The two major releases at the cinema this week see Sandra Bullock and Sienna Miller go head to head at the box office.
Premonition (15)
After the cinematic disaster zones that were Miss Congeniality 2 and The Lake House, Sandra Bullock appears in yet another dull waste of her talents and our time. The story here is like some bad TV movie – Bullock plays a woman who wakes up one morning to find out her loving husband (Julian McMahon) is dead. Only she wakes the next day and discovers he isn’t. Cue lots of loud melodramatic nonsense, some predictable plot twists, a ridiculously sappy climax and Miss Bullock has even more reasons to fire her agent.
Factory Girl (15)
This is a biopic about Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller) who for a period in the 60s became a muse to Andy Warhol (here played by Guy Pearce), girlfriend to Bob Dylan (Hayden Christensen plays a very thinly veiled Dylan figure) and a style icon before her untimely demise at 28. It explores her early years and her collaboration with the man who predicted everyone in the future would be famous for 15 minutes. Miller and Pearce both give solid performances and the subject matter is interesting (and topical in our current fame obsessed culture) but it never quite sparks to life. Ultimately, although the film deals with an interesting time and an intriguing set of characters, it doesn’t have the resonance it should.
Neither of these films get an enthusiastic thumbs but if you have to go see one, Factory Girl isn’t as bad as Premonition.