SPOILERS AHEAD
Zodiac is the best film of the year.
Because I Said So is the worst film of the year.
Premonition is the dumbest film of the year.
I like Sandra Bullock. I really do. She's one of the most underrated actresses working in Hollywood today. In my book, if you can take a bad film on paper and make it good (Miss Congeniality, Speed 2 - Yep, I'm a defender of that movie) you're obviously doing something right. She has a charm about her that I think is missing from a good chunk of the actresses working today. That saying, she can't save Premonition from becoming a massive wreck.
Linda Hanson (Bullock) seems like your normal housewife. She has two adorable little daughters and a husband (Julian McMahon) who seems somewhat distant. That is until one day Linda recieves news that her husband has been killed in a car crash. She consoles her children the best she can, but she also has help from her mother (Kate Nelligan) and best friend (Nia Long). After a long day she collapses on the couch and falls asleep. The next day she wakes up in her bed, but she hears a sound coming from the kitchen. Is it her mom? No. It's her dead husband Jim. She soon realizes that she is living each day out of order. One day Jim is alive, the next he is dead, but is all confined within one week. After some problems at first, she soon realizes that she might have the power to control whether or not Jim lives or dies. Or does she?
I really don't know where to begin with this mess. I might as well start by saying that the film isn't awful thanks to Sandra Bullock. With anyone else this is a laughable mess. With her, it's barely watchable. She's the only decent thing about the film.
As I mentioned before - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Okay, let's start with what this film is supposed to be. A drama? A poor one. A thriller? Not really thrilling. A comedy? Close. There too many unintentional laughs in this thing to really take the film seriously. I mean, when you have a scene outside of a church where only two guys are trying to carry the casket of her husband into the church - while the lady who works for the funeral home is saying that Bullock can't see the body - only to have the casket fling open to have her husband's head pop out and roll around on the ground for as long as PG-13 film can allow, that's just stupid. You can't pass that off as traumatic because it's just too funny.
Bullock's character is committed? Why? Because the mother saw the scars on the child and immediately assumed that she did it? Nice parental benefit of the doubt. Because she said that her husband would die the next day? Okay, like the psych said himself, we all say, dream and imagine things, so that can't be it? Did she do something on Thursday and Friday that I'm forgetting about? Did she take out a clock tower?
How about Supergirl running through a glass door? One of her daughters inexplicably runs through a glass door. And I don't just mean she runs up to it and falls down. She takes it out like a lineback. Here's the thing,it doesn't help that the door was clearly a CGI cartoon when the girl ran through, but how about just the simple idea of it? Why is it in the film? To make a beautiful small little girl look like Leatherface? Because I didn't see any reason why that had to be in the film, except to mark which day Bullock was in, which could've just been answered with a simple title card? She also kept that calendar up didn't she? We saw it what, twice?
Now let's move onto the things that weren't funny, but still puzzled the ***** out me.
What about that psychiatrist who just hands out Lithium? I know you have to condense some scenes to keep the film moving, but she met with him for all of five minutes? Talk about a drug addicts fantasy.
The affair. Boy that was played up well. Her husband is thinking about having an affair with one of his co-workers. That's pretty much all we know. It's basically handled as an afterthought, but it's a big key to the film. It's the key to when Bullock realizes that she can pretty much control her husband's death. She ponders it for chrissake! But what, it's played up with a phone call at the end, and a scene with the mistress at the cementary and at her front door? What's also a mystery is why the husband wanted the affair. So, I'll ask. Why? All I could gather it was a silent distance between the two. But in anything except a silent film, that's not enough. He's just interested for the sake of the plot. Plot? HA!
And then we come down to the all important question - why was she having these premonitions? I found it kind of odd that it was pretty much written as an afterthought? If you take that scene out of the film where she goes to church, you've got no other evidence as to why she has them. That saying, they almost would've been better off. She has premonitions because she has a loss of faith? Or was it the other way around? Either way...........whaaaaaaaaaaat?
Finally we come upon the ending. I would've been very leniant on the things I mentioned above, if it weren't for one of the worst endings I have ever seen in a film.
SPOILERS PEOPLE!!!
Her husband dies. Fair enough you might say? Not if you invested 90 minutes on someone who is kind of trying to prevent the whole thing from happening. I say kind of because she has that one scene on the bed when she's not sure. And then to top the whole thing off, she's pregnant! Which makes killing him even worse. There's a 10 minute seqence prior where the two of them fall in love again, and it almost seems that they maybe a complete family again. So they kill him off?
I guess here pregnancy is supposed to represent hope and gaining her faith back, but let's be honest here. She's a thrity-something partial wacko who is now in charge of three kids. She will have to raise them all by herself and from the looks of things, she didn't have a job. Sure they have the money from the policy the husband set in when he apparenly became suspicious of his wife's warning (We never see a scene to really confirm it), but how long will that last them? Should I care? And then how about the simple fact that even though he apparently paid attention to his wife's warnings, he still tried to go and see that woman, with that business meeting tacked on. Did I mention that the affair was hardly brought up? So we're pretty much lead to believe he's a *****ing moron right?
There my rant is done
Zodiac is the best film of the year.
Because I Said So is the worst film of the year.
Premonition is the dumbest film of the year.
