Joshua Gulch
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joshgulch.bsky.social
Joshua Gulch
@joshgulch.bsky.social
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I like spaceships and dinosaurs. He/him.
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The #1 movie from when you were 10 years old is how your 2026 will go.

Yeah, that checks out.
December 19, 2025 at 8:08 PM
joshgulch.bsky.social
Revisited a year's worth of shortlists for week 50 and caught up on five I'd missed. Began with 'Killer of Sheep' (1978) from week 44, 'The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun' (1999) from weeks 24 and 38, and 'Asako I & II' (2018) from weeks 27, 37, 41, and 45, so that one was long overdue... 1/2
The rerelease poster for Killer of Sheep, since I couldn't find evidence it had a poster back in 1978. It features five young Black children walking in front of a bright white wall, the shadow of one of the kids cast back up on it in a sort of dancing shape. The photo is in black and white and the only color is the title above them in dark saturated blue lettering. The poster for La petite vendeuse de soleil, or, The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun. It features a crude, abstract illustration of a Black girl, sitting on the ground, looking up at us. She has a walking crutch leaning on her leg and a newspaper titled "Le Soleil" on her lap. She is set against a bright yellow background, with the title in the top left corner in black handwritten lettering. The poster for Netemo Sametemo, or, Asako I & II in its English title. The upper 1/3 shows an Asian woman and man, with a slight sepia tint. The man lays on his side, asleep in bed, while the woman looks down at him, her head resting against his shoulder. The bottom 1/3 is made up of various shots from the film of the characters interacting. Splashed across the center of the poster is the title, in yellow, loosely handwritten, Japanese text.
December 15, 2025 at 7:17 AM
joshgulch.bsky.social
Popped in to visit four films in Movietown. Terence Stamp (RIP) got the whole family horned up in Teorema ('68). A count brought messy drama to The Haunted Castle ('21). Durante invited everyone to his place for a Hollywood Party ('34). Shatner came to town to start a race war in The Intruder ('61).
The poster for Teorema, or, Theorem in English. A photo of Terence Stamp's head looks seductively outward, the photo washed out toward the next, blending into a white background. In the upper right corner, obscuring his eye, is a photo of a man and woman in tight embrace, makin' whoopie. The title is below Stamp's head, arranged as TEO vertically, then bending with REMA following horizontally from there. The poster for Schloß Vogelöd, or, The Haunted Castle in its English title. An expressionist charcoal drawing of a spooky woman makes up the poster, wearing elbow length black gloves, one hand to her slender chin, her dark eyeshadowed eyes glancing away, her black hair flared up like some kind of pointy hat. A dark figure with bulging eyes is to the right, stalking behind her. The title is up in the left corner, out of the way. None of this appears in the film and gives a completely different idea about what to expect. The poster for Hollywood Party. It's in a painted illustration style. Four chorus girls in puffy pink hats line the top, hands under their chins. Laurel and Hardy appear to the left, Stan's head above Ollie's, while Polly Moran smiles to the right. Mickey Mouse alights in the center, arms up, in a happy dance. The title arcs below the chorus girls in big red letters dotted with stars. The poster for The Intruder. William Shatner appears as a blue-tinted headshot that fills the top half, looking to the right. A burning cross is superimposed over his face. The bottom half is an off-white expanse. The title is within that expanse in black block letters beside a burning house.
December 8, 2025 at 7:26 AM
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Got around a bit in week 48 with a little vehicular viewing. A Ukrainian couple got wrapped up in a plane crash in 'Klondike' (2022), underground train workers needed therapy in 'Kontroll' (2003), and a town had an unhealthy relationship with automobiles in 'The Cars That Ate Paris' (1974)... 1/2
The poster for Klondaik, or Klondike with its English spelling. The view is looking out from a damaged house, a bit of ragged wall visible at the top, of a woman with a large pregnant stomach sitting on a damaged couch in her barren yard, surrounded by debris. Way off in the background, a plume of black smoke rises from the horizon. The title is across the center in a yellow Cyrillic font. The poster for Kontroll. The upper half is dark while the bottom half shows a bank of four escalators rising up toward light, the view of the top blocked by an archway. A man and a woman, the latter wearing fairy wings, stand at the base of the escalators, mostly silhouetted, looking toward us. The title is above them, in the dark area, in a rectangle with torn ends shaped like a subway ticket, with the title in heavy red type. The poster for The Cars That Ate Paris. It's almost entirely black with the very top of the black becoming a silhouette of a house and some telephone poles against a salmon colored sky. Lower down is a large black and white photo of a Volkswagen bug covered with dozens of long metal spikes. The title, in large red letters, stands above it, taking up three lines of text.
December 1, 2025 at 6:47 AM
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4 from 2024 for week 47. Saoirse Ronan got her life back together in 'The Outrun' (2024), a cute cat learned the power of friendship in 'Flow' (2024), two manga artists united their creative sparks in 'Look Back' (2024), and poverty bred gruesome desperation in 'The Girl with the Needle' (2024).
