A striking design by the artist Martin Ansin features on this official screen print for the 2012 sci-fi film Looper. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, creator of the superb ‘Brick’ (2005), the film is a futuristic, somewhat dystopian crime-drama based around the theme of time travel. Looper is set in both 2044 and 2074 and stars Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the same character from each era, with the latter made to look uncannily like the former thanks to the skills of makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji. The audience learns that time-travel was invented in 2074 but then immediately outlawed. Because the tracking of individuals is so advanced and accurate, enterprising criminal gangs begin using the technology to dispose of victims they want disappeared.

These individuals are sent back in time 30 years and killed by the titular loopers who are paid in silver bars strapped to the victims. Eventually, however, all loopers must accept that they too are sent back in time to be killed by their younger selves. They are sent with reward of a packet of gold bars strapped to them and this moment known as ‘closing the loop’, is intended to stop the future authorities seeing a link to the use of time-travel. Young Joe (Gordon-Levitt) discovers that his flat-mate Seth (Paul Dano) failed to close his own loop because his older self warned him of a mysterious figure in the future known as the Rainmaker who has begun to overthrow the crime bosses and is murdering each of the loopers one by one. Joe reluctantly agrees to help his crime boss Abe (Jeff Daniels) track down Seth and close the loop.

One day Joe comes face to face with his older self and the older Joe (Willis) manages to overpower his younger self and he escapes. Older Joe is determined to kill the Rainmaker when he was just a child and young Joe discovers the target is a young child called Cid (Pierce Gagnon) who lives on a remote farm with his mother Sara (Emily Blunt). Sara confides that Cid has advanced telekinetic powers and that the young boy is barely able to control them when he gets angry. Soon, Abe’s henchmen come looking for young Joe and he must try to survive whilst also protecting Cid from older Joe and attempting to stop him from fulfilling his destiny as the Rainmaker.

Johnson also introduces an alternative timeline in which young Joe kills his older self before he can escape but then shows how the timelines are then ingeniously linked together. The film was met with great critical acclaim and performed brilliantly at the box-office, with takings several times the original production cost. Some recent reviews on IMDb have been pretty brutal and unforgiving of what are perceived to be plot holes focused around the time travel concepts, but the director himself has since explained that the film was never intended to get too focused on the technicalities of how it works:

‘Even though it’s a time-travel movie, the pleasure of it doesn’t come from the mass of time travel. It’s not a film like Primer, for instance, where the big part of the enjoyment is kind of working out all the intricacies of it. For Looper, I very much wanted it to be a more character-based movie that is more about how these characters dealt with the situation time travel has brought about.’

This screen print was commissioned by the limited edition poster outfit Mondo for a screening of the film at the 2012 Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. It was created by the talented Uruguayan designer and artist Martin Ansin, whose work has graced many of the best posters released by Mondo, including several in the Universal Monsters series, like this amazing Phantom of the Opera one. This design for Looper cleverly captures the time travel concepts and the two versions of the lead character.  The artist also worked on a variant of the poster that features a silver colourway.

The other posters I’ve collected by Ansin can be seen here. His official website is well worth a browse.

This is the advance one sheet for the 2010 western Meek’s Cutoff, directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood and Paul Dano. The director is best known for her work on indie films and spent some of the early part of her career working behind the scenes for directors including Todd Haynes (she was involved in his first film, Poison) before beginning to direct in 1994. She’s best known for Wendy and Lucy (2006), this film, and 2016’s Certain Women. The film is loosely based on a real incident that happened in 1845 on the Oregon Trail, a famous route for families who were emigrating across the United States to the West coast. The name of the film references an alternative route that was taken by the famous frontiersman Stephen Meek.

The film focuses on three families who have hired Meek (Greenwood) to take them along the trail to Oregon. They place their trust in him when he suggests a shortcut that will shave time off their journey. After some time it becomes clear that Meek has miscalculated and the group struggle to find a source of fresh water, which is much needed in the arid and sunbleached Oregon High Desert. The group realise a Native Indian has been following them at a distance and eventually Meek sets out to capture him. They then have to decide whether to kill him or trust him to lead them to water and eventual safety.

The artwork on this one sheet is by the noted designer and illustrator Marlene McCarty who was apparently specifically requested to work on the poster by Reicardt. McCarty has been active since the 1980s and gained notoriety for her work with the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury during the 80s and 1990s. She’s also known as the co-founder trans-disciplinary design studio Bureau along with Donald Moffett. As Adrian Curry explains in this ‘Movie poster of the week’ article on mubi.com, the artist has also worked on film posters for various indie productions over the years. More recently she’s been producing large scale drawings of people and chimpanzees, drawn using pencil and ballpoint pen. Curry notes that this illustration of Michelle Williams has been drawn in a similar style, albeit with some digital touch-ups during the design process. McCarty also worked on the film’s titles.

A great portrait of the legendary country singer Willie Nelson on this poster for the film based on his 1975 album Red Headed Stranger. The film, like the source material, tells the story of a preacher in a Wild West town who seeks redemption after he kills his wife and her lover in an act of revenge.

The film took several years to come to the screen and at one point it looked like Robert Redford would play the preacher, despite Nelson always envisioning the part for himself. Sam Peckinpah was also attached to the project but left after the budget proved to be insufficient. Nelson and the director William D. Wittliff eventually raised the finance themselves through various means, and I believe Wrangler jeans may have been one of the sources – hence the inclusion of a Wrangler logo on the poster. A mock Wild West town nicknamed Willieville was built near to the singer’s home in Texas and filming took place there as well as a few other locations.

The excellent artwork is by American artist Robert Tanenbaum. To see other posters I’ve collected by him click here.

A (VHS) trailer for the film is on YouTube.