Top 5 Movie Posters | Archive

19:12Adam Kempenaar:Well, we certainly will put up those links in our show notes. And we encourage our listeners to check you out and your show, samsmith.net. That is S-A-M-S-M-Y-T-H dot net. And of course, theposterboys.tumblr.com or just do a search for The Poster Boys in iTunes. Sam, thank you again. Thanks so much, guys. See ya. Music there from Bernard Herrmann's Great Score for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Music that should evoke images of a woman's face in close-up or unblinking eyes and dizzying spirals. The film's memorable opening title sequence was designed by Saul Bass. He designed the poster as well. It's a poster, Josh, that I think we both would have been inclined to include in our top five favorite movie posters of all time.

19:58Adam Kempenaar:But alas, it's in the film spotting pantheon.

20:00Josh Larsen:It's one of those hanging in my house. It is. It's one of those three.

20:03Adam Kempenaar:It is. Yeah. Okay. Well, I want to hear what the other two are. That was one of the questions I had for you to help set this up if you're ready to admit those on air, because I have a list of my own. Oh, okay. Yeah.

20:12Josh Larsen:Well, one of them's on my list, so I'm not going to say that one now. The one that didn't make my list in addition to Vertigo because of the Pantheon is Pinocchio, actually. And it's a smaller print of it. It's not the huge size movie poster, but really evokes the eeriness of that supposed family film.

20:29Adam Kempenaar:Well, before we get to the other question I want to pose to you, we'll mention that other films with great movie posters that are in the film spotting Pantheon include Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars A New Hope, Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, singing in the rain, The Godfather, I think Raging Bull probably belongs in the conversation, Casablanca, Chinatown. We could go on and on. I don't know if there are going to be enough good choices left, Josh, but of course there are because we're choosing from every movie ever made to form this list. And behind the scenes a little bit, you didn't really fight it.

20:59Adam Kempenaar:That would be putting it too strong, but you seemed a little bit hesitant about it. Maybe it's because we're so used to talking about performances and direction and movies in general and not so much things like art, the artwork that we don't really have much of a grasp on. Neither of us are really capable when it comes to drawing or painting or sculpting or doing anything like that. So it's a little bit out of our realm. But by the time you were done forming your list, did you feel better about it? Were you glad that you went on this journey, so to speak, with this topic?

21:30Josh Larsen:Yeah. I mean, my main concern was just wanting to do justice to the art because it's not something I've explored too deeply yet, have always appreciated. That's why I have posters hanging in my house. But yeah, I feel better about it because I relied on a lot of experts, including Sam Smith. So that helped a little bit. And also I thought, you know, part of this, as with any list we do, needs to be personal, my personal favorites. And it did cause me to think a little bit more deeply about, okay, given what the experts say, given what has personally appealed to me, how do I think about what a movie poster does well?

22:06Josh Larsen:And it came to mind that maybe it's similar to how I think about film adaptations of novels that I love. So I wanted these to be free to be their own work of art, to stand on their own. But ideally, maybe they don't have to do this, but ideally somehow they're still evocative of the original art that inspired them. If it manages to pull those both off, then they made this list.

22:26Adam Kempenaar:Okay. So I'm going to jump in here because it turns out then we had a very similar mindset as we made our picks for this top five, because I wanted to initially and I did focus on the poster itself separate from the movie it had to catch my eye as a piece of art undo itself and I wasn't just picking my favorite movies that also have great posters but then I did want to consider it in relation to the film and I hadn't really thought of it as almost like an adaptation but is it imparting information is it imparting something essential about the movie perhaps even literal in relation to the movie but more importantly is it expressing something essential.

23:01Adam Kempenaar:So that gets to your use of the word evocative, whether it's a tone or mood. Literal is marketing. What you're talking about is art. Yeah, exactly. Highlighting, maybe even a theme of the movie, something that does make it stand on its own, but also feels like you almost can't remove it from the thing that inspired it. Are we on the same page? We are.

23:19Josh Larsen:Okay, you're number five. My number five, well, one of the experts I leaned on was Stanley O. He's the gallery manager for New York City's Poster Tati. It's a great source for buying movie posters of all sorts of kinds. I got to know them because they're one of the sponsors for my review site. And Stanley named one that actually also came to mind for me right away when I started thinking about this topic. It's on Sam Smith's list as well. Rosemary's Baby. That's where I definitely knew I had to go. This is the one that's against a foggy green backdrop, the ghostly profile of Mia Farrow's face looking up, and that silhouette of the tiny baby carriage that superimposed over Not until I really sat and studied this for a little bit did I realize maybe it strikes most people right away, but it's positioned in a line so it could almost be her teardrop right where it is on the poster itself.