I like Sandra Bullock. I really do. She's one of the most underrated actresses working in Hollywood today. In my book, if you can take a bad film on paper and make it good (Miss Congeniality, Speed 2 - Yep, I'm a defender of that movie) you're obviously doing something right. She has a charm about her that I think is missing from a good chunk of the actresses working today. That saying, she can't save Premonition from becoming a massive wreck.
Linda Hanson (Bullock) seems like your normal housewife. She has two adorable little daughters and a husband (Julian McMahon) who seems somewhat distant. That is until one day Linda recieves news that her husband has been killed in a car crash. She consoles her children the best she can, but she also has help from her mother (Kate Nelligan) and best friend (Nia Long). After a long day she collapses on the couch and falls asleep. The next day she wakes up in her bed, but she hears a sound coming from the kitchen. Is it her mom? No. It's her dead husband Jim. She soon realizes that she is living each day out of order. One day Jim is alive, the next he is dead, but is all confined within one week. After some problems at first, she soon realizes that she might have the power to control whether or not Jim lives or dies. Or does she?
I really don't know where to begin with this mess. I might as well start by saying that the film isn't awful thanks to Sandra Bullock. With anyone else this is a laughable mess. With her, it's barely watchable. She's the only decent thing about the film.
As I mentioned before - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Okay, let's start with what this film is supposed to be. A drama? A poor one. A thriller? Not really thrilling. A comedy? Close. There too many unintentional laughs in this thing to really take the film seriously. I mean, when you have a scene outside of a church where only two guys are trying to carry the casket of her husband into the church - while the lady who works for the funeral home is saying that Bullock can't see the body - only to have the casket fling open to have her husband's head pop out and roll around on the ground for as long as PG-13 film can allow, that's just stupid. You can't pass that off as traumatic because it's just too funny.
Bullock's character is committed? Why? Because the mother saw the scars on the child and immediately assumed that she did it? Nice parental benefit of the doubt. Because she said that her husband would die the next day? Okay, like the psych said himself, we all say, dream and imagine things, so that can't be it? Did she do something on Thursday and Friday that I'm forgetting about? Did she take out a clock tower?
How about Supergirl running through a glass door? One of her daughters inexplicably runs through a glass door. And I don't just mean she runs up to it and falls down. She takes it out like a lineback. Here's the thing,it doesn't help that the door was clearly a CGI cartoon when the girl ran through, but how about just the simple idea of it? Why is it in the film? To make a beautiful small little girl look like Leatherface? Because I didn't see any reason why that had to be in the film, except to mark which day Bullock was in, which could've just been answered with a simple title card? She also kept that calendar up didn't she? We saw it what, twice?
Now let's move onto the things that weren't funny, but still puzzled the ***** out me.
What about that psychiatrist who just hands out Lithium? I know you have to condense some scenes to keep the film moving, but she met with him for all of five minutes? Talk about a drug addicts fantasy.
The affair. Boy that was played up well. Her husband is thinking about having an affair with one of his co-workers. That's pretty much all we know. It's basically handled as an afterthought, but it's a big key to the film. It's the key to when Bullock realizes that she can pretty much control her husband's death. She ponders it for chrissake! But what, it's played up with a phone call at the end, and a scene with the mistress at the cementary and at her front door? What's also a mystery is why the husband wanted the affair. So, I'll ask. Why? All I could gather it was a silent distance between the two. But in anything except a silent film, that's not enough. He's just interested for the sake of the plot. Plot? HA!
And then we come down to the all important question - why was she having these premonitions? I found it kind of odd that it was pretty much written as an afterthought? If you take that scene out of the film where she goes to church, you've got no other evidence as to why she has them. That saying, they almost would've been better off. She has premonitions because she has a loss of faith? Or was it the other way around? Either way...........whaaaaaaaaaaat?
Finally we come upon the ending. I would've been very leniant on the things I mentioned above, if it weren't for one of the worst endings I have ever seen in a film.
SPOILERS PEOPLE!!!
Her husband dies. Fair enough you might say? Not if you invested 90 minutes on someone who is kind of trying to prevent the whole thing from happening. I say kind of because she has that one scene on the bed when she's not sure. And then to top the whole thing off, she's pregnant! Which makes killing him even worse. There's a 10 minute seqence prior where the two of them fall in love again, and it almost seems that they maybe a complete family again. So they kill him off?
I guess here pregnancy is supposed to represent hope and gaining her faith back, but let's be honest here. She's a thrity-something partial wacko who is now in charge of three kids. She will have to raise them all by herself and from the looks of things, she didn't have a job. Sure they have the money from the policy the husband set in when he apparenly became suspicious of his wife's warning (We never see a scene to really confirm it), but how long will that last them? Should I care? And then how about the simple fact that even though he apparently paid attention to his wife's warnings, he still tried to go and see that woman, with that business meeting tacked on. Did I mention that the affair was hardly brought up? So we're pretty much lead to believe he's a *****ing moron right?
There my rant is done
Top Box Office
- 1.$70.6M
- 2.$35.2M
- 3.$23.4M
- 4.$3.1M
- 5.$2.8M
- 6.$2.7M
- 7.$2.2M
- 8.$2.2M
- 9.$2.2M
- 10.$1.1M