5. “De Palma”
BLT communications went back to the source, commissioning veteran poster illustrator Steven Chorney to put his talents to work on this fabulous image for the Jake Paltrow/Noah Baumbach documentary on Brian De Palma. With a layout that manages to cram in references to many of De Palma’s biggest hits, and also suggests the themes of voyeurism that have always characterized his work, all in a style that evokes De Palma’s early ’80s heyday, it’s the perfect summation of the film: a witty, irreverent whistle-stop tour through a fantastically entertaining career.
4. “The Neon Demon”
Unsurprisingly perhaps, considering the Nicolas Winding Refn film looks good enough for almost any still from it to adorn a wall in a frame (and is just as shallow as that sounds), “The Neon Demon” has inspired a plethora of different posters, with almost every territory taking a slightly different tack. Our picks of the crop are the Elle Fanning image above from LA Associates, which dials back on the splashy neon-ness, and the Italian release poster from Vertigo Movie Advertising, which may be a little more cluttered than we’d like, but does indeed turn the maximalist neon aesthetic up to 11.
3. “Moonlight”
Since this is our first year-end feature of 2016, might as well warn you now, you are going to be seeing a lot of Barry Jenkins‘ miraculous “story of a lifetime” — there’s pretty much nothing we do not adore about the film. And that extends to its marketing, with In Sync Plus’ exquisite poster treatment (along with the triptych version) doing a stellar job of simplifying the complicated notion that one life can be portrayed by three different actors — each with a slightly different arc to fulfill — and still feel like a harmonious, and beautiful, whole. We particularly love Chiron’s battle wounds and the earring and glint of grille on Black’s poster.
2. “La La Land”
The wider campaign for Damien Chazelle‘s Oscar-tipped lovely is more straightforward and traditional but the early teaser artwork above, done by LA Associates, is so much more evocative. Riffing on classic jazz album cover design (check the similarities to the piano key execution here, and to the cream and turquoise version here and here), these two images perfectly summon the film’s modern take on the classical musical form, as well as its retro stylings.
1. “Free Fire”
Yet again, a Ben Wheatley movie has made our Best Poster roundup (“A Field in England” and “High-Rise” figured in previous years), and this year his 70s-throwback shoot-em-up has taken the top slot, with this BOND-designed poster that perfectly evokes, well, a 70s-throwback shoot-em-up. That it also does so without overtly ripping off a classic design, and with a sense of surreal wit that feels very Wheatley, is all the more impressive. Of the many images on this list that we’d be happy to have grace our walls, these ones (the character posters are great too) are perhaps the only ones we can see working as T-shirt graphics too, and weirdly, we mean that as a compliment.
Honorable Mentions
It may not have been the most stellar year ever for movie artwork but there were plenty of other designs that caught our eye and were under consideration, including the posters for Robert Greene‘s doc “Kate Plays Christine“; Andrew Neel‘s hazing drama “Goat“; the bad January horror “The Forest“; the very bad Drake Doremus movie “Equals“; the good Don Cheadle Miles Davis biopic “Miles Ahead“; the very good, low-key Julia Hart film “Miss Stevens“; Mira Nair’s solid “Queen of Katwe“; Dan Trachtenberg‘s surprisingly fun “10 Cloverfield Lane“; Dawn Porter’s abortion rights doc “Trapped“; and some horror thing we’d never heard of called “The Void.”
There was also the obvious but still well-done posters for the “Trainspotting” sequel and the murkily mysterious campaign for Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s “Evolution.” There were, furthermore a few great images we came across that we just weren’t sure were ever really used as official posters or were for films that had other artwork much more closely associated with them, such as Shepard Fairey‘s design for “Captain Fantastic”; these natty illustrations for “Now You See Me 2“; this intricate illustration for “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies“; and this striking image for “Deepwater Horizon.” We tried to avoid campaigns based solely on spoofs, but the “Deadpool” romance poster is fun, and the “Keanu” campaign was pretty amusing across the board, as was this “Graduate” rip-off for “Dirty Grandpa.” On the blockbuster front, nothing much has really grabbed us aside from the ‘Guardians’ teaser, not even the perfectly fine but not particularly inspired campaigns for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” And, to address the elephant in the room, while we concede that the various “Suicide Squad” campaigns were distinctive and clearly communicated the nature of the film, unfortunately that nature was “likely to cause violent indigestion” and we just couldn’t bring ourselves to look through them all again. Here they are if you would like to, though, knock yourselves out.
And lastly, a few dishonorable mentions — the “handbags at dawn” expression on this character poster for John Malkovich in “Deepwater Horizon” never fails to amuse us; the poster for “Lion,” which is about Dev Patel‘s character searching for his biological family via Google is a summary lesson in the dangers of po-faced over-literalization; and this “X-Men: Apocalypse” poster caused much consternation for its depiction of male-on-female violence, but should also have caused a furor for being, like the rest of that movie’s campaign, fugly.
Tell us your favorites of the year in the comments below.
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