24:05Josh Larsen:So here's what Stanley said about it. One of my favorite one-sheet designs. Love the use of space and the understated type. There's some disagreement in the community as to attribution. The design is most likely the result of collaboration. He credits Steve Frankfurt and Philip Gibbs. The understated type, that's a big part of it for me. I love clean design in general. And this is all about sublimating the busy details on this poster, which in this case would mostly be the credits and just leaving us with this stark, powerful, insidious image.

24:35Adam Kempenaar:Well, it turns out we're really on the same page. So on the same page that all three of us, it's a Rosemary's Baby trifecta. You had it too, huh? Put that in our top five. And no, we did not plan that ahead of time. and it turns out I tried to avoid this, Josh. I don't know about you, but did you recognize just how many great horror movie options there are for this list? I think Tasha even said something about that at the end of last week's show when you were setting up the list.

25:01Josh Larsen:I've got three films on my list could be classified as horror.

25:04Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, I have three or four that maybe could fit into that category as well. Again, not planned, certainly not by design, but there is something about a good horror movie that can make for a really good evocative movie poster. And despite all those great horror movie options and then all those options that exist beyond the horror genre, somehow we landed on Rosemary's Baby. And I don't think it's an accident. For me, the source that was invaluable was one Sam recommended, Adrian Curry. He does the movie poster of the week Tumblr and highlights so many great things. And there were a bunch of pieces of art.

25:38Adam Kempenaar:I'm going to get to some of them that I wasn't even familiar with until I saw them on his Tumblr page because some of them are foreign and not the traditional movie poster we maybe have seen before. I'll link to his Tumblr page and what you can find that Adrian does over on Mubi, our great partner there, in order to see more of what he does. But he talks about Frankfurt and the fact that he was one of these young buck advertising guys who was really kind of credited with being the first guy to take movie packaging and recognize that you needed to have sort of a unified theme across all the commercials, across all the artwork.

26:18Adam Kempenaar:and it even came down to the taglines. He's known for not only coming up with In Space No One Can Hear You Scream for Alien, but that great line on the poster, Pray for Rosemary's Baby. I'm with you, though. It's just the simplicity of that poster. Rosemary and her baby. You want to get literal. They're the two characters in the title and they're there on the poster. And that green and the black, the smallness of the carriage, as you mentioned, juxtaposed with the primordial green ooze and that landscape just suggests peril. You know what's inside that baby carriage, at least what should be inside there, and something about it being so tiny and helpless against the vastness of that just instantly tells you that this is helpless and there is something wrong and something a little bit terrifying about what you're going to see, and that's matched by Mia Farrow's helplessness.

27:11Adam Kempenaar:Of course, if you see the movie, you know where that shot is directly taken from, It's from the conception sequence, but she's also helpless. She's lying down and almost strikes me in looking at the poster like a resting saint or someone that's there to be a sacrifice. It's a little Joan of Arcish. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. Even, of course, down to her hair. But the tagline, too, is just one of those touches where the poster would be great without it, probably would have made all of our lists without it. But the simplicity of that and the creepiness of Pray for Rosemary's Baby on top of the green and black and everything else that's going on is just so, so perfect.

27:46Josh Larsen:Yeah. What do you think that landscape is supposed to be? I mean, it's like it implies sulfurous. It's like it's in the bottom of a volcano or something, even though it's green, not red. I don't know. I don't think Central Park looks like that anyway. No. All right. Number four, something a little more hopeful, at least. It's the Tree of Life. And this is the there were a number of different posters for the Tree of Life. I'm going with the image of an infant's foot being cradled by a pair of hands with that bright white light seeping through in the background. I believe this is a still pulled directly from the film, in which case we're getting a pure image from the movie's two dominant visual poets.

28:22Josh Larsen:That'd be writer-director Terrence Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. I do really like that collage poster they did for the Tree of Life as well, which has about 70 individual frames from the movie's kaleidoscope of images and just gives us all of them in one gorgeous blast of color. that captures the whole scope of the movie. But I feel that this one also in its own way, the way it evokes new life and journey and providence and vulnerability. This one stark image gives us all of those senses, I feel like, that it too encapsulates the movie just with the picture of a baby's foot. It's so perfect.

29:02Adam Kempenaar:It's an honorable mention for me. I just saw it as I was reviewing my list earlier today and was immediately struck by the fact that it needed to be in consideration, not only because I loved the movie as much as you do, but it does somehow sum up the overall grandness of that film and the ambition. Something about seeing the smallness of that foot within the vastness, relatively speaking, of that hand speaks to what that whole film is really all about. And it also hit me today, and am I being too literal here, but the way you have the limbs crossing each other in that frame, because you've got, obviously, two hands and you've got a foot and probably another foot that's just kind of going off camera.