The poster for The Outrun. It features Saoirse Ronan, facing right, in profile from her mid-torso up. She has her head tilted back, eyes closed, aquamarine dyed hair streaming to her shoulders and black t-shirt. Behind her is a body of water with a hill on the other side. The title is in the lower half in simple white letters. This is the latest in the "Saoirse Ronan in profile" series of posters, following Brooklyn, Lady Bird, and Ammonite. The poster for Straume, or, Flow, its English title. It features a dark grey cartoon cat, floating underwater, staring at us. Behind it are rings of colorful fish and the brightly lit surface above. The cat seems suspended in space, weightless. The blues of the water offset the darkness of the cat's fur. The title is below, in handwritten white letters. The poster for Rukku Bakku, or, Look Back, its English title. Two animated girls fill the page, one with short hair and a yellow shirt laying on the floor, propping her head up on her hand and smiling while the other girl lays on her stomach beside, with shaggier hair and an orange shirt, pencil in hand drawing a manga page. The title is at the bottom in white Japanese text, hand drawn like on a manga page. The poster for Pigen med nålen, or, The Girl with the Needle in English. A black and white photo of a young woman fills the poster, wearing a seamstress uniform and hat, looking up from a crowd of other women, her eyes dark from stress and hardship, a world weary expression on her face. The photo fades to black below the halfway point. A smaller image of an older woman holding a baby swaddled in a blanket, a grim expression on her face, is below, along with the title in handwritten script.
November 24, 2025 at 6:43 AM
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For week 46 I watched as many movies as there have been Charles. In 'Pool of London' (1951), sailors on leave got into girls and trouble. Jessie Matthews conned her way into the London theatres in 'Evergreen' (1934). Ended with a pair of actors needing to escape London in 'Withnail and I' (1987).
The poster for Pool of London. Against a blue background, the title, in all caps yellow letters angles with perspective, its left side smaller than its right. Very dynamic. Below, artwork of a man in a red shirt grimacing as he heaves himself over a wall, with dockyard cranes standing against a pink sky in the distance. A DVD case for Evergreen, since I couldn't find a legitimate contemporary poster. Jessie Matthews's face fills the left hand side, looking toward us, in a black and white photo. To the right of her face, an illustration of a man and woman dancing. Below, the title, in green text, angles upwards toward the right. The E in the title is swooshy while the rest is a basic sans-serif font. The poster for Withnail and I. A dartboard makes up most of the frame against a yellowed background. Three darts with Union Jacks on their ends pierce a piece of paper to the board, on which is a line art cartoon of a man laid out on a sofa on his stomach with another man leaning against the wall behind him. Their hair is rendered as wild lines shooting from their scalps. off to the side of the board is a telegram, stuck to the wall with another dart, with a tagline. Below the board is the title, scrawled on the wall in red manic handwriting.
November 17, 2025 at 8:06 AM
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Of all the movies I've seen, allow me to name the four most recent. 'Amanda' (2022) about Amanda making a friend, 'Lilya 4-ever' (2002) about Lilya trying to survive creeps, 'Tony Takitani' (2004) about Tony's shopaholic wife, and 'Silvia Prieto' about Silvia Prieto finding another Silvia Prieto.
The poster for Amanda. It's a full sheet image of a top-down view of a woman laying on a blue pool float. She's wearing a floral dress and cats eye sunglasses, her arms folded behind her head as she stares upward. She's positioned with her head pointing to the bottom of the poster. Below her head and the edge of the float is blue pool water and the title, which is rendered in a pudgy script font, with white letters, each one outlined in a different color. The poster for Lilja 4-ever, or Lilya 4-ever with its non-Scandinavian spelling. The poster is entirely a grainy close-up of a teenage girl's face. Her eyes stare ahead, empty, a fringe of blonde bangs peeking in from the top. She looks defeated. The title is in white Helvetica across the width of the frame below her mouth. The poster for Tony Takitani. It's divided into three horizontal frames. The top one features a middle-aged Asian man in a grey vest and tie, staring out a window to the right, the frame having a cool grey color tone. The bottom one features a younger Asian woman with shortish hair, wearing a black turtleneck sweater whose neck is weirdly thick but that's beside the point. She stares ahead with a concerned expression and the color tone is a warm yellow tint. In the white frame across the center, separating the two, the title is spelled out in gold Japanese text, the characters made up of ornate floral designs forming the lines. The poster for Silvia Prieto. Against a white background stands four images of a cheap ceramic figurine of a woman with shoulder-length black hair, wearing a white dress, holding a bouquet of flowers in her left hand and a pink hat in her right. It's a terrible looking figure, the kind of kitsch you can't imagine anyone actually wanting in their home, with its blobby form, easy to cast shapes, and simple paint job. The title is beneath, the letters formed from black dots, like it's ASCII art.
