Top 10 Movie Posters of 2009
by Brian Eggert
12/10/2009
In the grand scheme of film criticism, poster art hardly plays a factor in my verdict at all. It doesn’t figure into the assigned star rating; it doesn’t influence over my capacity to enjoy a motion picture. Posters are a marketing tool, plain and simple, though occasionally they’re works of great art. In the early days of Hollywood, posters were primarily paintings, oftentimes wonderfully composed by inexpensive studio artists. Over time, photographs and photoshopping took over; now we’re stuck with the floating head phenomenon. However, every so often something special comes along. Some director actually cares how their film is sold, so they hire a Saul Bass or Drew Struzan to design them a work of art to sell their product. And in some cases, the posters are better than the films themselves.
The below list compiles the best movie posters of 2009. This list was assembled based solely on the artwork on the posters. Choices were not necessarily made based on the quality of the movie, rather the poster’s ability to communicate an entire movie in one distinct image, and do so in a creative and expressive way. There are posters on the list for films that I loved, and posters for films that I didn’t enjoy in the least. What remains constant through them all is their ability to sell their movie in a beautiful or provocative way through a singular image. Enjoy…
10. The House of the Devil 
The little-seen indie horror flick The House of the Devil had better posters than it did a plot. Director Ti West pays tribute to 1980s babysitter horror fare with the poster’s visual style, faded artwork, and corny taglines (“Talk on the phone. Finish your homework. Watch TV. DIE!” and “A total eclipse of your senses.”). The poster to the right even has false creases, since most vintage posters from cheapie studios were folded and mailed to theaters, so as to save on the cost of a tube—that’s a nice detail. Reminiscent of those cheesy slasher favorites from yesteryear, these posters earned second glances, even fooling the occasional moviegoer into believing West’s movie was a bona fide ‘80s horror classic.
9. Precious
This painting, which creates the fanciful illusion of Precious, an inner-city teenage girl who is beaten by the system and her family, avoids detail, composing the figure through a series of simple shapes and flat colors. And yet curiously, there is depth to the work. The brushstrokes are visible, reminding us that this is the constructed fantasy image for Precious—how she sees herself when she needs to escape. This was the second and more attractive image used for Precious; the initial poster was recalled after some suggestive interpretations. It’s a very human image, painted with the gritty class the film conveys.
8. Pandorum
Awesome poster. Dumb movie. All summer long, because of this poster, I looked forward to seeing Pandorum, hoping for a Giger-esque exploration into biomechanical horror. Looking at this image, I still want to see that movie, even if it is suspiciously similar to the videogame Dead Space. Several of the posters in the film’s marketing campaign contained the same fleshy-machine appeal (see Right), promising something Cronenbergian, perhaps. Alas, the result was a mess of mix-n-match genre riffing and sloppy storytelling more concerned with martial arts fight scenes than creeping us out the way the poster does. Maybe the creative art department behind this poster should’ve given the script a rewrite...
7. The Brothers Bloom
The Brothers Bloom suffered from one too many twists, but this limited edition poster suggests the undeniable potential of Rian Johnson’s second movie (following Brick). Drawn in a classicized presentation with comic-book stylization, artist Zach Johnson’s poster is best viewed in a high-resolution pic to see all the detailed ornamentation. Only indie films with a budget like this or Precious (or Antichrist, #3 on this list) have the ability to take risks with a poster and do something truly memorable, making their poster a work of art. If only the movie had been as beautifully composed as this poster.
6. A Serious Man
The simplicity of this image not only captures the film’s tone, but the Coen Brothers’ recurrent low-key irony present throughout the expanse of their work. Encapsulating how the Coens made A Serious Man into a suburban Minnesota-set parallel to the Book of Job, the image is both momentous and petty. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) stands upon his roof, his fists on his hips in a conquering, claim-the-world gesture, despite the triviality of his task to fidget with his TV antenna. Encased in a white border, the way we now see most reprint posters for classic movies, the poster instills a sense of classicism and importance to the film, reflecting its simultaneous allegorical profundity and open-endedness of its interpretation. It’s kind of brilliant.