29:43Adam Kempenaar:It feels a little bit like a tree to me. It feels like roots. It feels like limbs of a tree. Branches. Yeah, the branches are also being formed by those arms and legs.

29:51Josh Larsen:Yeah, and I think this is an incident too of, you know, this is a common picture people take when they have children of, you know, one of the parents maybe holding the foot just to show how tiny it is. And I'm sure it was done well before the tree of life too. But somehow when you get an artist taking an image, we've seen many other times, They just imbue it with this extra level of magic that this poster captures. Yeah, such a good pick. This is Ashley Akinetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. Ben, I've been reflecting a lot lately on how many big life moments our listeners have experienced with us.

30:25Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, it's pretty wild. They've watched us go from dating shows to engagements, weddings, babies, buying homes. Every stage comes with new decisions. The milestones are the fun part, but the planning is where things get real. That's why Klarna stands out. Klarna gives people smarter tools to help manage everyday money with flexible ways to pay, cash back that builds automatically, everything in one place, and support that makes everyday decisions feel less overwhelming. Since life moves so fast, the right tools can help you feel more confident. Download the Klarna app today or visit Klarna.com to learn more.

31:05California Resident Loans made or arranged pursuant to a California finance law license, NMLS number 1353190. Clown a balance account required to be eligible for cashback points. Limitations, terms, and conditions apply.

31:15Adam Kempenaar:I'm Glenn Washington. This is snap judgment from KQED. When everything is falling apart, what do you do? Hurricane Helene shut everything down. No roads, no cars, no way through. But his daughter was getting married. and somehow, someway, he was going to walk her down that aisle.

31:36Josh Larsen:All Systems Down, a new Snap Judgment miniseries from KQED, wherever you get your podcasts. Amazon Health AI presents Painful Thoughts. I, um, I can't stop scratching my downtown.

31:54Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, but I'm not itching to go downtown and tell a receptionist I'm here to talk about my downtown. Some things you'd rather type than say out loud. There's no question too embarrassing for Amazon Health AI. Chat your symptoms and get virtual care 24-7. Healthcare just got less painful. Wait, I came in for two things. How is this$47? All right, we're going to need a plan here. Just start simple with Bank of America Advantage Safe Balance Banking. No overdraft item fees, no monthly maintenance fee if you're under 25. Plus, as a new checking customer, you can earn$100 when you open an account and make qualifying Zelle or debit transactions.

32:35Oh, that's actually really simple. Safe balance banking. One less thing to figure out. Learn more at bfa.com slash earn100. Terms and conditions apply. Bank of America and a member FDIC.

32:46Adam Kempenaar:I didn't realize at all that I had a little bit of a connection here between my five and four, but I'm going from the devil in Rosemary's Baby to this one. You don't make up for your sins at a church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. That's the opening voiceover from Martin Scorsese's breakout feature, Mean Streets. And the poster is one that I'm not sure we know who the designer was. I did some searching today. It's not attributed to anyone in particular. It's just a Warner Brothers production. Whoever did it did a great job. You've got a hand holding a gun. The arm that's holding it could be the street, sort of.

33:24Adam Kempenaar:You see a stoop, maybe, and a stop sign in the bottom left of the frame and above it, and I guess depth-wise behind it, looming over it all is the city. Apartments with fire escapes, tall skyscrapers, but it's all very artistically rendered. It's not a literal cityscape. And in one of the windows appears to be a woman. And if you know the movie, Keitel's Charlie struggles with his relationship with Johnny Boy, Robert De Niro's character, his cousin, Teresa. And I think just seeing her in the window is emblematic of the sin and the temptation that he feels. There are some versions of this poster I've seen that are just really white and the city stuff is all gray and black and the mean streets is the only color.

34:03Adam Kempenaar:The text is in red, but other versions, I think it's the traditional one, is the one I really love where it is more in color. The bottom is an orangish-yellow, like a fire, that gets darker and darker red as it overtakes the city. And there are other versions that have a tagline as well that says, go to church on Sunday, go to hell on Monday. But we get a visual representation of that threat of hell, I think, in that color scheme. And I haven't even mentioned the way the gun points upward and blends in like a building. The smoke coming out of the top like a building chimney, and you can equate smoke to hell as well, of course, if you want to.

34:40Adam Kempenaar:I think, though, that gun, the way it so perfectly fits into that cityscape, it reflects how inextricable that type of life is from the city, from the streets. The way of sin, I guess, is always directly linked to that city. And contrast it with something like the Taxi Driver poster. This movie is just as gritty, should be just as real and authentic as something like Taxi Driver. But that's one where you've got the Travis Bickle character basically just walking down the street. This isn't that realistic. It's more abstract. And that fits with that overall conflict in the movie of the physical world versus the abstract, the streets, the here and now versus the poetic and the eternal.

