Guns and mugs. Most movie posters still contain a posed action shot with a weapon or strong, appealing shots of their stars (some assemble every actor for a group shot and call it a job well done). Many are indistinguishable. In that way, movie posters greatly reflect movies in general.
However, every year there always a high number of well-crafted, well-designed films, and likewise, there’s always a high number of interesting and differently designed movie posters to complement them. Some designs harken back to previous decades, some convey the plot with a single image, some have adventurous fonts or color tones, and some have no stars and have to stand out from the generic posters that litter multiplexes.
Related: The Top 14 Home Video Releases of 2014
Snobby design folk like to say that “good design can change the world.” Well, we will certainly concede that good movie poster design can make us consider a film that wasn’t on our radar before, or that was lower in interest. Others wet the appetite for a project that we’d already looked forward to.
Okay, we’ve waxed philosophical enough on this subject. You just want to get to the slideshow to see our picks. We just needed to get enough text to register as a full-fledged SEO-stamped article about a pretty self-describable list. Now that we’re at an impatient standoff, we invite you to view our selections in the slideshow below. Also, we want you to know that this was very thorough, and included a scan of every poster that is listed with a 2014 release. We considered teaser posters, proper theatrical posters, but we didn’t consider character posters because those are more akin to trading cards and follow a template for numerous posters. If we left out your favorite, please sound off below!
Slideshow: The 20 Best Movie Posters of 2014
Brian Formo is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at @BrianEmilFormo.
Top 20 Movie Posters of 2014
-
20. X-Men: Days of Future Past
Designed by: BLT Communications
The concept -- overlaying a young Dr. Xavier (James McAvoy) over an image of an older Dr. Xavier (Patrick Stewart) -- is simple, handsome, and effectively gets the time travel plot across. X-tra points for the two-tone color print.
-
19. A Most Violent Year
Designed by: BLT Communications
A romantic photo above a "violent" title lends a proper Lady MacBeth feeling to the type of romance this film has: love is empire building. The black and white is also a nice touch for the couple, as both Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain's characters view the use of force in opposing black and white tones.
Sold? Read Fred Topel's review
-
18. Neighbors
Designed by: Ignition
We're giving points to this poster for conveying the film's premise succinctly: a new family man, a frat dude, and a fence between them. A few extra points for a vertical title.
-
17. The Rover
Designed by: Ignition
Points for using a scene from the movie -- and showing the violence and subservience of the two characters -- instead of just using separate shots of The Rover's stars: Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson. Additional points for the fade of blue sky into the desert wasteland.
Sold? Read Fred Topel's blu-ray review (with less interesting cover artwork).
-
16. Starry Eyes
Designed by: Nonsense!
A throwback to 80s horror film video box art, and metal album covers. This one-sheet also has a great font.
-
15. Stage Fright
Designed by: P+A
Although this poster is a fantastic throwback to 80s horror (Dario Argento's Opera and a creepier "Phantom of the Opera" come to mind), we knocked it down a few spots for including the old crease lines of a folded up poster. This image deserves to be preserved.
Sold? Watch a death scene, exclusively debuted by CraveOnline.
-
14. The Dog
Designed by: Nonsense!
The Dog is a documentary about John Wojtowicz, whose attempt at robbing a Brooklyn bank in the 70s to fund his male lover's sex change operation was turned into the Al Pacino classic Dog Day Afternoon.
This poster uses the LGBT pride colors to convey that the doc will put the queerness of Wojtowicz more front and center than Dog Day did. But by placing Wojtowicz behind the color bars it also implies that this will be a truer portrait of a character than Technicolor Hollywood was able to do.
-
13. Third Person
Designed by: Cardinal Communications
This lovely design makes us think we're going to watch classic 60s Italian cinema: chasing the women from La Dolce Vita, Blowup and 8 1/2 comes to mind. So to, does the femme cast list of Mila Kunis, Olivia Wilde, Moran Atlas, Maria Bello, and Kim Basinger. Their names are placed above Liam Neeson's "watch me" order-following (order given?) gaze.
But then, hidden toward the bottom, the text, "from the director of Crash" makes us aware that it won't be as skilled as those aforementioned Fellini and Antonioni films. That's the power of a poster. It can raise and lower your expectations, from top to bottom.
-
12. The Better Angels
Designed by: Midnight Marauder
A lovely photographic image -- two foreheads pressed in an embrace -- above a "Terrence Malick presents" slug, lets us know all we need to know: it's going to be pretty.
-
11. Maleficent
Designed by: BLT Communications
Those horns! Those eyebrows! The over the shoulder stare, and the hidden, menacing red lips: Disney has never looked so dark and twisted.
-
10. The One I Love
Designed by: Akiko Stehrenberger
This damaged romance takes a surprising genre twist for its third act. To be in a relationship is to be treading water. This poster is the best book cover type design for a film from 2014.
Sold? Watch it on Netflix.
-
9. The Purge: Anarchy
Designed by: Ignition
Movie posters have long used the American flag to juxtapose something menacing and violent. The weapons that substitute for the stripes in this teaser poster for the horror sequel was horrifically deceptive at first sight. It's even more horrifying now, after witnessing military enforcement against American citizens in protest.
-
8. Nightcrawler
Designed by: BLT Communications
We love the color halftone effect, the skyline, and the font. You might not be able to get a sense of what Nightcrawler is about from this poster, but it certainly catches the eye. And after witnessing Jake Gyllenhaal's wide-eyed optimism of the film, we get it: his future's so bright he's gotta wear shades.
Sold? Read Brian Formo's review.
-
7. The Grand Budapest Hotel
Designed by: BLT Communications
Wes Anderson's designs in his films are so meticulous that it's a disservice to put faces on his posters. Just show the set.
This poster actually perfectly captures the story within a story approach of Wes Anderson's quadruple-narrated film: it's the painting of the hotel that hangs inside the hotel.
-
6. Inherent Vice
Designed by: Dustin Stanton
This design uses the font and colors of the cover of Thomas Pynchon's novel that it was adopted from, but the film's poster actually captures the feel of the story much better than the book cover.
The corners have a surface sexiness on one side, a clue on the other. And the feet are a little wrinkly from so much sunlight.
-
5. Under the Skin
Designed by: Kellerhouse
Information transmitted from this other-worldly design: Scarlett Johansson is a star. Humanity is a prism of different experiences. To seduce is to focus on features.
-
4. Gone Girl
Designed by: Kellerhouse
Poof, and she's gone. Ben Affleck's back is to us, because we're not sure if we should trust his narrative. Rosamund Pike's eyes are set as the last glance out the door. The extra magnificent touch? The Fox News ticker running beneath Affleck. This poster conveys why people are so obsessed with crime cases: you're fed a story, but who knows what you can actually believe. The principals are all selling some angle.
-
3. Blue Ruin
Design by: Palaceworks
Video stores, remember those? The poster for Blue Ruin is a design that would've caught your eye scanning through the new releases at a video store. The tile. The colors bleeding through the cracked windshield font. A crime scene. There are no stars to sell you on taking a chance on Blue Ruin. If you were in a video store and took a chance on this exciting potboiler, you'd think you'd really discovered something that everyone else looked over.
-
2. Godzilla
Designed by: Art Machine
Sometimes all you need to do for a great movie poster is to take the best moment from the trailer and posterize it.
Godzilla certainly wins for having the best marketing campaign of the year, from beginning to end.
-
1. We Are the Best!
Designed by: Gravillis
Color, font, hairstyle -- you know this is a punk movie right away. Just seeing this poster will make you want to go home and make a 'zine as soon as possible. DIY is the fucking best. And punk is never really dead as long as there is youth.
