Judging a Movie by Its Poster

I rarely, if ever, literally judge a book by its cover, though I judge books by their book jackets, or book jacket blurbs, I should say, all the time. Because what else are you going to base it on unless it’s Maureen Corrigan on Fresh Air, a review in the Weekend FT, or something from your father-in-law’s never-ending bookshelf? In the pre-streaming era, I judged compact discs, or cassette tapes, by their covers constantly, leading to myriad regrets but also some remarkable discoveries. I do not, however, judge movies by their posters. I mean, I’ll judge a direct-to-video, direct-to-streaming movie by its poster, yes, but its distribution model has essentially already rendered judgement for me. And sure, I would have judged “The Northman” based on its Nicole Kidman character poster, are you kidding me, but because of Nicole Kidman I already knew all about “The Northman” and didn’t need the poster to sell me. And that’s how it’s always been with me: I’ve known about most movies before I ever see the poster. Yet, in the last few years, as my consumption of movie news has significantly decreased, more movie releases are sneaking up on me. I didn’t know what “Weapons” was until, maybe, a week before its release. Even then, though, it wasn’t suitably creepy poster that piqued my interest, it was the buzz. (The buzz was wrong, but that’s neither here nor there.) But. All the livelong day I’m getting emails from publicity people trying to sell me on their respective movies, and though intermittently they do, it’s because of the synopsis, never the poster, until…

What’s the ice tower? No idea. Why is Marion Cotillard in it? Couldn’t care less. I’m there.