November 10, 2025 at 5:55 AM
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Unmasked four new-to-me films in week 44, watching a spooky masked man targeting models in 'Blood and Black Lace' (1964), a gas mask clad bank heist with 'The League of Gentlemen' (1960), a time traveler with a mask in 'Timecrimes' (2007), and mask-wearing travelers in 'Lost in New York' (1989).
The poster for Sei donne per l'assassino, or, its English release title of Blood and Black Lace. It's a painted illustration, with a masked face at top left, wearing a hat covering his forehead. This mask is more taught than in the film, giving the face beneath a desiccated appearance. In front of the face, filling the center of the poster, is a pile of four women sprawled on the floor wearing slinky dresses. In the background, or upper right, is a mesh mannequin against a red lit doorway, which makes it look like a body in flames. The title is below, in Italian, and in spooky yellow letters with blood drip bottom edges. The poster for The League of Gentleman. It's minimalist, with a white background. There's an illustration of a gas mask in the center, with shining in the eye openings that resembles big eyes looking to the right. The gas mask has a bowler hat on top, an umbrella leaning in from the left, and a red machine gun below the breathing tube. At the very bottom is a series of six black-and-white headshots of the cast. The title is in between the gas mask and the headshots, in black, jaunty lettering. The poster for Los cronocrímenes, or, Timecrimes. A mostly black-and-white photo makes up the poster, of a man in a long black coat, his head bound entirely in bandages with eye and nose holes, holding a pair of scissors in his hand, as he stands in the woods, trees and fog in the background. His head bandages and the pointy tip of the scissors are colored bright pink. The title crosses diagonally near the bottom in hand-scrawled letters, white on a black band, with "crono" called out in pink. A poster for Perdues dans New York, or, Lost in New York. I don't know if this is an original poster or something for a later release. It features two women standing side by side wearing white emotionless masks over their faces. The eye holes don't allow much to be seen behind them, making the eyes look dark and empty. The woman on the left has tussled dark hair while the woman on the right had straighter lighter hair. They both wear black shirts. Behind them are faint buildings of Manhattan, mostly their window lights picked out in a haze. The entire poster has a blue tint. The title is at the very top in white letters, fractured like glass.
November 3, 2025 at 6:08 AM
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Wish I'd made more time in week 43 but still enjoyed these three. A phone in the past changed the future in 'The Call' (2020), a time machine displaced Tsar Ivan the Terrible in 'Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession' (1973), and a journalist learned his lesson in 'It Happened Tomorrow' (1944).
The poster for The Call. A thin vertical pane down the center shows an Asian woman with bangs, holding a cordless phone, and looking ahead in distress. On either side are two more panes depicting a different Asian woman, without bangs, in different stages -- clean and holding the same phone while smiling, looking dead ahead with no emotion, smiling menacingly, and looking dead-eyed and terrifying. The title is below in silvery text, both in English and in Japanese, the English word Call, running horizontally, broken in hall by the Japanese letters running vertically. The poster for Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession. It's in a cartoony illustration style. The poster is divided into two frames. At left, in orange and yellow, a man with a mustache and goatee faces left while holding a staff and orb with a crucifix, wearing a golden jewel-stuffed cloak and a modern white fedora. At right, an identical man facing left, in yellow and blue, holding a flask of vodka and a dagger, wearing a white button-down shirt and ornate old Russian crown hat, with a fur trim and a crucifix at its peak, and there's a TV set in the background. The title is below in dark blue Cyrillic text. The poster for It Happened One Night. At left is a photo cutout of Dick Powell wearing a brown overcoat and hat, with Linda Darnell at right, wearing a dark blue man's suit and hat. They are holding up a banner between them with cast names. Above their head are word balloons, his saying "Paper, lady?" and her's saying "Paper, mister?," with both including a bit of extra dialogue about the movie's plot. A yellow splotch fills the background between them, with the title centered below their cast names banner in jaunty red text.
October 27, 2025 at 6:21 AM
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Pulled four films under one roof for week 42, watching a house become a prison in 'Home' (2008), youths trying to save their housing complex in 'Gagarine' (2020), the last night of an aging cinema in 'Goodbye, Dragon Inn' (2003), and a bored hotel night clerk people watching in 'Nightshift' (1981).
The poster for Home. It depicts the corner of a cute kitchen with yellow walls and two green framed windows on both sides of the corner. A small stove and cabinets fill the corner with a kitchen table in the foreground. A blonde woman in a red top and white floral skirt stands against one of the counters staring off into space. Outside the windows is a freeway, with guardrails, as a young woman in a bikini films the bird at a semi truck speeding past. The title is below in large pale yellow letters. The poster for Gagarine. At the bottom are three teenagers -- two boys and a girl -- against the fading red sky of dusk. Above them, a large image of the moon with a small rocket blasting towards it. In between, the title in thin red lettering. The poster for Goodbye, Dragon Inn. It's in a rough illustration style in three frames. At the top, an Asian man with short hair and a mustache stands in front of a reel of film. Below, a sea of red seats within the theater. Below that, at the bottom, is a street scene showing the exterior of the theater with a large film poster hanging above, and a woman standing in the street in front holding an umbrella. The title is at right in large red Chinese lettering. The poster for Nightshift. It consists of a black and white photo of a bored woman with a vacant expression on her face sitting behind a checkout desk, with rows of empty mail boxes on the wall behind her. She is completely checked out and over this job. The title is at the top in hollow, white lined rounded letters.