35:19Adam Kempenaar:That struggle that's present throughout not only this film, but so much of Scorsese's work. It's all right there in the poster for Mean Streets.

35:26Josh Larsen:What I like about the color one, too, is there's something very late 60s, and I know this was, what, 73, but that sort of era, late 60s, early 70s, gives it that feel and roots it in a time and place with a little bit the typeface that's used, but the colors, too. All right. My number three came through a listener who on Facebook, his name is Matt Thurston. He pointed me to a recent LA Times piece from film critic Kenneth Turan, where he writes about his love for Golden Age movie posters specifically. So I browsed through some of those that he listed, and the one that jumped out to me instantly was for 1927's London After Midnight, which stars Lon Chaney.

36:05Josh Larsen:It was directed by Todd Browning. There are no surviving prints of this film, which only adds to the ephemeral nature of the poster itself. It's mostly an impressionistic landscape painting of a London bridge glowing at night, but towering over it are two figures. There's a pale woman who's staring straight at you, and imagine this is like the size of Godzilla. That's how big these figures are. So she's staring straight at you. Then there's this ghoulish man behind her in a top hat. His teeth are bared. His hair is wild. His skin is gangrene. And he has one hand with these long nails that are on her arm, while the other is draped over her shoulders and pointing at us again.

36:43Josh Larsen:So it's very confrontational, this poster. And if you look closely, you'll notice that she has these long green fingers too, which don't necessarily match the color of her skin, of her face that we see. so there's a lot of weirdness going on here this is probably not a pair that you want to hang out with but they're a pair in a movie that i definitely do want to see so it does its job

37:03Adam Kempenaar:wow you've got me intrigued it's one i'm not familiar with at all and will definitely take a look at online and speaking of that as you're listening to film spotting we're sharing our top five all-time favorite movie posters we recognize that it's a little bit difficult for this top five in particular to maybe get the most out of it when we're talking about something so visual movies are always visual, but you can play a scene sometimes and play some audio to back up and support whatever you're trying to articulate. Here, we're really diving into these posters. And unless you're online as well, Googling them, you can't necessarily play along.

37:35Adam Kempenaar:Hey, that's not a bad idea. Exactly. I will also say that when you're done listening, when you get to a computer, if you want to see the posters we're talking about, you don't have to Google them. Just go to filmspotting.net, click on top fives. We will include all the images there with our selections. My number three, I swear, I did not plan any kind of through line. Really, it just worked out this way. My number three is the poster for the Powell Pressburger film, Black Narcissus. And this is not a horror movie, Josh, but it is one that you could argue becomes a psychological horror movie, similar to my number five pick, Rosemary's Baby.

38:12Adam Kempenaar:The poster I'm going with, though, isn't any of the UK versions or other traditional versions you might see when you Google it. It is the German poster for Black Narcissus. It was the poster designed for the 1948 premiere of the movie in Hamburg. The designer here, just as with my number four pick, unfortunately unknown. And I looked at those other posters, and they're fine, the other Black Narcissus posters, but they wouldn't come close to making this list. and Black Narcissus even as a movie, Josh, I really appreciate it as I appreciate every Archer's film that I've seen. But when we did a Powell Pressburger marathon several years ago here on the show, it wasn't among my top three or four from that marathon.

38:54Adam Kempenaar:That's just how good their movies are. But this poster just captivated me when I saw it in preparation for this list. Instead of selling this technicolor adventure drama, ornate with splashes of color everywhere and a very busy design like the other posters do for this movie. It takes that amazing showdown at the end of the film between Deborah Carr's sister Clota and Kathleen Byron's sister Ruth, and it turns it into this triumph of the will struggle. It becomes epic and expressionistic and a struggle between not maybe good and evil, but at least rationality and insanity, reason and intellect versus passion and emotion.

39:35Adam Kempenaar:And In the movie, we do see Ruth wearing a red dress, but it's a very muted red dress. The dress is actually not as red as her eyes. Powell and Pressburger really emphasize that she's gone mad. She's let this kind of passion and jealousy consume her. But the red on the poster is a very vivid red that stands out against the black and greenish-blue colors that dominate the design. and, of course, stand out against Clodagh's white dress as she's pulling on the big bell of the convent and she's clinging to the rope there in the Himalayas, hanging on for dear life. An interesting element of the poster, I know, Josh, you're looking at it right now, do you notice that Ruth is actually holding out her hand to Sister Clodagh, as if she's trying to pull her back up to safety, which, if you've seen the movie, is not at all what she's trying to do in that moment.

