Last week People magazine named Sandra Bullock as the most beautiful woman in the world this year. This cheered me a lot, I’ve always liked Sandra Bullock – she seems great fun and the kind of woman I’d like to be my friend. She seems not to take the Hollywood hoopla too seriously and turned up to receive her Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress. All About Steve, the film for which she won her Razzie, was pretty bad but here are my 10 favourite Sandra Bullock films.
The film for which Sandra Bullock won the Oscar for Best Actress (the same year as her Razzie) this is the moving story of a troubled teenager adopted by a wealthy family. Based on the true story of Michael Oher, an American football player.
2. Crash
Winning the Best Picture Oscar over Brokeback Mountain, this is a beautifully played ensemble drama about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles. Bullock’s character is a spoiled and pampered woman who displays racist behaviour. As far as I know this is the first film I saw where Bullock played a character who wasn’t thoroughly likeable.
This is a totally mindless – TOTALLY MINDLESS – Sylvester Stallone action vehicle and I really, really like it. LAPD Officer John Spartan is cryogenically frozen in 1996 after he and super villain Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) cause all sorts of havoc in the city. Both are defrosted in 2032 and face a world which has changed completely. Bullock plays Lieutenant Lenina Huxley, assigned to help Spartan and gets a chance to show some comedy muscle. Daft but fun,
4. Gravity
An absolute acting tour de force by Bullock, playing Dr Ryan Stone a NASA specialist left stranded in space following an horrific accident. On screen alone for almost all of the film, Bullock conveys a number of emotions – predominately grief, fear, and anger – in a truly believable way. The special effects are ground-breaking and stunning but the acting from Bullock is even better.
5. The Heat
Melissa McCarthy teams up with Sandra Bullock for this buddy-cop movie. I don’t think there’s been a female buddy movie before and apart from the gender of the protagonists , this follows the well-worn route of mismatched new partners. Much like in Miss Congeniality, Bullock plays an uptight FBI agent. It’s not a brilliant film, but the two leads work well together and it’s a fun couple of hours.
Bullock plays the uber-efficient and unfeminine FBI agent Gracie Hart who is sent undercover to protect the Miss United States beauty pageant. A culture clash comedy ensues as Gracie is plucked, waxed and squeezed into the necessary bikinis and evening gowns. Bullock gets good support from Michael Caine, William Shatner and Candice Bergen. The sequel takes Gracie back into the world of beauty queens but isn’t quite as good.
7. The Proposal
Bullock teams up with Ryan Reynolds in this great romantic comedy. She plays businesswoman Margaret Tate who has to get married quickly or be deported to Canada. She persuades her assistant (Reynolds) into getting engaged and the pair visit his family in Alaska where things start to fall apart. It’s a fairly flimsy story but Bullock and Reynolds have fabulous chemistry and that raises The Proposal to above average. Every movie couple should be so good.
8. Speed
Speed wasn’t Sandra Bullock’s first film but it did catapult her to stardom and create the sweet girl persona that we all know and love. Crazy bad guy Dennis Hopper places a bomb on a bus and rigs it to explode if the bus loses speed to under 50 miles per hour. Bullock and Keanu Reeves work well together in one of the best action films of the 90s. The less said about Speed 2: Cruise Control the better.
9. 
Based on John Grisham’s novel of the same name, this is a great courtroom drama set in the deep south. Matthew McConaughey plays the liberal lawyer defending Samuel L. Jackson’s Carl Lee Brigance, a father who has killed the men who raped his ten year old daughter. Bullock is the law student who assists in the defence of Brigance. It’s not a big role but she does well in a movie full of fabulous actors.
My favourite film on this list, While You Were Sleeping is a sweet romantic comedy co-starring the brilliant Bill Pullman. Bullock plays Lucy, a lonely train station employee with a crush on Peter Gallagher’s businessman. One Christmas Day she rescues him from the train tracks after a mugging. His family come to believe that the pair are engaged and welcome her into the fold but things get complicated when she falls in love with her “fiance’s” brother. This is sweet and funny and a must-watch when you’re feeling low.
While You Were Sleeping is still my favorite after all these years even though I love her in everything she does.