The movie tagline is an art form unto itself. Short, snappy, faux-sincere and often completely meaningless, the tagline is an almost redundant part of film marketing that provides both a hint at the movie within and a ludicrous soundbite that only sounds right coming out of the mouth of Trailer Man. These tiny snippets range from the amusing (like The 40-Year-Old Virgin's: "The longer you wait, the harder it gets"), to the iconic (Goldeneye's: "You know the name. You know the number"), to the inspiring (Saving Private Ryan's: "The mission is a man") to the frankly even more inspiring (Day of the Dolphin's: "Unwittingly, he trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States"), but, more often than not, taglines are just plain dumb. Take, for instance, Jaws: The Revenge's: "This time it's personal," a basically excellent tagline until you realise it's about a shark, or Knowing's: "What happens when the numbers run out?" which sounds like the conspiratorial wailings of an idiot. Even better, though, are the taglines that secretly seem to be warning you about the (often terrible) films they're advertising. Taglines like...
Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1
