Category: movies

  • Retro Streaming Movie Adventures: Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

    Seita and Setsuko looking worried with fire behind them in Grave of the Fireflies.
    Seita and Setsuko facing each other and looking at something between them below the bottom of the image in Grave of the Fireflies.

    Boy, Studio Ghibli sure is good at crushing hearts.

    I spent way to long faking the logo for this fake poster, and it’s still not quite right.

    A poster for Grave of the Fireflies mimicking the poster for Ghost World.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Retro Streaming Movie Adventures: Nowhere (1997)

    The alien from Nowhere.
    James Duvall in Nowhere.

    There’s a pretty good chance I would have liked this when it came out, and there are some parts that work for me, but Old Man Me spent most of the movie thinking two things: “Gosh, they sure are trying hard to be edgy” and “James Duval has anti-charisma in this.”

    Some cool set designs, though.

    I struggled to find a poster to parody for this, and I don’t think it really works.

    A poster for Nowhere mimicking the poster for Mean Girls.
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  • Movie (no) Pass Adventures: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

    Camille Rutherford in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
    Movie bar for Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Pablo Pauly and Camille Rutherford look at each other. Behind them is greenery.

    So there’s this woman who just can’t find romance in her life. There’s a guy who’s her best friend, but they’ve never quite become a couple. Then an opportunity comes up to do something she’s always dreamed of, but there’s this awful (but handsome) guy there. You will never guess what happens next!

    Other than some nudity and frank sex talk that probably wouldn’t happen in an American version, this movie is a lifetime rom-com with some subtitles. Everyone is charming and fun to watch, but it’s total fluff.

    For today’s poster I went with the obvious dumb pun.

    A poster for Jane Austen Wrecked My Life mimicking the poster for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
    Yeah, baby!
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  • Movie Pass Adventures: Pavements

    Two versions of Pavement: the original band and the biopic version.
    Pavements movie bar.

    The best possible Pavement movie. A documentary of the band, but also of a jukebox musical about the band, and also about the reunion tour, and also about a Pavement museum, and ALSO a parody of traditional Bohemian Rhapsody style biopics, and ALSO a documentary about making the biopic. Everything is jumbled together, and it’s often hard to know what’s real. It’s refreshing to see a band movie that never pretends to be accurate.

    Today’s fake poster was pretty obvious once I found a picture of the band standing like they were in a lineup.

    A fake poster for Pavements mimicking the poster for The Usual Suspects.
    As a Blank Check fan, I had to add Griffin to the poster.
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  • Retro Movie Adventures: Dogma (1999) (25th Anniversary release)

    Mat Damon and Ben Affleck in Dogma.
    The cast of Dogma looking serious.

    I’m glad this movie was as good as I remembered it. Serious topics buried in New Jersey stoner humor; it’s Kevin Smith at his peak.

    Today’s fake poster is a spiritual successor to the one for Frida (but that one looks better).

    A poster for Dogama mimicking the poster for Dog Man
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  • San Francisco Movie Pass Adventures: The Phoenician Scheme and The Life of Chuck

    The Phoenician Scheme

    Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston on The Phoenician Scheme. They are rendered in muted cyans and oranges
    movie bar for The Phoenician Scheme

    Wes Anderson certainly has a style, doesn’t he?

    My fake poster for this is pretty weak, but I enjoyed trying to push Anderson’s color grading into superhero territory.

    A poster for The Phoenician Scheme poorly mimicking the poster for Deadpool

    The Life of Chuck

    Tom Hiddleston as Chuck, smiling and wearing glasses
    movie bar for The Life of Chuck

    This is more like three related short films than a single movie. Some of it works well, and some of it is trying far too hard to look like deep wisdom. But that’s also how Stephen King writes, so that makes sense.

    This fake poster also isn’t particularly great, but I thought the tagline at the top was pretty funny.

    A poster for The Life of Chuck poorly mimicking the poster for The Secret Life of Pets
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  • Streaming Slightly Older Movie Adventures: MacGruber (2010)

    Stylized image of MacGruber on a colorful fake LEGO background for some reason.
    MacGruber & Vicki in MacGruber

    Would Ethan Hunt ever put celery in his butt as a distraction? I think not!

    Today’s source poster is about as unrelated to this movie as it could be.

    A poster for MacGruber mimicking the poster for High Fidelity.
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  • Movie (no) Pass Adventures: Caught by the Tides

    Tao Zhao smiling in Caught by the Tides. She is rendered in simplified shapes of orange, red, green, and black.
    Tao Zhao, arms above head, wearing sunglasses, looking to the right. Part of her face and arms are visible.

    I imagine Jia Zhangke in 2014 watching Boyhood and thinking “I like the idea of a movie shot over decades with the same actors. I’d like to do it with my favorite actress (who is also my wife), but I want to start with her twenty years ago. Maybe I’ll recycle old footage of her I shot for other movies. And I’ll throw in some random experimental videos I shot along the way.” No one should be able to make that work, but Jia somehow pulls it off.

    Today’s poster is about getting caught. I didn’t have the right pictures of the cast to make it work, but I decided they were blurry enough to fake with substitutes. Please pretend they look vaguely like the real characters.

    A poster for Caught by the Tides mimicking the poster for Catch Me If You Can.
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  • Streaming Movie Adventures: Mission Impossible: Fallout

    An impressionistic rendering of Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt hanging onto the side of a cliff.
    The top half of an image of Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle toward the camera.

    I’m not sure why the Mission: Impossible movies don’t do much for me. Yeah, they’re preposterous and predictable, but so is pretty much every superhero movie and I generally like those. I don’t know if it’s the direction or the stars, but they just feel soulless.

    For today’s fake poster I went with the opposite of Impossible: Easy.

    A poster for Mission impossible: Fallout mimicking the poster for Easy Rider
    …or is the opposite of impossible “unavoidable?” Whatever… close enough.
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  • Movie Pass Adventures: Sister Midnight

    Uma (Radhike Apte) looking into the camera while holding her hair up with her right hand. She is rendered in shades of blue. The background is shades of deep orange and red.
    The faces of two people (Radhika Apte and Subhash Chandra) in an elevator in Sister Midnight.

    I went into this movie knowing almost nothing about it, and I’m glad I did. Afterward I remembered seeing a promotional picture and thinking it wasn’t for me, and I’m glad I forgot about that as well. It had a lot of clever and unexpected turns. Plus, I learned you can make food that pleases men by cutting it into big dumb chunks!

    Rejected ideas for today’s poster included Sister Act, Midnight Run and Midnight Express. I ended up going with an antonym. If someone was paying me to make these I would have spent more time getting the colors right, but at least I matched the fonts!

    A poster for Sister Midnight mimicking the poster for O Brother, Where Art Thou?
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