SUBMITTED BY Fred Hill
June 27, 2001 — Well school is out and the grades are coming home, not only for
students but for movies as well. Entertainment Weekly not looked at
these movies as a whole, mainly because some are not out yet, but
they have looked at what is out: posters. They broke them down into
categories and here are the results. Thanks Squrik for the
grades.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, and movies go by at 24
frames per second, then...carry the two Oh, we can't do the math, but
we do know a movie poster makes a crucial first impression of a film.
This season, some one-sheets lure us drone-like to the multiplex, but
others should have gone back to the proverbial drawing board. Here's
our semiannual critique of poster come-ons...
FACE THE NATION
It doesn't matter how much you paid for big stars--simply
tossing their marquee mugs on a poster isn't enough to cause a
stampede. For the high-action Swordfish, suiting up John Travolta,
Halle Berry, and Co. in their steppin'-out clothes and posing them
stiffly with a laptop in someone's basement doesn't exactly crank an
"extreme" vibe. The thoroughly bland art for The Score not only
renders the sunglassed Edward Norton unrecognizable (is it Norton or
a young Harvey Keitel?), but the dangling man on the right makes the
film look less like a heist caper than a spelunking romp. As for
Captain Corelli's Mandolin's poster, all we can take away is that
we're dealing with moony-eyed Nicolas Cage, as opposed to car-chase
Cage. The generic embrace and portentous approaching WWII warplanes
give no hint of the plot, serving only to induce an instant bout of
post-traumatic Pearl Harbor disorder. America's Sweethearts more
effectively hints at its showbiz love triangle with the
red-carpet-ready Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack posed like
they're part of a cardboard lobby stand. No one would be fooled into
thinking they're the real couple, though: Anyone with a working
knowledge of Julia Roberts' oeuvre will know how this turns
out.
SWORDFISH C
THE SCORE D
CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN D+
AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS B |