October 20, 2025 at 5:48 AM
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In spite of the prompt I found three films for week 41. A worker disappeared among land being reclaimed in 'A Land Imagined' (2018), the elusive Chan is in fact very much missing in 'Chan is Missing' (1982), and a husband disappears prompting an emotional crisis in 'Under the Sand' (2000). Poof!
The poster for A Land Imagined. The poster is sliced from upper right to center left, with the top slice being red with an Asian man holding a gun out defensively. In the bottom slice, which is fully inverted, a man is standing on a distant hill, which is formed from the shape of the upper slice. Against a blue background, a honking mass of girders stands closer to the foreground. IN a small inset circle, a young Asian woman with short hair looks indifferently to the left. The title, in large white Chinese letters, stands in the center. The poster for Chan is Missing. It is a colorful collage of photos pasted together. A yellow tinted picture of two Asian men, one young and one older, at top right. Blue tinted letters making up the background to the left, with Dianne Feinstein being named in a newspaper article because she was always awful even before she became a decrepit fossil dying before our very eyes. A handgun is above the papers. A yellow tinted photo of a street protest is in the lower left with a purple tinted 1971 Dodge Dart taxi cab to the right, above which is the San Francisco Chinatown's Dragon Gate in lime green tint. The title, above that and below the two men, is in narrow red lettering. The poster for Sous le Sable, or Under the Sand in English. It consists entirely of a photo of Charlotte Rampling, gazing distractedly to the right while a pair of hands rest on her bare shoulders. The title is in French with white lettering to the bottom left.
October 13, 2025 at 6:08 AM
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Stalked my watchlists to find three films for week 40. A woman hunted a soldier through the forest to seek revenge in 'The Nightingale' (2018), two captains tried to outsmart one another in 'The Enemy Below' (1957), and a family came under scrutiny for girl's death in 'An Inspector Calls' (1954).
The poster for The Nightingale. An image of a woman makes up most of the frame, her eye bruised, her expression tunnel-visioned dead ahead. Half of her face is covered by a blackbird taking flight, its wings raised over its body, obscuring the right side of her face and her nose, revealing only a black eye and emotionless mouth. The colors are slightly muted and yellowed, against yellow clouds making up the background. The title is below, in white serif letters. The poster for The Enemy Below. A painting of a green ocean makes up most of the frame, with a grey destroyer steaming in from the upper left and a black submarine speeding in from the lower right. Leaning in from the left side of the poster are six of the American crew, with Robert Mitchum in front, wearing a life jacket. Leaning in from the right are five of the German crew, with Curd Jurgens in front, wearing a captain's hat and holding binoculars. The title stands between them, in yellow blocky letters. The poster for An Inspector Calls. It has a pulp comic cover illustration style, with Alastair Sim filling most of the frame, wearing a dark overcoat and hat and looking like he's come to claim the souls of everyone in the house, which he kind of does. In a grey-tinted cutaway to the lower left, a man in a suit escorts a woman down the street, as he holds her arm and she hold his hat. The title makes up the center, in yellow cursive lettering.
October 6, 2025 at 7:40 AM
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Four films bloomed on my tv in week 39. Happy flowers infested brains in 'Little Joe' (2019), a rich botanist married a selfish schemer in 'A New Leaf' (1971), Jeffrey Combs played a manipulative mold in 'Motivational Growth' (2013), and I tried to learn if corn is a grass in 'Grasses' (1970).
The poster for Little Joe. Two people, one a woman with short red hair and the other a man with brown hair, stand back to back in light green lab coats and matching rubber gloves. They are in a greenhouse, surrounded on both sides by racks of bright red flowers looking like koosh balls. The title is above their heads in simple, plan red text. The poster for A New Leaf. The poster is all white, and down in the lower left are two people one is a man played by Walter Matthau, with some of the most ridiculous 1970s basic men's hair could be, standing beside Elaine May, who is wearing glasses and looking up at him smiling. He looks glum as he holds her hand. Above their heads is a huge block of text naming pairings, like Romeo and Juliet, Yoko and John, Mamma and Mia, and every combination of characters from the film 'Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.' To their right is the title, in red, in fancy text that is also very 1970s. The poster for Motivational Growth. It is rendered in a colorful comic book style. The overall design is a VHS cover, with black background and worn white corners and edges. In the center are three versions of the main character at different stages sitting on a couch, from clean-shaven in yellow to grungy, bearded, and in his underwear in blue, to a version sprouting mushrooms from his skin in red. Behind them, in purple shading are various other characters from the film. The title is overhead, in pink and green festering letters. The poster for the Rifftrax release of At Your Fingertips: Grasses. It has the basic Rifftrax layout, with their logo at the top as jaunty yellow and orange letters against a blue filmstrip, and the title at the bottom in yellow and green rounded letters. In the center, set within a stage with curtains above and at the sides, is a still from the film showing a young child wearing a paper mask to which he's glued bunches of dried weeds.
