1. The Place Beyond The Pines
The Place Beyond The Pines is one of the most beautiful and impressive films from 2013, and epic hardly begins to describe the scope of the generation-spanning story. Part of what makes it so memorable is the gritty tone. There aren’t many good guys or bad guys. Everyone falls somewhere in the grey area. So for the film’s posters most of the color was washed out, the images were distressed, and there’s a focus on the powerful characters that the story centered on. All the headshot posters are great, but it’s this image of Ryan Gosling staring at the fateful bank that tops the bunch.
The photo is just completely beautiful. It’s a perfectly framed image of the scene, leaving ample room for text above without seeming forced. And that’s because the clouds behind the text are beautiful in their own right. It’s rare that I’ll be excited to look at the clouds in a picture, but here they’re just wonderful, working perfectly with the tone of the movie and the the rest of the poster.
For me, the most memorable part of the movie was the initial bank robbery and the period of time just before it. While the entire film is taut, that’s the most intense portion. So obviously a poster depicting that is going to have my attention. It doesn’t have any of the other memorable characters on it, but it’s a beautifully composed and shot piece of art, and that makes it the best movie poster of 2013.