5. Food, Inc.
A cow stamped with a barcode tells you everything you need to know about Food, Inc., a disturbing and revealing documentary about the food industry’s inhumane and unsafe practices when preparing the nation’s nourishment. Like all powerful imagery, this one is straightforward and simple, reflecting the cattle branding it’s meant to parody. The cow remains an ever-present symbol of food, whereas the barcode a symbol of efficient consumerism; and yet, when combined they become something atrocious. That the poster can say all that has made it one of the year’s most effective visual ads.
4. Inglourious Basterds
What image could better summarize the brutal, unforgiving tone of Quentin Tarantino’s masterwork Inglourious Basterds? There were a series of similar posters for this film; one featured the close up of a gun butt, while another featured a knife through a Nazi swastika. Though the final poster was a boring composite image of the characters, only this one featuring the baseball bat and the German helmet captures the blunt force of the film, acknowledging with playful glee that the Nazis receive some serious whoopin’ in Tarantino’s Leone-esque war film. The image also addresses the therapeutic violence provided by the film, how Tarantino’s subject is ultimately about watching violence in movies and gaining some form of release from the experience—particularly when it comes to his finale.
3. Antichrist
Reminiscent of illumination that you might’ve found in a Medieva book of hours, this Fantastic Fest poster beautifully depicts the thesis behind Lars Von Trier’s pretentious debacle known as Antichrist. This scandal-of-a-film is probably unwatchable for most, turning viewers away through its intentionally graphic sexual and violent content, as warned by the NC-17 rating. However, the poster should do nothing but fascinate. Whereas the other poster images for the film sold only its more shocking aspects, this one tries to explain where Von Trier was coming from—that he sought to represent a world where Satan was in control of Nature. The pseudo-biblical imagery shown here, along with the quote “Nature is Satan’s Church,” makes for an undeniably intriguing image.
2.The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Terry Gilliam’s manic artistry pours out of this British poster for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a film whose over-the-top visuals find a more uniform structure in this single image. Gilliam goes too far with his computerized special effects in the film, but here everything looks joyous and delightful (and most importantly tangible), filled with that old Gilliam energy we remember from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Brazil. Most notable is that the marketing department doesn’t dwell on the presence of star Heath Ledger, and instead uses bizarro-looking model-turned-actress Lily Cole as their centerpiece. Gilliam has too much class to exploit the fact that his film features the last performance by the late Ledger. Instead, this poster does what it should: it sells the wild imagination of its director and the amazing ensemble cast.
1. Thirst
This South Korean poster for director Park Chan-wook’s brilliant horror-romance Thirst was banned shortly after its release. As provocative as the film’s subject, the poster relies on the deceptively simple basics of the plot: A priest becomes a vampire and must resist newfound lusts for blood and sex. The poster shows said priest between the legs of a woman in ecstasy, his face expressing fear and shock, with a hint of pleasure; meanwhile, the woman remains elated. Representing the broad strokes of this complicated film in an image powerful enough to get itself banned, the poster was later reissued without the woman’s legs in the top half, which dismisses the direct implication of a priest’s sexuality (but not really). As challenging as the film, the poster realizes the poetic, confrontational, and thought-provoking nature of Park’s work.
Honorable Mentions:
The Top 5 Worst Posters:
Below are five of 2009’s worst posters. They’re terrible for various reasons. Take Year One, which is merely boring; nothing about two guys in rags standing in front of a blue expanse makes me want to see this movie. With The Invention of Lying, the poster tells you nothing about the movie except who’s in it, and even star Ricky Gervais looks eerily thin-a-lized by the studio’s resident airbrusher. There’s similar trouble with the image for Everybody’s Fine; it Photoshops its actors together, making them look melty and weird for a cheery Christmas scene you’ll never see in this downer-of-a-movie. Furthermore, the movie made a point of underlining that De Niro’s character carried a film-based camera, not a digital. Sometimes the marketing department isn’t shown a movie, they’re just told to sell it; the people behind My Sister’s Keeper seem to think cancer is a pretty fun time. Boy, were they wrong. The worst poster of the year is more disappointing than anything else. For years we’ve been hearing about how James Cameron is going to revolutionize movies with Avatar, but the first poster looks like something that should be riding a unicorn on a 12-year-old girl’s wall. Congratulations, Mr. Cameron. Your movie has revolutionized the lameness of blockbuster poster art.
