Premonition

After the review I did of Happy Feet you might think I'm a difficult person to please when it comes to movies but truth is, I love a good movie as much as the next ticket holder. It just happens that nowadays good movies--those worth the current ticket price of $54.25 plus tax--are hard to come by but this one is intriguing enough to warrant a review.

Premonition, starring Sandra Bullock, is a psychological thriller with supernatural elements that in many ways follows the Hollywood thriller formulas but in other ways goes against dramatic convention. I love thrillers--The Fugitive, The Client, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense--and enjoy Sandra Bullock. She has an interesting screen presence and a flawed but beautiful face that I like to watch. While You Were Sleeping, The Lakehouse, Two Weeks Notice, Practical Magic were all decent movies that left me wondering how she can continually be clad in sweats, sweatshirts and old oxfords and still look so classy. She makes grunge wear look good. So I went into this with a fair amount of expectation and left the theater trying to decide if I was satisfied or not.

Bullock's angst-riddled housewife character isn't far off of the other characters she's played and her husband, (Julian McMahon) is the typical handsome suburban husband but much of the plot is conveyed not in dialog but in images, which the director and actors convey with a fair amount of skill. Subtle glances and actions are clues to relationships and motivations and visual hints are carefully placed for the audience to decipher and put into the developing context. I like a mystery, I like a good hunt and this movie provides a one and a half hour challenge for my sleuthing skills as I watched, mesmerized, trying to catch each nuance.

Some things about the movie are formulaic--the dissatisfied housewife, the suspicious husband, the creepy Sheriff--and other things throw you for some major loops (I can't say more without giving away too much). There are ridiculous plot episodes (I'm certain the morticians of America are more reliable when delivering bodies than the ones presented in this scenario) but individual character emotions and reactions had a genuine conviction that I swallowed whole.

There are the Obligatory Disturbing Animal Images--a requisite for any thriller that wants to creep you out--and then there are more subtle touches: check out the large picture above the psychiatrist's desk when Bullock's character visits. Velazquez's Las Meninas suggests themes more complex than your typical Hollywood thriller. There are Hitchockian (is that a word?) details such as the omnipresent ravens that enforce the tension and make you certain something is not quite right. Metaphors like the jigsaw puzzle give this film a bit more depth than your typical thriller and flatter the audience into believing they're intelligent detectives that are going to solve this mystery.

But I warn you, you may not have this one figured out. Go see it tonight, try not to talk to the person next to you too much (it was a constant temptation to discuss what was happening) and then let me know what you thought.

Technorati tags: Premonition, movie reviews, Sandra Bullock, time travel