September 29, 2025 at 5:28 AM
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In week 38 I caught up with four films I'd missed as a teenager. 'But I'm a Cheerleader' (1999) had been on my watchlist forever, 'In the Soup' (1992) was a new discovery that I enjoyed, and ended with a Parker Posey double feature of 'The Daytrippers' and 'Waiting for Guffman,' both from 1996.
The poster for But I'm a Cheerleader. Against a blue sky with wispy white clouds, a blonde teenage girl stands at center, wearing a bright pink dress with light pink elbow-high gloves, clasping her hands in front of her waist. She stares forward with a forlorn expression on her face while five small cheerleaders bounce through the air over her head. The title is across the center in green sans-serif letters in a Word 98 text effects wave. The poster for In the Soup. An older man with white hair and moustache smiles as he pats the cheek of a younger man with a mop of dark hair, and that young man is a baby faced Steve Buscemi. They are against a light background, and in black and white. The title is below them in huge seafoam green capital letters, filling the entire center of the poster. The poster for The Daytrippers. At the top is a photo of four cast members: a man with dark hair and a red scarf peeking out from behind a woman with long dark hair and lipstick wearing an orange coat. To her right is a woman with blonde hair wearing a green coat, and behind her is another man, wearing sunglasses and a yellow coat. Below is a road map of Manhattan, with a small image of a group of people standing beside a station wagon. The title is under the top group photo, with "Day" laid atop the U.S. interstate shield, and "Trippers" in yellow alongside. The poster for Waiting for Guffman. A man with a mustache and his hair in a bowl cut stands in a field, his arms outstretched. He wears an orange t-shirt tucked into a pair of blue jeans, and also wears a grey sweater vest that's a little too short. Behind him is a vibrant blue sky filled with puffy white clouds. The title is below him in yellow Broadway-style text.
September 22, 2025 at 6:44 AM
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Four adaptations in week 37 with 'The Cruel Sea' (1953) from a novel by Nicholas Monsarrat, 'Muse' (2025) from motifs notated by Jose Luis Padula and Hoagy Carmichael, 'Tank Girl' (1995) from a comic by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin, and 'The World of Kanako' (2014) from a novel by Akio Fukamachi.
The poster for The Cruel Sea. The background contains an abstract painting of a rough sea with two ships in black silhouette. A drawing of a man in a captain's hat is at the right, the illustration style in black with simplified line art. The title is at the top in white text. The poster for Muse. A light grey background with a woman standing in the center. She has short bobbed hair and is wearing a strapless dress with elbow-high gloves. She's tilting her head upward, eyes closed, and there's a shadow falling over the lower quarter of the scene. The title is at the top in large black block letters, with a descending line cutting into each letter. The poster for Tank Girl. It's in a bright and manic 1990s art style. A woman with blonde hair, big goggles, and a teal tank top leans in from the left, staring into the camera. Behind her is a big tank, modified with a doll, painted stripes on the gun barrel, and a little tag hanging from the front that says "TANK." It sits in a desert with a large skeleton appearing over a dune in the background. In the blue sky above are some futuristic aircraft. The title is off to the right in copper colored militaristic block letters. The poster for Kawaki, or, The World of Kanako in English. A mostly very light grey poster. A photo of a weathered faced Asian man fills the upper right corner, with longish hair and a goatee, as he stares with determination. At the bottom, a young Asian girl, with long black hair, a white top, and a blue bow on her collar, stares emotionlessly ahead. Above her head is a splash of pink, like a blood splatter. The title, in large black Japanese letters, surrounds her head.
September 15, 2025 at 5:26 AM
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Week: 36. Films: 3. Words: 2. Watched 'Magic Farm' (2024) about a documentary crew who didn't know where they were, 'Air Doll' (2009) about an inflatable doll who grew a heart and a sense of whimsy, and 'Silent Running' (1972) about an environmentalist gone rogue in space with his robot friends.
