Awards sea­son con­tenders ranked by their posters

With awards sea­son fast approach­ing, and because Hol­ly­wood loves noth­ing move than to cel­e­brate sur­face beau­ty, we’ve lined up some of the year’s big hope­fuls and ranked them accord­ing to how visu­al­ly appeal­ing their offi­cial pro­mo­tion­al assets are. If you’ve got a favourite ²⁰¹⁶⁄₁₇ movie poster that isn’t fea­tured below, let us know @LWLies

This sleek poster doesn’t explic­it­ly sug­gest aliens, yet from the impos­ing mono­lith­ic shape, title and tagline we know just what to expect from Denis Villeneuve’s low-key sci-fi dra­ma. The sub­tle­ty with which Arrival’s poster posi­tions the film is as mys­te­ri­ous and orig­i­nal as the film itself.

Per­haps not the most orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion or tagline, yet Dev Patel’s frown­ing face def­i­nite­ly gives Lion’s poster an impli­ca­tion of high stakes and sol­id deter­mi­na­tion. Patel’s curly lion mane locks sug­gest a hint of Sam­son-like inner strength. We could have done with­out the ran­dom search engine bar cut­ting right across the cen­tre though.

Although Fences was not shot in black-and-white, this fine look­ing mono­chrome poster elo­quent­ly con­veys a sense of time and his­to­ry. And with a pow­er­house act­ing duo like Den­zel Wash­ing­ton and Vio­la Davis front and cen­tre, it would be pret­ty dif­fi­cult not to stop and take notice.

Emma Stone’s bright yel­low dress con­trasts beau­ti­ful­ly with the deep blue-pur­ple sky, and there’s a cer­tain dreamy qual­i­ty afford­ed by the glow­ing street lamp and twin­kling stars above. Although there is some­thing of a man­nequin chal­lenge feel to the pair’s mid-dance pose.

Minus the crash­ing waves, there is very lit­tle noise in this poster for Mar­tin Scorsese’s upcom­ing Jesuit dra­ma. With its gloomy palette and clever fram­ing of Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver’s char­ac­ters with­in Liam Neeson’s strong, embat­tled frame, this almost ethe­re­al image sug­gests so much with­out actu­al­ly giv­ing any­thing away.

We get the plane, we get the Hud­son Riv­er, and we get Tom Han­ks as Cap­tain Sul­ly, but there’s so much more to this poster for Clint Eastwood’s true-life dra­ma than meets the eye. A per­fect exam­ple of a decep­tive­ly sim­ple composition.

Besides the rather corny ​‘all love is cre­at­ed equal’ tagline, and the slight­ly con­trived pose of Joel Edger­ton and Ruth Neg­ga, the poster for Jeff Nichols’ Lov­ing has an irre­sistible roman­tic warmth to it, with its attrac­tive blend of nat­ur­al light and soft sepia tones. Its impact again comes from its sim­plic­i­ty, sug­gest­ing two peo­ple who love each oth­er deeply.

For a film enti­tled 20^th Cen­tu­ry Women, it’s some­thing of a sur­prise to see two men in the group of five fea­tured on this poster. But Mike Mills’ film is about rela­tion­ships, and the eye-catch­ing place­ment of var­i­ous ​’70s-era pho­tographs hints at both the peri­od and set­ting. A sump­tu­ous­ly sun­ny, ana­logue-tinged snap of an every­day fam­i­ly scene that per­fect­ly cap­tures the film’s heart­warm­ing essence.

This poster for Man­ches­ter by the Sea can get a tick for being aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing. At first glance, the cosy scene of peb­bles and seag­ulls gives the poster a Nicholas Sparks feel. How­ev­er, the cold sea­side set­ting, Affleck’s down­cast gaze and the awk­ward space between the two cen­tral fig­ures is enough to sug­gest what is in fact an emo­tion­al­ly raw mod­ern masterpiece.

It’s hard to miss this strik­ing, deep red vision of Natal­ie Port­man as Jack­ie Kennedy – a straight to the point state­ment that this is a biopic. See­ing red imme­di­ate­ly con­jures up asso­ci­a­tions with the for­mer First Lady’s blood-splat­tered dress after her husband’s assas­si­na­tion in 1963, allud­ing to the inher­ent tragedy of this 20^th cen­tu­ry icon.

This strik­ing neon-hued por­trait com­pris­es the three dif­fer­ent lead actors in Bar­ry Jenk­ins’ Moon­light. The faces are neat­ly spliced togeth­er, with jar­ring tri­an­gu­lar shapes off­set­ting the sep­a­rate shades of pink, pur­ple and turquoise. The boy­ish inno­cence, blood­ied nose and intense stare all cap­ture the dis­parate yet ulti­mate­ly sin­gu­lar thread of one person’s ​“sto­ry of a lifetime”.