40:25Adam Kempenaar:And I just find that very striking. I don't know if there's something more we're to read into that, but it's a hopeful reading on the end of the movie somehow that, of course, doesn't really get matched by the movie itself, but instantly fell in love when I saw that Black Narcissus German poster.

40:40Josh Larsen:Yeah, the colors here are just amazing. Even though there aren't that many of them, what it essentially does is it makes the costume design the main actors in the poster. Even their skin tones looking at it are the same as the background, that sort of blue, that light blue, but you've got the white robe on the one figure and then that red dress. Yeah, they become symbols almost more than people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love this one. All right, my number two is from La Dolce Vita. It's the original release poster by Giorgio Olivetti. This is the one that has the large head of Marcello Mastroianni shaded in blue while he's smoking a cigarette.

41:17Josh Larsen:That's on the right. And then the full figure of Anita Ekberg on the left. It's a personal pick. This is the other one of the three that's hanging in my house. And this is a big one. It's also a stereotypical pick. I mean, this is the sort of poster that you will find in the homes of people who have never seen La Dolce Vita. Yeah, trying to impress someone. It's everywhere. But you know what? I think that partly speaks to its power. This not only evokes something of La Dolce Vita, I think it evokes the entire sensual allure of the movies themselves beyond any specific film. That red glow of his cigarette, which emerges from the blue area of the poster, trails up and out of the poster frame.

41:56Josh Larsen:And then another red in a dress here. It's the swirl of Ekberg's skirt that's red. And of course, not to mention just Ekberg herself. You might assume that her form has been exaggerated by Olivetti, but then if you see the movie, you'll realize, well, not so much. That is what she looks like. And Mastroianni's line of vision in the poster, it goes right to her. It's like a dart, right looking at her. So this has the promise of cool, has the promise of mystery, of sex. It certainly captures the allure of the sweet life, which is something that the movies have long promised that you're going to live vicariously through these figures.

42:31Josh Larsen:So to see, you know, the downside of the hedonistic pursuit of the sweet life, you'd actually have to watch the movie itself. But that promise is all up here in the poster.

42:39Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, it's a great, great poster and a great choice. My number two pick comes from a designer I can name because he's already been name actually during our conversation Sam Smith singled out Neil Kellerhouse as one of the designers anyone interested in movie posters should be paying attention to and our listeners are familiar with his work whether they know it by name or not from a lot of stuff he's done with David Fincher like Gone Girl and the girl with the dragon tattoo and the social network but the one I'm going with is his work for Jonathan Glazer and his poster for one of our favorite films from last year, Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson.

43:19Adam Kempenaar:A lot of times, of course, you can't actually see or hear some of the names we've mentioned so far describing their process. You can actually do that with Keller House. It's not very long, but there's a two-minute video on Vimeo where you can hear him talk about what he had in mind when he designed the poster. And you actually do get to see some of the different iterations of the poster as it began and the different versions. I wouldn't say it's overly revealing, whether he just doesn't want to reveal it or he doesn't have a whole lot to say. Sometimes describing how you made a piece of art is more difficult than making the piece of art itself, especially if it's really good.

43:54Adam Kempenaar:And I think this poster is really good. But he says something, Josh, that I think speaks to what we both talked about in setting up our list. He mentions that the image of Scarlett Johansson's face that we see in the poster is an image of her face from the movie where it's in daylight, I believe, and it's just her face looking out over the steering wheel like so many shots from the film are. but he says that he wanted to design something that was appropriate and not just kind of an esoteric pretty picture because he says it's not difficult to make a pretty picture and i think that's an interesting point that we would think that's the hardest part to make something really visually striking but he's saying any designer can come up with something that looks cool but how do you make it not only cool but make it appropriate and the word he uses is genuine and i think he nails that because what we get ultimately in seeing scarlett johansson and her face against this starscape and the colors, the blue and the red sort of reflected on her face is a pretty picture.

44:55Adam Kempenaar:But the use of that black space and the stars suggests a sci-fi component to the film, which of course the movie has, that this person, this entity is somehow otherworldly. There's even, I could be reading too much into it, but when you get some of the sparkles that look like they might be stars or bits of color, flecks of color in her eye, it makes me think of the Terminator, The redness of the specks against her eye, like there's something just off with this character, something not human about this character. And the color, the blue on her chin and lips and the red on her cheek. I honestly don't know what to make of those other than they look great against the black of space.