The poster for Magic Farm. Against a pale blue background, a collage of orange-tinted photos of the six cast members making up the documentary crew. They all look utterly lost. The title fills most of the top left in even paler blue, heavy sans serif letters with the descender in the "g" dropping down to join the upper arm of the "F." An orange-tinted airplane skims the edge of the title. The poster for Air Doll. A young Asian woman stands in profile, wearing a maid outfit consisting of a short-sleeved black dress with white collar and small white apron. She has a small white frill of a hairpiece in her short bobbed hair. She stands facing to the right, staring straight ahead. In the background is the sky, around dusk, with the out-of-focus horizon starting to turn pink while the sky above is a faint blue. The title, in white Japanese lettering, hangs in the air above her head, its very light strokes so delicate and in danger of scattering with a light breeze. The poster for Silent Running. It is in a classic '70s poster format, with a painted image inset within a broad white frame. The image depicts a man in a blue jumpsuit covered in embroidered patches kneeling down next to an angular yellow robot, which shines its light on a small sapling they've planted. Behind them are a set of bushes, behind which a criss-cross of lines arcing overhead. Off in the distance there is a large round structure with trees inside, covered with a geodesic dome. Beyond even that are three spacecraft consisting of red girder hulls with clusters of domes at their bows, and even even even beyond them is the planet Saturn against the darkness of space. The title is in the white area below in lowercase futuristic looking (from the perspective of 1972) red letters.
September 8, 2025 at 9:16 AM
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Seven days of polymaths for 35. A young Jenny Lewis beat up a gross teacher in 'Foxfire' (1996), Cher swooned for one-handed bad boys in 'Moonstruck' (1987), Billie Piper wrote, directed, and starred in 'Rare Beasts' (2019), and Danny Elfman was a swingin' Satan in 'Forbidden Zone' (1980)... (1/2)
The poster for Foxfire. It is a black and white photo of five teenage girls, looking very mid-90s. The photo is taken at a dutch angle, for edginess. They are all frowning and looking serious, posing at the open doorway of a run-down abandoned house. The title is off to the lower left in a kind of handwritten style, with a yellow and orange drawing of a flame above the letter I. The poster for Moonstruck. It features a photo of Cher in a jubilant pose, sanding on one leg in heels, her arms stretched into the sky, head back, the other leg drawn up below the red skirt of her dress, her long black coat swaying with her motion. Behind her is a large white circle representing the moon, with a cut-out photo of the Manhattan skyline along its bottom. Below is the title in a yellow thin-line serif font, the two O's in the title interlocking with one another. The poster for Rare Beasts. Against a fully black background, Billie Piper's head and neck stand out against the darkness. Her strawberry blond hair hangs over her right eye, obscuring it. Her lips are parted, like she's just exasperated and tired and over it, and her visible eye stares blankly past us. The title is below in light pink sans-serif letters. The poster for Forbidden Zone. It is very '80s, rendered in an illustrated Memphis Style. Against a purple background with a teal triangle, a woman with large outlandish hair, with pink puff in the center, wearing a blue and green dress, holds her chest, pushing up her bountiful bosom, while making a face as if she's singing. In the lower left corner, Danny Elfman's Satan grins broadly while looking over his red cloaked shoulder. In the lower right corner, a butler with a large frog head stands looking puzzled. The title is in the center, written in that pointy triangular lettering we associate with the 1980s for "Forbidden," as well as a blocky, stone-like lettering for "Zone."
September 1, 2025 at 7:16 AM
joshgulch.bsky.social
The mission that I chose to accept in week 34 led me to watching 'The Wild Robot' (2024) with M:I film series actor Ving Rhames, 'Lured' (1947) with the original series' Desilu chief Lucille Ball, and 'Dead Reckoning' (1946) with no connection to later films that have shared the same name.
The poster for The Wild Robot. It depicts characters in the CGI animated film. A silver robot, with a spherical head and torso, with long lanky arms and legs, runs towards, the camera, flanked by a moose, a fox, a pair of deer, and a bear, with a goose flying over the robot's shoulder. In the background, a forest lit bright with yellow light, a trio of flares rising into the air behind the group. The title is below, in large yellow letters that have a rough "painted" effect. The poster for Lured. It is a painting depicting Lucille Ball in a yellow trench coat, holding a pistol in her right hand, pointed off to the left, where she is looking. Her red hair is partially hidden under a white shawl with red stripes. She stands atop a dark abyss forming the center of a whirlpool taking up the background. To the right are four squares with black and white headshots of her four male stars. The title is about 3/4 down the poster in a yellow, italic, serif font. The poster for Dead Reckoning. It is a painting that features Humphrey Bogart, in a dark coat, standing with his back mostly to us, as we see part of his left side as he looks down at Lizabeth Scott, in a red dress with detached sleeves, grasping onto him has he looms over. The titles are framed by the shadows spilling off his back, the film's title in yellow blocky lettering near the bottom.
August 25, 2025 at 7:20 AM
joshgulch.bsky.social
I tried to treat all sides equally during week 33, with the party girl vs. preacher man in 'Sensation Seekers' (1927), the Tsarists vs. Bolsheviks in 'The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty' (1927), and colonialist settlers vs. native populations in 'White Material' (2009). Not all were sympathetic though.
