doesn’t have a body? Or does he want a whip of his own? We’ll find out July 7.
FOOTNOTES – Designer: Matt Frost
Paul Calori and Kostia Testut’s musical comedy was inspired by the films of Jacques Demy and Stanley Donen. Matt Frost’s one-sheet for the US release of this French film beautifully captures the spirit of those classics. Plus, we love Frost’s attitude to art: “I’ll use any means necessary to produce a key image, photography, illustration, spray paint, burn things, break things, get a goat, get a gun, or get messy in one way or another. I love to go to the hardware store.”
FERDINAND – Designers: Proof
The classic story by Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson was previously adapted by Walt Disney in 1938 as the Ferdinand the Bull short. Proof’s alternative poster for the Blue Sky animation recalls the many illustrated promos for Disney shorts of the 1930s and 1940s. We just really want to see this film.
THE MONSTER (Short film)
Short films are a rarity on this list, mostly because they are harder to keep track of. Damien Kazan’s already onto a winning design that is better than most features. Except the other awesome ones in this column.
OKJA (Korea)
OKJA is currently the most expensive Korean language film ever made, and perhaps only Netflix would give Korean director Bong Joon-ho $50 million to make a primarily subtitled film about a giant pig. This poster is the antithesis of that expense, stripping the titles and the titular pig back to its barest pink bits.
SAFE PLACE
This startlingly minimalist piece might tell us that “You’re not safe here,” but simple style still has a home. The isolation of the three colours creates the seemingly contradictory state of claustrophobic isolation, which is really at the heart of all horror films.
STAR TREK: DISCOVERY – Designers: BPG
Star Trek is returning to our small screens for the first time since 2005, and because we’re now in the future it will be on the streaming services CBS All Access and Netflix. The simple warp trail and new ship is all this poster needs to get us excited about the future again.
SWISS ARMY MAN – Designer: Oliver Barrett
From the Mondo blog: “I loved the film’s unabashedly wild, ‘what the fuck?’ approach to tackling themes of isolation, shame, and loneliness. So, I had to strive to distill that approach into a single image that echoes the idea of being saved from that isolation, wrapped in a goofy fart joke.”
WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES
This ‘viral’ style poster is a little bit Banksy. If this is the graffiti that exists in the Planet of the Apes reality, that would explain why the apes on our Earth are spray-painting hippies on the wall.
WONDER – Designers: LA
If you know nothing else about the new film from Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) then know this: Daisy IS The Dog.