45:32Adam Kempenaar:But they also made me think of all the reflections we constantly see in the movie through the windshield and the windows because she's doing her stalking, doing her driving at night and sees a lot of those lights. The most significant element, though, of course, is that it's Scarlett Johansson and her face, but she's mostly obscured. Depending on which version of the poster you see and how light your computer screen is, the right side of her face is almost entirely blending into the dark. So it defies you to see this movie star, to see this prominent actress and challenges you to really explore what you're seeing while not just trading solely on her beauty.

46:11Adam Kempenaar:And of course, that's perfectly in sync with the challenges that that movie directed by Jonathan Glazer presents to the viewer.

46:17Josh Larsen:Yeah, this is probably one of the most recent posters I did consider for the list, too. It's really striking. For my number one, though, I went with an obvious pick, a nostalgic pick, but one that I think is really effective as a movie poster too, that's Jaws. It's hideously effective, actually. It's also drawn directly from the paperback book cover for Peter Benchley's novel, so maybe I'm really praising that, but it works as a movie poster too. It's a painting by Roger Castell, who also did the poster for The Empire Strikes Back, the most iconic one there. And like Jaws, this is an exercise in blunt terror.

46:53Josh Larsen:It just has a woman swimming at the top of the poster, unaware that a giant bullet of teeth is streaming directly toward her from below. This is another example of using the space within the conventional poster frame. And when you think about it, these artists have to deal with the same space all the time. Unlike a movie director who can conform that theater screen a variety of different ways, depending on what they have to show, you're more confined here. And this is what we get. The air, which is life above water, is just the tiniest little bit, maybe a tenth of the poster space up on top. Most of it is devoted to the deathly deep.

47:31Josh Larsen:And going back to color, the blue gets darker as it goes further down to the bottom of the poster. The shark is huge. I mean, it's much bigger than the shark in the movie, just probably like six or seven times the size of what we actually get. But he's also unnaturally perpendicular. It's as if this creature was created for no other purpose than to eat this one woman. And he's there. He's going to do it. Also, you know, as in the movie's opening scene, this particular victim is skinny dipping. So maybe this is part of that sex says death horror trope that's been talked about when it comes to a recent film like It Follows.

48:10Josh Larsen:But you know what? Combining those two things here in this one stark image certainly gets your juices flowing.

48:15Adam Kempenaar:You know, a lot has been made about the fact that Jaws put a lot of people off of going in the water and going in the ocean. And even I remember as a kid when I finally saw Jaws later in the 80s being a little bit afraid of going in the deep end of the pool. because somehow I thought Jaws might be there in our 10-foot pool. If he's in the pool, that's where he's going to be. Exactly. But here's my thing. It occurs to me as you talk about the shark and this amazing, iconic poster that maybe we weren't so afraid of the movie, we were afraid of the poster. That poster alone and the size of that shark underneath that woman's foot might have been enough to traumatize all of us.

48:49Adam Kempenaar:It could be. So I found out that you were going to make this your number one, and I instantly started writing back to you today, Josh, saying, yeah, great pick, but Jaws is in the Pantheon. You can't do it. I checked. It's not. And then I checked. And it's not.

49:03Josh Larsen:Why is it not in the Pantheon?

49:04Adam Kempenaar:Well, we're going to rectify that now. This time. Wait a minute. This is becoming a habit. I know. Hey, every once in a while, you just got to anoint a movie into the Pantheon. It's been probably two years since we last did it before a couple weeks ago. I was going to say, I think it's been two weeks. Well, there you go. You got to do it every once in a while. Sometimes they come in bunches. Complete agreement when it comes to Jaws. This time, producer Sam Van Halgren approved. He agrees. I'm glad you asked him ahead of time. I did. this time after just going instead of pulling an audible just going on our own and being rebellious with what was the movie we just recently put in now I can't even remember I know I can't either

49:36Josh Larsen:it wasn't another oh no Back to the Future's been in

49:38Adam Kempenaar:it's not Back to the Future Unforgiven that's what it is Unforgiven is the movie our top five movies of 1992 we are putting Jaws where it belongs in the Pantheon

49:52I'll be right here What is this, your farewell speech? Your farewell to the troops? Have a good trip.

50:11Adam Kempenaar:Well, I don't know how I follow all of that up with my number one, but I'll try. I'm going with Ingmar Bergman's 1966 psychological, yes, horror movie. You can call it that if you want. Persona, starring Liv Ullman and B.B. Anderson. And just a little bit of plot here for this movie, if you haven't seen it, because it is essential to the poster, is you've got B.B. Anderson as a nurse who takes a job taking care of an actress, played by Liv Ullman, who has just all of a sudden gone mute. They can't find an explanation for it, but she needs someone to take care of her. She can't speak anymore. and the doctor suggests that they go off to the seaside resort and she will convalesce and get better and somehow overcome whatever trauma is causing her to no longer speak and bb anderson's nurse is going to be the one who helps her get there of course if you've seen it what you know is things get a little weird between them and their identities sort of start to merge into one and they lose sense of who they really are as individuals as things become more and more blurred and Bergman, of course, is constantly showing this by giving us shots where their faces are merging together or overlapping.