The poster for Sensation Seekers. Its format is very tall compared to a traditional film poster. It comprises a graphical illustration of a man with a serious expression while a woman leans against his chest, looking up at him with a sort of confused "is this what I want" loon on her face. His hand is over her shoulder, holding her near. They rendered in stark black, white, and yellow, with the yellow extending down, fading into a light pink at the bottom, with a black silhouette of a city. A tall martini glass stands in front, with a scantily clad woman relaxing in it like a bath. The title, in big black letters, stands in between these two scenes. The poster for Padenie dinastii Romanovih, or, The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty in English. The black shape of the double-headed eagle that represented the Russian monarchy dominates the field against a pale yellow background. This consists of an eagle, with wings outspread, its two heads wearing crowns while a larger imperial crown stands between. One talon grips a scepter, another a globe. A large red X is stamped over top of the eagle. The title, in red Cyrillic, stands below. It's pretty on the nose. The poster for White Material. Across the center, a photo of Isabelle Huppert, standing outdoors against some trees, her hair slightly windblown. She looks off to the right, a somewhat dazed yet disaffected look on her face. Across the top is a white background with the title in big black block letters, slightly smudged and worn.
August 18, 2025 at 5:53 AM
joshgulch.bsky.social
I only needed one, two would have been appropriate, but I watched three for week 32. 'Titanic: The Arabic Version' (2016) was a dumb little parody that got some actual laughs, 'Love Lies Bleeding' (2024) muscled its way into my heart, and 'Evil Does Not Exist' (2023) was a beautiful ode to nature.
The poster for Titanic: The Arabic Version. It is a riff on one of the posters from James Cameron's Titanic. Two Middle Eastern actors representing Jack and Rose huddle together against the night sky above an image of the sinking ship. The not-Jack has a ridiculous dome of a wig and stares with wide eyed mugging off into the distance while not-Rose stares off, equally shocked but less cartoonishly. The title, Titanic, is in the came serif typeface as the 1997 film. Below it are lines of Arabic text with the credits. The poster for Love Lies Bleeding. Against a bright orange background, two women stand over us, looking down with disgusted looks on their faces. The woman on the left wears a teal spandex top tucked into very short jean shorts while she holds a pistol with a silencer down at her side. The woman on the right is Kristen Stewart, and she is wearing a red tank top that says "Crater" and jeans. They both have messy '80s hair, the woman on the left with like the curly remnants of what may have once been a perm while the woman on the right has a mullet going on. The title is across the center in white block letters. The poster for Evil Does Not Exist. It is an illustration with loose lines colored by marker. An Asian man in a long dark coat and beanie cap looks down at a young girl wearing a light blue coat and hat, as she holds a yellow feather in her orange gloved hand. Behind them, wispy representations of reeds in loose yellow scribbles. The background is a light cream, and the title is overhead in dark blue Japanese text.
August 11, 2025 at 5:45 AM
joshgulch.bsky.social
Made small use of a history degree this week with a trio of films about days of yore. The skewed biography of Prime Minister King in 'The Twentieth Century' (2019), an expressionistic demise of a famed aviator in 'Mynarski Death Plummet' (2014), and a slice of WWI misery in 'Many Wars Ago' (1970).
The poster for The Twentieth Century. It's designed in a style similar to 1930s Hollywood posters. Against a dark blue background, a series of heads of various characters amidst large text proclaiming "Supreme creativity ... jaw-dropping audacity. Men play women and women play men!" with the title below, in yellow Art Deco lettering. Along the bottom, a lineup of characters with William Lyon Mackenzie King, future Prime Minister of Canada, standing at far right, staring off into the future. As is his destiny. The poster for Mynarski chute mortelle, or Mynarski Death Plummet. The poster has a black background. There is a photo of the real life World War II bomber crewman Andrew Mynarski, a black and white headshot wearing a suit and tie. The photo is depicted falling, with a stream of abstract yellow and red flames trailing behind him. The title, in white block letters, is in the lower right. The poster for Uomini contro, or Many Wars Ago. It is a painting with characters and events from the film. At the very bottom, in the foreground, is a tired looking man in a World war I military uniform and helmet, giving a salute. Behind him at to the left, is a gruff looking older man, the general, with his much fancier officer's hat. Behind him, and now to the right, is a dead man ensnared in barbed wire. At the very top of the poster, against a blood red bar, is the title in large yellow letters.
August 4, 2025 at 7:49 AM
joshgulch.bsky.social
Enjoyed a rose-colored week 30. Began with 'Immaculate' (2024) which grew more red as the story progressed. Followed with the red-colored personas of 'Nimona' (2023). Finished with two redheads: Vincent van Gogh in 'Loving Vincent' (2017) and ultimate redhead Karen Gillan in 'Late Bloomers' (2023).
