Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0

Premonition

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, Shyann McClure, Courtney Taylor Burness, Nia Long, Amber Valletta, Peter Stormare

Directed by: Mennan Yapo

Sony Pictures - Official Site of the Movie

Check out the discussion of this movie and comic on the boards!

Once upon a time Sandra Bullock was an international darling. Huge box office success, hunky celebrity boyfriends, and “it� girl status in a town that is always looking for the next girl to crown. She was living every little starlet’s dream. A few rocky years filled with bad choices and movies no one bothered to see later ended as Bullock began to show up in off-type risky roles that gained her some attention. She was choosing smart and it paid off as she made a quick return to the spotlight. With her newest film Premonition, a movie where her character is thrust back and forth in time, she hopes to continue this trend and not end up wishing she’d had a vision of the future before she agreed to jump on board this sci-fi hopscotch through time.

I liked Premonition. It’s a great concept, smart and interesting, and it’s told very smoothly, but I don’t think it’s up to par with the films she’s been associated with in the past few years. The story is a little obvious and a few dark turns read as cheap tricks to forcing the audience to become invested, and as I left the theater I couldn’t help but think the finished film is an idea that’s better than the story that tells it.

Premonition is very focused and organized in its storytelling, but when it came to tone there were times where it felt like the movie wasn't sure what kind of movie it wanted to be. There’s an unbalanced shift midway through that was gradual, but noticeable. Lauren Hanson (Bullock) is living the days of a particular week out of order. Specifically the week that her husband dies. Linda unravels into irrational behavior and confusion wondering what, if anything, is real. Around day four she grabs hold of her time-jumping reality and slips into a dark place where she questions the difference between letting someone die and murder.

Linda’s dilemma coupled with some pretty twisted ideas (including maimed children, animal deaths, and a wife demanding to see her widowed husband’s corpse. The corpse of a man that died in a car explosion. You do the math) makes for a pretty dark opening. As she moves into the second half of her mismatched week, the movie shifts gears and becomes about hope and togetherness. After being presented with life changing news Linda deals with it, moves past it and ultimately finds something she needs to fight for.

I know, it sounds like a crappy Hollywood ending, but it's not as neatly packaged as you might think. Though if you spend enough time thinking about how this movie works, then you'll figure out exactly how things wrap-up.

Premonition has two speeds and the first 10 minutes of the film, that speed could only be described as “agonizing�. It’s nothing but character introduction and cues to be referenced later in the film. These are bored and beaten people, but there has got to be a way to express that without forcing your audience into late winter hibernation. I understand the importance of set-up but I was miserable during this introduction and even as the movie shifted speeds, it would take me some time before I was able to settle in and become invested.

The second speed (break-neck speed!) really kicks in when Linda starts mapping out the events of the week. At first I thought it was a cheap trick because I was already making my own mental calendar of what happened when, but as soon as she starts to gain some perspective, the momentum of the film really picks up. The movie starts to get fun!

This is a movie about time travel so there’s bound to be some cause and effect situations, but I was disappointed as Linda began fulfilling her own prophecies. A plot point like this is expected, but I found a lot of frustration in it. A crumpled piece of paper she pulls out of the trash on Friday, she crumples and throws into the trash on Tuesday, even though she knows that the information on the paper will lead to a really bad Saturday. It’s neat to pick up on the things that change and connect the days together though. A bottle of wine, a mirror covered in a blanket, and other seemingly unimportant props become time markers to the audience for what day it is. You’ll start understanding how the timeline works and before you know it, you’ll be calling out what day of the week it is before she does. “Annie, what day is it� (From the audience) “It’s Wednesday, Bitch! Go get yo’ man!�

Bullock’s career has taken a good turn in recent years. After back-to-back hits with Speed and While You Were Sleeping, Bullock was on track to become Hollywood’s next big thing. But with every success comes another movie that no one remembers. She’s been able to hold onto her celebrity through the millennium with the Miss Congeniality franchise being such a hit, but there was a time not so long ago where the most significant thing she had going on was a producing credit on The George Lopez Show. Since then she has made some risky choices that are finally starting to pay off. Roles that were against type in movies like Murder By Numbers and Crash proved that Bullock was going where the best material was and not blindly accepting anything that crossed her desk. Even when returning to romantic comedies she made sure that the movies were of a higher quality and audiences really responded to Two Weeks Notice and The Lake House.

