Glenn’s Monthly Movie Poster Analysis – June

The month of June has offered us plenty of movie posters worth mulling over so let’s take a look and see who comes out on top amongst the animals in love and grown ups in the city.

I Am Love

Sometimes it’s just a fact that from great looking movies great looking posters come. Such is definitely the case with the Italian film I Am Love. The entire film is merely an excuse to frame star Tilda Swinton in gorgeous outfits, sets and locations and the poster does the same. Placing her front and centre and curling the gorgeous typography around her frame makes this poster a captivating stunner.

Animal Kingdom

This Australian crime thriller has a wonderful poster from key art extraordinaire Jeremy Saunders that successfully evokes the air of a crime saga based around a protective and close-knit family. The portrait motif is well done (in fact both of June’s best posters have that in common), filled with shadows and secrets, while the tagline “A Crime Story” is simple and effective. Meanwhile, American audiences get a stale and grungy design made up of aligned floating heads. Lucky them, right?

Get Him to the Greek

Whatever it is about this ubiquitous frat-house comedy design of the film’s male star looking out at his audience with dimwitted innocence it sure seems to work. By now this design idea can’t come off as good as it did with The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up but at least with this poster you know what movie you’re going to get, which is more than I can say for our next poster.

Mother and Child

Something about this movie’s premise proved an impossible concept for poster designers to overcome. Rodrigo Garcia’s film is a study of three women connected by the issue of child adoption, but you wouldn’t know that from by looking at the poster. The Australian design is one audiences have all seen before, with stripes being inhabited by the film’s main actors. At least it looks clean and crisp unlike the international designs, which are all untidy and way too busy.

Grown Ups

I am not a fan of Adam Sandler, I will admit that up front, but there is something so incredibly off-putting about this poster anyway. The idea of watching a movie in which Sandler and his friends act like buffoons like they are on here is not appealing in the slightest. I am a much bigger fan of this alternate design that uses real childhood photos of the film’s stars, which is a nice twist.

Legion

Look, can we discuss Paul Bettany’s “abs” for a moment here? For all the flak that Sex and the City got (below) – and rightfully so – for it’s ridiculous airbrushing, men don’t get away quite so scot free in that arena. Not once have I looked at Bettany and thought he had abs of steel and while I am sure he worked out vigorously for his role as a battle-fighting angel, I think it’s quite obvious to anybody with eyes that these are as fake as those wings sprouting out of his back.

Sex and the City 2

It’s not Sarah Jessica Parker’s fault that the people who designed the posters for this hit sequel went overboard with the Photoshop. Let’s be honest here, nobody thinks Parker’s legs looks like that. No 45-year-old, man or woman, has skin that flawless. It’s a shame that a franchise that prides itself on being about women, for women, have to go and put forth this ridiculous image.

Join us again next month when we take a look at Twilight: Eclipse, The Karate Kid and Knight and Day.

Images 1,2,3,4,5,6,7