The invisible menace in the Bird Box causes anyone who looks at it to kill themselves, hence the blindfolds that Bullock, as a deranged mother, forces her children to wear. The film itself was a magnet for eyeballs: by the end of 2021, it was the most-watched film on Netflix, although Trent Reznor, who composed the score with Atticus Ross, accused some of the creative staff of “phoning it in”.
19. A Time to Kill (1996)
“There’s no room in my court for show!” booms the judge (Patrick McGoohan) in this John Grisham cornball adaptation. Apparently, he hasn’t seen the incredible performances of his co-stars, including Kevin Spacey as a lawyer prosecuting a father (Samuel L. Jackson) for murdering the men who raped his daughter. Bullock is a plucky law student who helps Matthew McConaughey with little more than a library card and a marker.
18. Who shot Patakango? (1989)
This sleazy but cute late 1950s drama resembles a very low-key diner. Bullock, 24, has a small role as college student Sarah Lawrence, who catches the eye of a rough-and-ready Brooklyn boy when she and her friends recite the E.E. Cummings poem [Buffalo Bill ’s]. Also features Allison Janney’s screen debut.
A rehab comedy that’s never as funny nor as serious as it needs to be. Bullock is an alcoholic who hits rock bottom after tipping over her sister’s wedding cake and crashing a limo. The high-caliber supporting cast includes Steve Buscemi as Bullock’s counselor, Viggo Mortensen and Marianne Jean-Baptiste as fellow junkies, and Dominic West as her drunken, bad boyfriend.
16. Forces of Nature (1999)
Ben Affleck is about to get married when his plane crashes on takeoff; Bullock is the companion he teams up with for the road trip, their attraction to each other throwing his marriage plans into turmoil. She might not be cut out for a part-time weed-smoking party animal, but she gets top marks for trying to diversify.
Mark Lawrence (who wrote Forces of Nature and Miss Congeniality) makes his directorial debut with this mixed-race romantic comedy about the unlikely relationship between a millionaire developer (Hugh Grant) and a conscientious lawyer (Bullock). Abominable low lights: she runs into traffic, he cuckoos with Donald Trump.
With Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal. Photo: Warner Bros/Sportsphoto/Allstar
A tyrannical Canadian CEO (Bullock) decides to marry her scorned PA (Ryan Reynolds) in order to stay in the US when her visa expires. “We can’t fight a love like ours,” she grimaces, desperately improvising the plan in front of her bosses. The comic inspiration evaporates after that, except for the sight of Bullock offering a puppy to an eagle in exchange for her stolen phone.
Time has done funny things to this routine tech thriller, made when the home internet was still a few years away from ubiquity. Now it seems kind of innocent and forward thinking. We were right to warn about the dangers of giving away personal information – that’s how Bullock’s character, a computer analyst unwittingly involved in espionage, has his identity stolen – but we still underestimated the damage that lay ahead.
Bullock won her only Oscar to date for her role as Lee Ann Tuohy, the Christian Republican mother who adopts awkward, neglected African-American teenager Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) and inspires his greatness on the football field in this fact-based white guilt-fest. The film is entirely uplifting, but Bullock’s performance—nuanced, slightly enigmatic and closed—suggests that Lee Ann is less at ease than she appears.
The diabolical Barbet Schröder, director of Maîtresse and Single White Female, was a wise choice for this thriller based somewhat on the Leopold and Loeb case (which also inspired Rope, Compulsion and Swoon). Bullock is the cop who gets close to brainy young psychopaths Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt while dealing with his own demons.
10. A Thing Called Love (1993)
The last film River Phoenix completed before his death in October 1993, Peter Bogdanovich’s drama about aspiring country and western singer-songwriters, is worth watching mainly for Bullock as Alabama hopeful Linda Lou. It’s rare for an actor to sing on screen, even rarer for her to perform a song she wrote. Her song, Heaven Knocked on My Door, shouldn’t be too cop-y. “I took great pleasure in making it as bad as possible,” she said.