51:22Adam Kempenaar:And the poster, little bit of a cheat here, Josh, because I really think it's essential to have these two posters together. I would hang these two posters for Persona in one frame. I think they're that essential to have together. The first one is the traditional one you'll see for the movie where it's an image from the film where Liv Ullman's on the left looking at the camera, B.B. Anderson's on the right, and she kind of has her head against Liv Ullman's shoulder. And Ullman's hand is around her head, almost pulling her towards her. They've taken that but fractured them. There's now a black space between them and each character is drenched in a sort of eerie, creepy red color against that blackness.

52:01Adam Kempenaar:And what you see is their faces are actually puzzle pieces. And it suggests that, you know, maybe those two pieces, which really should be two separate pieces, are being pushed into one or could be pushed into one. But then as you look at it, you start to think, well, yeah, those pieces do fit together, but what do they construct? Yeah, that's the brilliance of it. It really is. Like, is that a figure? You don't want to see it together. No, you don't really want to see it together. And that struggle, that conflict is really at the heart of the movie. So here's what I love, though. Here's why I love so much both of these posters together.

52:31Adam Kempenaar:You then get the Japanese version, or some people just call it the foreign version of Persona. What does that look like? I know you're looking at it right now, and it has taken this whole seaside beach theme, and it's taken a shot from the movie where now the puzzle pieces aren't split apart, but they are now actually overlapping each other in sort of an X formation. They're embracing each other. Liv Ullman is actually kissing B.B. Anderson on the back of the neck. It's so warm. The colors are yellow, and there's a glow to it. And down at the bottom, you see each character. Liv Ullman looks like she's maybe going to go sit and dip her feet in the water.

53:07Adam Kempenaar:And B.B. Anderson's getting some sun with her sunglasses on.

53:11Josh Larsen:Smaller figures. Yeah, smaller figures in the bottom.

53:13Adam Kempenaar:And you just wonder what they were trying to sell with that movie. I'm sure it was maybe. I'm just going to speculate more of a crass kind of marketing ploy to not try to sell the fact that this is a really weird, creepy movie about these fractured psyches and try to sell something a little bit warmer and pleasurable. But I love that. I love those two things being juxtaposed with each other. I love somehow, Josh, just the idea that what's maybe happening between Liv Oldman and B.B. Anderson in this film is something that we should actually have an emotional investment in and be supporting. It feels to me almost like with these two posters together, there's that perfect juxtaposition of the horror of human interaction and the pure tenderness of human interaction.

53:57Adam Kempenaar:And I would love those posters in my basement right next to each other reminding me, Josh, of the yin and the yang of it all. Okay, but you've got to pick. If I had to pick, I'd pick the puzzle. I knew you were going to make me do that, and that's what's beautiful about my cheat. The puzzle stands on its own. And the other one is 1A. Okay. Exactly. There we go. Yeah. Good. Are you happy now? Yes, I'm so much happier. You thwarted my attempt to cheat. I'm glad that makes me feel better. I'd rather have a 1A, 2, 3, 4, 5 than a top six. Well, those are our top five movie posters. We'll get to some honorable mentions, but first, you want to hear the other movie posters that I've owned, Josh?

54:30Adam Kempenaar:My first one, the one I first got probably back in college that just really speaks to sort of pretentious cinephile trying to impress people. Willow. How did you know? Apocalypse Now. Oh yeah, sure. Apocalypse Now with that big Marlon Brando head and the red sun.

54:46Josh Larsen:Yeah. People came into your dorm room and was like, who's this? I was legit. Smart, creepy guy. That's right. Reservoir Dogs. Yeah. Fargo.

54:55Adam Kempenaar:Oh, that's a great one. Tombstone. Hmm. Tombstone. Can't bring its mind right now. Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, shootout at the OK Corral, walking down the street. Heat, speaking of Val Kilmer, Robert De Niro. And then one movie poster I still have up now, though I should have looked this up. I don't know that it's actually the movie poster. I think it's more just a frame from the movie. The two most gorgeous people in the history of cinema together in one film, Antonioni's Le Ecclese, where you have Alain Delon and Monica Vitti embracing each other in black and white. So yes, a movie poster from that film, though, not really the marketing tool, I guess, for that movie, if you will.

