Sandra Bullock names cinema’s only flawless film: “Someone finally made the perfect movie”
Is there such a thing as the perfect movie? It’s a debate that’s been raging for decades and will continue raging for as long as cinema exists with no definitive answer. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, though, and Sandra Bullock thinks that one unlikely film fits the bill.
It’s not one of hers either, just in case anyone thought the Academy Award winner’s ego had gotten the better of her. She’s been in plenty of good ones, ranging from Alfonso Cuarón’s eye-popping Gravity and Jan De Bont’s action classic Speed to the raft of beloved rom-coms that made her a superstar in the first place.
On the other hand, she’s also been in some shite. Paul Haggis’ Crash might be a ‘Best Picture’ winner, but it’s not a good movie. The less said on All About Steve, the better, although it did give Bullock the opportunity to collect a Razzie for ‘Worst Actress’ in person the night before she took to the stage at the Oscars to claim her prize for ‘Best Actress’.
If the average cinephile were asked to name the most perfect motion picture ever made, it stands to reason the usual suspects would come up: Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, and the rest of the vaunted classics that have been deified as the cream of the cinematic crop.
While the one movie Bullock called filmic perfection did make an absolute fortune at the box office, won three Academy Awards, and notched another four nominations, including ‘Best Picture’, she’d definitely be in the minority who’d bestow such vaunted status upon Marvel Studios’ Black Panther, and there’s a massive amount of personal bias in play, too.
“Oh my god, that film’s changed my children’s lives,” she told The Times of the impact the Chadwick Boseman-led comic book adaptation had on her kids. “When I saw the cast on the red carpet, I started crying. The way women were represented as heads of tribes, generals, and geniuses. I thought, ‘Someone finally made the perfect movie.'”
It’s obviously a film that Bullock and her family hold close to their hearts, and there’s no denying that Black Panther was a cultural phenomenon that shattered records, blazed trails, and made a genuine impact on a lot of people’s lives. Is it the embodiment of perfect cinema? The consensus would lean towards no, but most folks who’d say that don’t have an Oscar, a three-decade track record of Hollywood success and a multi-billion dollar filmography, and Bullock does.
Film snobs might scoff at the notion of Black Panther being branded as the first time a perfect film had ever been made, but that’s why opinions are so often compared to arseholes.
