Sandra Bullock is 62 years old this week, over 30 years since she became a name, thanks to her run of films. Her critical record is one of 96% to 4%, so this list doesn’t include the films that critics didn’t like. Here are the 12 she released since 1993 up until Bird Box in 2018 that got a rating over 60% on Rotten Tomatoes.
1. Demolition Man (1993), 67%
Her first really nice reviews, as Lenina Huxley with Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. It’s a satire that is older than any had hoped in 1993. Now it’s being referred to as a film that got a few things right.
2. Speed (1994), 95%
The movie that made her a leading lady. She has also been trained to drive the bus, and passed the test first time. The premise held together due to her chemistry with Keanu Reeves, which reviewers noted as one of the two areas that needed improvement.
3. While You Were Sleeping (1995), 81%
A romantic comedy built from entirely familiar parts that works anyway. It established her public character for 10 years, a blessing and a curse. The consensus of Rotten Tomatoes gives her credit for giving formula a good name.
4. A Time to Kill (1996), 66%
The John Grisham adaptation, and the closest she came to a straight courtroom drama. It was too long, it was a bit superficial, it was well made, it was well acted, were the words of the critics. She holds her own in a cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey.
5. The Prince of Egypt (1998), 79%
Voice role for DreamWorks’ animated adaptation of Exodus as Miriam. It is one of the strongest scores on her list, though her contribution is a supporting one. The praise was mostly directed towards the animation and the magnitude of this animation.
6. Crash (2004), 73%
Paul Haggis’s Los Angeles ensemble won Best Picture and has been argued about ever since. Bullock is not the lead in a large cast, but rather one string in the cast. In fact, its reputation has dropped significantly since 2005, but its score hasn’t changed much.
7. Infamous (2006), 75%
Bullock plays Harper Lee opposite Toby Jones’s Truman Capote. Unfortunately, the film was released a year after Capote had already done the same. It was a real different approach, and not necessarily a ‘lesser’ version.
8. The Blind Side (2009), 66%
She won the Oscar for Best Actress for this and has a rating of 66%, a pretty good indication of how far critics are from awards voters. The positive reviews were positive about her specifically. The negative ones called it too neat by half.
9. The Heat (2013), 66%
Paired with Melissa McCarthy as a buttoned-up FBI agent, and the first of two films she released in 2013. No one could claim it wasn’t predictable, most agreed, and it was very funny. It was a rare female-centric buddy movie, and studios didn’t do it any more.
10. Gravity (2013), 96%
Ninety minutes of Bullock alone on screen, mostly fighting for breath. She was nominated for her second Oscar for Alfonso Cuáron’s movie, and her best reviewed film by a wide margin. It was regarded by critics as a technical feat and a survival story second.
11. Ocean’s 8 (2018), 69%
A group of people is put together to steal the car in the Met Gala. Reviewers praised its own smoothness in comparison to sharp, and reported being carried by a cast that was sufficiently deep that no one was left to do all the work. It brought her best campaign of her career since 2013.
12. Bird Box (2018), 64%
Netflix’s blindfold mystery got pretty real over Christmas 2018 – and the company even had an online challenge to have to publicly discourage. The reviews were more positive than what the film’s standing is today. The ending was not as well received as the mood, and the work of Bullock.
Just outside the list
I used to think that wrestling Ernest Hemingway would be exactly 60%, but it’s not quite. A relatively subdued, 1993 movie drama starring Robert Duvall and Richard Harris and starring Bullock as two lonely old men in Florida.
What the good reviews have in common
Just twelve out of 36 films she produced over this period get a 60% rating and it dries up pretty badly in the middle, with nothing from ’98 to ’04 passing the 60% mark. The two best scores are 19 years apart, with Speed having a higher score. What the list reveals is that when she wasn’t doing a romantic comedy herself, she was a hit, two of her biggest hits The Proposal and Miss Congeniality both sit in the forties and aren’t even here.
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