Premonition isn’t one of the better movies of her career but I think it’s got immense appeal and will only continue the winning streak she is currently on. The only bad press Bullock has gotten of late comes from Andy Richter’s new show Andy Barker, P.I. where Miss Congeniality is openly mocked. Really funny, but not enough to slow down the marketing machine for Premonition, which has been in full stride for months now. Whether or not you’re interested, you’re certainly aware of this movie.

That’s certainly not a reason to go see the film but if this is the sort of thing you’re into, you could do far worse. They never go into scientific explanations for Linda’s leaps through time (though I say she was just crazy) but from a storytelling perspective there’s a lot to be learned here. A story told out of order is just begging to be confusing but Premonition is able to tell a compelling story in a crisp clear way that won’t make you want to pull your hair out. Though the possibilities of what they could of done with the concept or the fact that the woman that made Forces of Nature somehow has a career again, might leave your hairline a little thinner.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10 - It’s not the best Sandra Bullock film, it’s not even the best Sandra Bullock time travel film, but I think Premonition has the potential to be a big crowd pleaser this weekend. But does Sandra Bullock have the star power to rule the box office and take down 300? I wouldn’t be surprised either way. We’ll know for sure in 3 days.

If you have seen this movie please head over to this thread on the boards and read the spoiler (scroll down to the bottom of the first post.) I wrote. I want to know how many of you noticed this element of the movie, and if it bothered you as much as it bothered me.

Nope, not for me. I love the high concept and I’m not disappointed with what director Mennan Yapo did with it, but I feel like I would keep wondering how much further it could have gone. Can you imagine a TV show where a man lives a full month out of order, stretching over the course of a 30 episode season? That would be a lot of fun, even though it would just be called a rip off of Day Break and 24. There are no good ideas left.

I get the nagging feeling that some scenes were clipped from Premonition so for that reason I might want to rent it, but once I have those answers, I can’t see a reason to keep this movie on hand.

Vanilla Sky - In 2001 a lot of us were all hoping for the next Almost Famous from director Cameron Crowe as his new film Vanilla Sky was about to hit theaters. The fact that he was reteaming with Jerry Maguire cohort Tom Cruise (pre-crazy) only had our hopes shoot even higher. But none of us could have anticipated the trippy, tragic, sci-fi, love story that Vanilla Sky delivered. It was a colossal disappointment. A risky and complicated story from someone that most of just wanted great character studies from. I have nothing but respect for Cameron Crowe, but after 8 years of waiting for another great film form him, I feel like we’ll always be waiting on another Almost Famous.

As indifferent and disappointed I was with Vanilla Sky in 2001, I couldn’t help but turn it on when I noticed it was on cable last year. And to my surprise… I couldn’t turn it off. It was still weird and bizarre, but suddenly it was also smart, engaging, terrifying, and brilliantly conceived.

Sky messes with your head in the same was as Premonition, blurring the line between reality and insanity but with a lot less clarity. It’s easy to ground yourself within Premonition’s structure, but Vanilla Sky is far more ambiguous. Something that left a lot of people confused and angry after being jerked around for a couple hours.

It took years of disappointment and the expectation I would still think it sucks for me to really appreciate the beauty of this story. It’s not the movie I wanted, but it’s not as bad as we all remember.

I had some trouble getting this joke together. All my original instincts were jokes like “I have a premonition this movie will suck!� But if that’s the best I can do… why bother? When I came up with this angle of using Nostradamus and the bait and switch with Premonition and Speed, I was pretty pleased. It came down to getting the terminology right though. I couldn’t just have them speaking English normally. They would have to be speaking at least in the same manor that Nostradamus wrote his predictions. I’m pleased with the way it sounds but if you think about how fast “50 horse lengths per minute� is, then it’s just way too fast. They’d be rocking out of control. But in terms of phrasing it well so it reads well and sounds pleasing to the ear, I felt like it was a good fit. Certainly comparable to “50 miles per hour� in a very old world manor of speaking.

Some of you may remember that I used Bullock’s last time travel movie, The Lake House in another bait and switch joke. It was actually for the movie Nacho Libre and it’s one of my favorite JLCM gags from that time period last year.

That’s it for now gang. See you soon.