55:34Josh Larsen:What about other movies you considered but left off, Josh? So another name that came up quite a bit in suggestions and just looking around on the web was Drew Struzan, who did a lot of the iconic character group illustrations for the likes of, well, some Pantheon films like Star Wars, also more recently the Harry Potter films. So a little bit of the blockbuster posters of my childhood there by Drew Struzan. The alien poster with the cracking egg, that one a lot of people suggested. It has more of the eerie green that's in both my Rosemary's Baby and London After Midnight pics. So there must be something about that, which I really like.

56:09Josh Larsen:Also could be a horror movie. And then the Phantom Menace poster with little Anakin's shadow. It's so good. Casting the shadow of Darth Vader. I mean, it just captures everything that that prequel group was about. I like that one. Well, it captures it better than the prequels do. Oh, right.

56:25Adam Kempenaar:But the poster is fantastic. But all those Star Wars posters are. So I'm glad that with those prequels, even they kept that tradition alive. We talked a lot about how horror was an easy go-to for some of these, despite the fact that neither of us are really go-to horror geeks. But some of the ones that I at least did have to give a little bit of a glance to and consider. The Exorcist, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Thing, and Peter Strickland, who recently made The Duke of Burgundy, which is a great poster. Barbarian Sound Studio, also a great poster. And you can go back to some of the classics, Halloween, Suspiria.

57:00Adam Kempenaar:I also really think the Donnie Darko poster is fantastic. But the best one of all those, the one that really almost crept into my list, one of our blind spotting reviews, the first ever David Lynch's Eraserhead. Oh, yeah. Just that big black and white Jack Nance head with that hair. That's that's classic. The Truman Show is really good. The 40 year old Virgin is really good. Of course, The Tree of Life, A Clockwork Orange. And I did also strongly consider one of Sam's top five, Anatomy of a Murder. A couple more here. Manhattan from Woody Allen. Bertolucci's The Conformist. Blade Runner and how good is the train spotting poster?

57:33Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, that's nice. The Choose Life, that whole monologue instead of going with any imagery from the film that really does force you to contemplate it, force you to really look at it and digest it. I think that one's really good. There are so many others we could mention and we hope to hear from you on the ones that we miss, the ones that you love, send your picks or any other comments about the show to feedback at filmspotting.net. Choose life, choose a job, choose a career, choose a family. Again, our top five movie posters from 2015 We'd love to hear your picks. You have to have some favorite movie posters.

58:04Adam Kempenaar:Email us feedback at filmspotting.net. And if you would like to become a member of the film spotting family, you can do that. Get the archive access, monthly bonus shows, the newsletter, discord access, and more at filmspottingfamily.com. Thanks for listening. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

58:34I love the little everyday moments with my dog, especially treat time.

58:39Josh Larsen:But dental care? Not always so fun. Until we found Greeny's Dental Treats. These are more than just tasty. They're vet-recommended and designed to support the four areas vets check the most. Plaque, tartar, gums, and breath. Their unique texture cleans down to the gum line and supports cleaner teeth after 28 days when fed daily. It's a simple daily habit that supports their health and gives us another moment to enjoy together. Greenies make health a treat. Shop now at greenies.com.

59:07Adam Kempenaar:Some so-called SUVs feel more like toys. You need a real vehicle that'll handle real life. A real SUV, like the all-new 2027 Kia Seltos. With its best-in-class interior room, it'll make the others feel like toys. Check out the new 2027 Kia Seltos X-Line. It's real-world ready. Kia, movement that inspires. Limited inventory available. Comparison based on publicly available data regarding cargo room and 2026 entry all-wheel drive CUVs as of May 2026. Entry all-wheel drive CUV class as defined by Kia segmentation.

59:38Josh Larsen:Apple Vacations, where your story starts. The Summer Savings Event is here at Apple Vacations. It's the perfect time to bring everyone together for the getaway you've been dreaming about. Book between July 24th and August 27th and enjoy up to 55 % instant savings. From relaxing beach days to unforgettable moments with the people who matter most, your next vacation starts here. Travel through July 31st, 2027. Start your vacation today at AppleVacations.com or through your travel advisor.

1:00:02Adam Kempenaar:Apple Vacations, where your story starts. T-Mobile is reinventing business internet with Super Broadband. Whether you run a small office or a factory of 500, connection is everything. Powered by America's fastest 5G internet, plus Starlink. Super Broadband from T-Mobile reaches every zip code in the U.S.

1:00:23Josh Larsen:Super Broadband, a new era of business internet. Visit SuperBroadband.com to learn more. This is 5G network based on analysis by Eucalypt Speed Test Intelligence. Data 2H 2025. Speeds vary due to local network characteristics and management. Satellite requires hardware installation. Clear view of the sky with a 36-month commitment.