Category: Photoshop

I saw three movies in the last four days. The first had a budget of $200. The second cost $100,000. This one has a reported budget of $180 million (but with all the reshoots it’s probably higher). This is proof that there is no correlation between movie cost and movie quality. Is this movie better than Who Killed Captain Alex? From a purely technical standpoint, sure. Is it nine hundred thousand times better? No. And it’s nowhere near as good as Tangerine, let alone being 1800 times better.

This movie seems to exist to tie up dangling threads that most viewers will either have forgotten or never seen. Do you remember the Celestial Island created when the Eternals stopped a cosmic egg at the center of the Earth from fully developing? Or when Hulk blood dripped into a guy’s head? Or even when the Falcon became Captain America after having an adventure with Bucky? I man, I do, but I’m enough of a nerd to have read the original comics. (Side question for nerds: Why do they call it Celestial Island? Did someone tell them that the big creature was called a Celestial?)

Also fun: the movie is built like a mystery, but what should have been a big reveal at the end of the film is spoiled by every single piece of advertising. Good job, marketing team! Harrison Ford applauds your out of the box thinking.

Poster Time!

My original plan was to make this into a romance like The Notebook, but then the original of this popped up and it was too simple to resist.

Silents Synced takes silent films and pairs them with more current music. It’s not a new idea: Giorgio Moroder did it 40 years ago with Metropolis. The main difference is that Moroder made new songs just for the movie. These use existing songs that have little or nothing to do with the films. They also include special effects that draw attention toward themselves and away from the movies. The audience applauded at the end, so I guess this works for people, but I’d rather watch a clean print with music created to enhance the story instead of just playing in the background. A modern score created and performed specifically for the film by a group like R.E.M. sounds pretty darn cool. Until that happens, I’d say watch the originals. You can find them for free all over the place.

Since the movie is about a guy who wants to be a detective, I used the poster for a movie about a different detective as inspiration for this poster. I barely had to change the story description.

I’m about to make some silly nit-picky complaints, but this is a good movie with strong performances from everyone in the family, and it’s worth investing two and three quarter hours to watch. Soheila Golestani is particularly strong as a woman trying to do the right thing while protecting her family.

That being said, here comes the nitpicking! There’s a bit of mild spoiling below:

If Anton Chekhov watched the first scene he’d jump up and yell “Hey! I know at least one thing that’s going to happen at the end!”

The ages of the actors playing the kids are a little hinky. There’s a moment where the mother says one of the daughters is going through puberty, and I thought “wait- how old is she supposed to be/” I looked up the actress afterward, and she’s 32. She doesn’t look ancient, but she sure doesn’t look like a kid. Then again, this movie was shot in secret and everyone had to flee the country after it was done to avoid getting arrested, so I guess they were lucky to find good actress of any age willing to live in exile to tell this story.

Also: is it bad that a chase scene in this very serious movie reminded me of Scooby Doo?

You know what this movie needs? A silly poster!

If you can figure out the poster I’m copying, you can probably figure out why I picked it. Or you could save some effort and just read the alt text.

This movie came out in the middle of COVID. I started to watch it at home, got about five minutes in, and turned it off. It wasn’t for me.

Then Alonso Duralde from Maximum Film was excited that there was going to be a screening in an actual theater, so I decided to give it another shot.

I discovered the movie isn’t for me if I sit alone and watch it on my computer, but is much more for me in a crowd of BASGTVDM superfans. It’s wild and silly and a bunch of fun. I’m glad I found the right crowd to watch it with. Thanks, Alonso!

And as a bonus, a pretty damn good fake poster:

This movie is about the first play performed in a video game world, and it’s all in-game recordings. During COVID lockdown in England, two actors stumble across a giant outdoor stage and are inspired to mount an in-game production of Hamlet. I’ve never played the game, but I knew that it builds its cities based on real world locations. I was amused when I saw that the stage they found was modeled on the Hollywood Bowl, which is just a few miles from my home.

There are some scenes that were clearly recreated to allow for some more nuanced acting, but most of the movie seems to be captures of actual rehearsals and performances. It’s a pretty fun spin on the “Let’s Put On A Show” movie.

The Grand Movie Poster

My silly poster project has caused me some surprising stress about the movies I choose to see. “That looks interesting, but I don’t know how I’ll spoof the poster.” My current plan: just watch the damn movies and worry about the poster after.

This was my best idea for this movie. Does it work? Not really. It’s hard to find a GTA screenshot using one point perspective.

Hard Truths

After we saw this, my spouse said I should call this section “Mike Leigh needs a hug.”

Some of the audience seemed to think this movie was a comedy, but it didn’t feel like one to me. Pansy says some clever things, but every word is soaked with anger and pain. She gets no relief from her caustic behavior.

A strong movie, but holy cow it was painful to watch. You know what it needs? A silly poster.

Hundreds of Beavers

HE TRIES TO CATCH BEAVERS BUT HE LOSES HIS CLOTHES AND GETS POOP ON HIS HEAD! AND THERE’S A GUY IN A HORSE SUIT!

I love this movie.

After Hard Truths I needed something silly and fun, and Hundreds of Beavers definitely qualifies. It didn’t trigger the crazy gut laughs like when I saw it the first time, but I re-watched by myself on my computer instead of in a crowded theater so that’s not surprising. I wish I could show it to my classes so they can see that great movies don’t require huge budgets, but it’s just a little too racy for me to risk playing it for middle schoolers.

This movie doesn’t need me to make a spoof poster for it- there are some great ones out there. Seriously, look at the official Instagram feed. But I have a mission and I’m sticking with it.

The buzz about this movie was stuff like “Pamela Anderson’s greatest performance! Incredible!” That sounds great until you remember that she’s never been known as a great actress. I don’t mean to sell her short- there are some scenes where she is absolutely riveting- but they are surrounded by acting that ranges from “okay” to “bewildering.” Jamie Lee Curtis is strong, as she always is when not terribly miscast and slogging through dreck. But my favorite performance was from Dave Bautista, who gets to play small and subtle. I’m really glad he’s been able to somehow avoid always being cast as “Large Angry Fighting Person.”

And now some (very) slightly sad news!

I started making fake posters this year so I could use them as replacements on Letterboxd, but the site where they draw posters from is cracking down on fan art, which means this is the last one you’ll see on Letterboxd (and it will probably disappear from there). The good news: you’ll still see them here! Another great reason to visit my blog!