Miss Congeniality. Photo: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy
Bullock’s wackiness was put to good use in this comedy about an FBI agent who goes undercover as a beauty pageant contestant. The actor never convinces as an awkward slob; in one scene, she’s called upon to pass out donuts in her underwear, which is funny in part because there’s barely room for a Tic Tac. But she’s gassed up against Michael Caine as a supreme fashion consultant who ensures she’s scrubbed up in time for world peace speeches.
8. Demolition Man (1993)
A cop (Sylvester Stallone) and a criminal (Wesley Snipes) cryogenically frozen in the 1990s are thawed in 2032. In this brave new world, Bullock (a last-minute replacement for Laurie Petty) is Lenina Huxley, whose task is to bring Stallone up to speed with 21st-century developments, including Schwarzenegger’s presidency and the advent of virtual sex. Offering her the physical appearance instead, she recoils, “Ugh, disgusting! You mean … fluid transfer?”
It’s You’ve Got Mail, but with a Twilight Zone zip code. Bullock moved out of his lakefront home in 2006 and left a note for the arriving resident, whose reply to it was dated – WTF? – 2004. Bullock, reteaming with Keanu Reeves for the first time since Speed, injects just the right amount of mistrust and longing. The complexities of time make this one of the few love stories that can make your heart and head ache.
With Channing Tatum in The Lost City. Photo: Paramount/Kimberley French/Allstar
Like Romancing the Stone, this improbable romp concerns a writer next door to Mills & Boon caught up in one of her own adventure yarns. In a pale purple jumpsuit, Bullock pulls off every bit of physical comedy: failing to climb a stool gracefully, kicking a trash can in a fit of rage, being dragged through the jungle while tied to a chair. Highlights include her exasperation at being kidnapped (“What’s that, Taken?”) and the sight of her peeling leeches from Channing Tatum’s bare ass.
This is the other Truman show. Held back a year by its distributor, but made around the same time as Capote (which similarly covered the research and writing of In Cold Blood), Infamous has even more to recommend it, including a richer portrait of its subject’s life. Toby Jones is eerily good as the whispering literary socialite; Bullock, armed with a flawless Alabama accent, is the novelist Harper Lee.
4. While You Were Sleeping (1995)
It’s an age-old story: a female transit worker worships a male passenger from afar, then saves him from an oncoming train; he falls into a coma; she introduces herself as his fiancee to his family. Just as Julia Roberts made the sleaze of “Pretty Woman” palatable, Bullock is charming enough here to wash away the macabre script. The double whammy of this breezy romance and the speed of the previous year catapulted Bullock onto the A-list, as well as anointing her the queen of transit movies.
Has Bullock ever had as much fun on screen as she does in Paul Feig’s rough-and-tumble odd-couple comedy? She plays the stingy new partner of a scrappy, gun-toting cop (Melissa McCarthy), their bickering gradually turning into good nature. There is no end to the euphorically crude gags and remarkable slapstick. A sample line delivered by Bullock to bystanders after McCarthy publicly said her “women’s business” was full of “broken shoes and dollhouses” – “It’s a misrepresentation of my vagina!”
“I hate space,” laments Ryan Stone (Bullock), an astronaut stranded after an accident destroys her ship and crew (including George Clooney in a floating part). For all the technical finesse of Alfonso Cuaron’s visually expansive, dramatically minimalist thriller and the ultimate space-movie gag in which the main character almost drowns, the real special effect here is Bullock’s understated, Oscar-nominated performance as the grieving mother who feels nothing lonelier in space than on Earth. Carrying most of the film alone, she makes the dramatic weightlifting seem weightless.
Foot to the floor… with Keanu Reeves in Speed. Photo: Cine Text / Allstar/Sportsphoto Ltd. / Allstar
One of the most brilliant entertainments of modern action cinema, this high-concept blockbuster combines elements of a disaster movie, a siege thriller and a car chase. Bullock is the passenger who gets behind the wheel of a Los Angeles bus that is ready to explode if it drops below 50 miles per hour. Having an intelligent female lead was remarkable enough. Having her drive the bus and the movie was another blow. Casting Bullock, as unknown to audiences as she was attractive, was the stroke of genius that gave the film freshness and gave her career the boost it needed. Even Speed 2: Cruise Control couldn’t ruin that.
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