Sandra Bullock

Gravity

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Gravity
  • IMDB: link

GravitySpace and underwater films offer the unique juxtaposition to explore both vastness and claustrophobia simultaneously. With Gravity writer/director Alfonso Cuarón offers a tense thriller, a moving character study centered around a single performance, and a roller-coaster that provides some of the best action scenes of this year. The result is a thrilling 91-minute thematic experience which easily ranks as one of the year’s best films.

Seeing the film in 3D IMAX, Cuarón’s vision is breathtaking. Although George Clooney has a supporting role as a throwback larger-than-life astronaut who would have been right at home during NASA’s heyday when astronauts were the country’s greatest heroes, Sandra Bullock carries nearly the entire film. And she does it well. As Dr. Ryan Stone,  a scientist sent to work on the Hubble Space Telescope, Bullock becomes untethered and lost in the vastness of space miles above Earth when debris from a Russian satellite rips through the shuttle and leaves her without anyone to rely on other than herself.

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Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
  • IMDB: link

extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close-dvdBased on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close follows the search of nine year-old with Asberger’s Syndrome who finds a key in his father’s (Tom Hanks) possessions and embarks on the kind of adventure his father used to create for him before his death on 9/11.

Oskar Schell’s (Thomas Horn) adventure takes him all over New York in an attempt to find a man or woman with the last name of Black who may be the only person who knows what lock the key fits. Over the course of his search Oskar meets several people including the mysterious mute renter (Max von Sydow) of his grandmother’s (Zoe Caldwell), who Oskar begins taking with him on his search.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is too cute for its own good. Although similar in the type of story told in Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated (one of my favorite films of 2005) director Stephen Daldry struggles with framing the tale.

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While You Were Sleeping

/ / Home Video, Theme Week
  • Title: While You Were Sleeping
  • IMDB: link

while-you-were-sleeping-posterLucy Eleanor Moderatz (Sandra Bullock) lives alone with her cat, carries an empty passport around in her coat pocket, and works long hours as in a subway booth taking tokens from strangers.  One bright spot in her dreary existence is when Peter Callaghan (Peter Gallagher) walks by every morning even though they’ve never met. 

On Christmas morning he’s mugged and falls onto the tracks.  Lucy jumps on the tracks and saves his life and through a miscommunication at the hospital is believed to be Peter’s fiancé.  When Peter’s large family arrives to find him in a coma they thank Lucy for saving his life and immediately embrace her into the family.  The whole thing happens so fast Lucy doesn’t get a chance to tell them the truth and, after a few days with the family, doesn’t want to.

Aside from funny misunderstandings and odd coincidences the film is basically about relationships.  Lucy’s only confidant is her boss (Jerry Bernard) who Lucy tells the story to and is both amused and annoyed at her situation. 

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I’ve got a “Proposal” for you

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Proposal
  • IMDB: link

The ProposalRomantic comedies can scare critics away quicker than a mob racing out of a burning building. It’s hard to warm up to a genre that’s let you down so often, and so consistently. So settling down to watch The Proposal all I really was hoping for was to make it out of the theater with my sanity intact.

Here’s the thing, aside from the contrived device used to get the film’s stars together (and a few best-forgotten groan-worthy scenes), the film actually works better than I expected. It’s not great by any stretch of the imagination, but for the genre it’s above average.

Sandra Bullock stars as Margaret Tate, a bitchy cutthroat book editor who is feared by all. Her assistant, Andrew (Ryan Reynolds), sums up her character best as someone who is allergic to “pinenuts and the full spectrum of human emotion.” When Margaret is faced with being deported and losing her job she decides to blackmail Andrew, whose career track is tied to her success, into marrying her. The newly engaged couple take a trip to Andrew’s hometown to learn about each other and prepare for a quicky wedding. And so the shenanigans begin.

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Capote, Take Two

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Infamous
  • IMDB: link

“Infamous is when you’re more than famous…he’s not just famous, he’s in-famous.”
—Three Amigos

InfamousMuch like Capote, the film begins in New York showcasing Truman Capote (Toby Jones) in his natural habitat.  Here however we are shown a man with a large group of friends, dreams and desires, and a great sense of humor.  Unlike Bennet Miller‘s Capote, this one is a fully realized character rather than simply a manipulator.

Truman and Nell Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock) travel to Kansas to research a new book about a grizzly murder.  Of course Capote is completely out of place in the rural Midwest and shunned by the local sheriff (Jeff Daniels) and townspeople until he wins them over with his tales of celebrities.

When the two murderers are apprehended Truman travels to the prison to begin interviewing the men and discovers a connection with the tender yet brutal Perry (Daniel Craig).

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