The poster for Immaculate. Filling the entire frame is a half portrait of a young woman (Sydney Sweeney) in a nun's habit, staring off to the left, her face bisected by the edge of the poster. Her white collar is stained with blood. The title is in red serif letters across the center. The poster for Nimona. It's a 3D animated film so it's in that style. A man in dark armor with a robotic prosthetic arm, and a mustache and goatee, stands in wide eyed shock, his pose reeling back, owing to a large number of various swords poking in from every edge of the poster, encircling him. Atop is shoulders is a young redheaded girl with a crazed expression her face, her posture ready to take on all of those wielding the swords. A pair of red dragon-like wings sprout from her back. The title is below the man's chest in white handwritten letters. The poster for Loving Vincent. It's an oil painting, as the entire film is animated through oil paintings, in the style of van Gogh's works. Vincent van Gogh stands with his back to us, glancing back over his shoulder. The background is made up of impressionistic turquoise swirls. The title, in dark blue, is below his shoulder, in handwritten, partially cursive, lettering. The poster for Late Bloomers. It features two women, one an elderly blonde and the other a young redhead, sitting on a wooden bench under a bus stop covering. A veritable garden of flowers erupts behind them, filling the bus stop. They are both photos while the scenery is illustrated. Overhead, against a pale yellow sky, the title in elegant red script lettering.
July 28, 2025 at 6:37 AM
joshgulch.bsky.social
A busy week 29 only left room for two films. Two Laurels and two Hardys caused five times the shenanigans in 'Our Relations' (1936) while Lee Pace and others pulled double duty between the fact and fiction storylines of 'The Fall' (2006).
The poster for Our Relations. Against a lemon yellow background, Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel, dressed as sailors with caps that read "S.S. Periwinkle" printed along the edge, stand at the left. Stanley points down at a man in an age-of-sail pirate outfit, complete with large tricorn hat, eyepatch, sword at side, and flared pantaloons in the lower right. The pirate does not appear in the film and it makes no sense why he is there. The title is below the boys in jaunty, staggered yellow letters. The poster for The Fall. Lee Pace stands at far left, bisected vertically through his centerline by the edge of the poster. He wears a sort of vest, with button up front and gold striped banding all the way up the front from waist to collar. His pants are black and flared and he holds an old fashioned flintlock pistol, raised beside his head. Occupying the center of the poster is a red mask, shaped like a rectangle with a rectangle opening within for eyeholes, with a vertical strip down the center. A woman's eyes peer through the mask. A blue butterfly and red flower below the mask give the shapes of a nose and mouth. The backdrop is a desert scene, with an onion shaped red pleated fabric covered carriage burning, a thick tower of dark smoke rising into the blue sky. The title is in the center, below the mask, in a tall maroon typeface with flared ends to the letters.
July 21, 2025 at 7:56 AM
joshgulch.bsky.social
Played the name game in week 28 by watching 'Seconds' (1966) with Roy Scherer Jr., 'Rain' (1932) with Lucille LeSueur, and 'Mermaids' (1990) with Cheryl Sarkisian and Winona Horowitz. If those really are their names!
The poster for Seconds. Against a black background, a circle with a black and white image distorted by a fisheye lends, of Rock Hudson strapped to a gurney, being pushed by an attendant, while a man in a suit stands behind them reading from a small book. The man strapped down is trying to scream but his mouth is gagged. Below is a small collage of the secondary characters, with a warped checkerboard floor twisting off behind them. The title is off to the lower right in yellow block letters. The poster for Rain. It features a painting of Joan Crawford, her face pale and her lips red, staring moodily off into space, with a dark midnight blue background. Her name is very large, spanning the poster from side to side, with the title in tall yellow letters, dwarfed by her presence. The poster for Mermaids. Bob Hoskins, Cher, and baby Christina Ricci are posed in the center, with Cher wearing a mermaid costume that consists of a white corset with sweater sleeves, the cups being made of clamshells, with a shimmering blue-grey metallic skirt. She has a blonde frizzy wig on. Hoskins stands behind her in a suit, lookin' cheeky, while baby Christina Ricci holds her by the waist. Below, there's an inset picture of Winona Ryder in a Wednesday Addams style top with the white collar on a black shirt, her hands together in prayer, a crucifix around her neck. The title is below her in simple blue serif lettering.
July 14, 2025 at 9:13 AM
joshgulch.bsky.social
A really off week only allowed me to witness a singular act of kindness with Aki Kaurismäki's 'Le Havre' (2011), where an old man tried his hardest to assist a young migrant boy in avoiding immigration police to help him get to his family. A very timely good deed in these trying times.
The poster for Le Havre. It's rendered in a minimalist illustration style and depicts an elderly man in a beige jacket and brown pants leaning against a dark red shipping container, looking off into the distance. Beside him, a young Black child crouches in his shadow, his wide eyes staring intently ahead, while a police officer in a long black coat, hat, and moustache stands off in the distance amongst other containers, staring at them. A golden furred dog also sits at the feet of the old man, looking off wherever he's looking. The title is at upper right in the yellow all caps Myriad Bold Condensed skewed slightly up and right that Kaurismäki frequently uses in his posters.
July 7, 2025 at 6:55 AM