Look, I know what you're thinking. There is no way you're watching a movie starring Sandra Bullock as a housewife who is told one day that her husband has died in a gruesome car wreck, only to wake up the next morning and discover him alive, with disturbing signs that what she saw before wasn't just a bad dream. Telling you more about that premise probably won't help: after her initial bad-dream switcheroo, Linda (Bullock) wakes up to yet another bright and shining day, only this time her husband is gone again, and it's the day of his funeral; eventually, she realizes she's living the worst week of life — but it's all out of order! Yes, that premise sounds like some unholy combination of sub-TV elements, like a poltergeist got control of your remote and won't stop furiously switching between the Sci-Fi Channel and Lifetime. And yes, the lovely Ms. Bullock pretty much lost whatever edge she may have had well before clawing her way back to the A-List with stuff like Miss Congeniality. So why are you reading this? More importantly, why did I spend most of Premonition nailed to my seat, genuinely riveted by the goings onscreen? How the hell did this movie turn out to be any good?

Faced with a ridiculous premise, most directors would probably try to compensate by over-stylization, ladling on the baroque camera moves and the hyperkinetic editing in an attempt to distract our attentions from the plot, or to wink at us not to take any of it seriously. But director Mennan Yapo has opted for a more sober approach. His remarkable control of atmosphere and tension suddenly takes this silly little story and brings its grim undertow of tragedy to the surface. Premonition starts off goofy film, but its conviction turns it into something genuinely moving.

Indeed, that's not the only way that Premonition transforms itself. It turns out this is less a pulse-pounding thriller and more of a domestic melodrama. By the end, we're not so much wondering what exactly is happening to Linda (a good thing, since the explanation, such as it is, doesn't make a lick of sense) but whether she will be able to keep her family in one piece — literally. It probably won't be for all tastes — those who can't stand Bullock in any context probably won't appreciate her low-key performance here, and those looking for major horror jolts will be severely disappointed. And the less said about the film's half-hearted religious subplot, the better. But for much of its running time, Premonition manages to be a curiously unsettling, gripping hybrid. So sue me — I liked it. — Bilge Ebiri

Zack Snyder's otherworldly adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel opens with a disturbing scene, as residents of ancient Sparta toss any newborn they deem physically inferior off a cliff. So it comes as a bit of a surprise when the film later posits the stand of three hundred Spartans against the invading Persian army as a fight for freedom against tyranny — saving European civilization from a swarthy Asiatic horde of multiculturalism, lesbians and ten-foot-tall ogres. If you're already confused, you're not alone. It's not enough that 300 doesn't quite know what kind of political stance it wants to take; it's not even sure what kind of movie it wants to be. Trying to find political resonance in a story like this is a fool's errand, to be sure, but for a filmmaker to try to tack on political resonance is not only foolish, but irresponsible.

That said, 300 is at times such a fascinating film that you can't help but embrace some of it — at least as a symptom of contemporary filmmaking. Much ink has already been spilled about how CGI dominates 300, so much so that the film could almost count as animated. And sure, it looks great — Snyder's slow-motion sequences of individual Spartan warriors slicing and dicing their way through reams of nondescript Persian soldiers have a study-in-motion, Eadweard Muybridge charm to them. (Oh, the irony: all that CGI, gone to replicate what a guy with an antiquated camera did over a hundred years ago.)

But it won't raise your pulse level one bit. Despite the numerical odds, until their final stand our Spartan heroes don't really have to put up with much grief. At one point, a gigantic Persian troll-monster thing shows up, straight out of the Caves of Moria sequence in The Fellowship of the Rings; five minutes later, he's been dispatched without a single casualty. For a film that's allegedly so groundbreaking, 300 feels curiously familiar. Here is the vaguely Eastern-inflected score straight out of Gladiator and a dozen other films (European civilization might have triumphed, but they sure do have a soft spot for Middle Eastern music in these sword-and-sandal flicks, don't they?). And here are the battle scenes that seem lifted wholesale from countless other films (not to mention a final shot that's straight from Braveheart). About the only thing that 300 brings to the table is nudity: yes, those original Spartans fought pretty much naked, and Snyder, like the secret love child of John Milius and Derek Jarman, appears to have given their rippling thigh muscles and slick six-packs more loving attention and detail than pretty much anything else in the film. — Bilge Ebiri

Can a movie work as a compelling character study and still be largely devoid of characters? David Fincher's sprawling, impossibly dense, unusually gripping take on the Zodiac killings that haunted the San Francisco Bay Area in the late '60s and early '70s dares to be that movie. Shorn of the usual introspection and backstory that accompanies serial killer films (and, let's face it, most films in general) Fincher's film takes an almost Olympian view of the Zodiac events — sifting through the murders themselves, the police reaction and the media coverage with effortless abandon.

That's not to suggest that the film generalizes its subject matter; on the contrary, this is one of the most exhaustively detailed, obsessive films made about. . . well, anything . Like many others, Fincher himself was apparently fixated on the Zodiac killings as a kid in the '70s, and he's made a film that would do that kid and his fellow Zodiac fiends proud. More lay viewers, however, may have some problems with the unconventional approach, given that Fincher and screenwriter James Vanderbilt give relatively little priority to the ostensible real-life protagonists: legendary San Francisco detective Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey, almost stealing the film) and cartoonist-turned-sleuth Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal, the closest thing the movie has to a lead). If anything, the main character in Zodiac is not really a person at all, but rather the hive-mind of terror, activity and obsession that resulted from the case. There's a reason why the atmosphere positively drips off the screen here: it's our hero.

Despite the surplus of mood, those salivating for the usual Fincherian camera pyrotechnics may well be disappointed — save for some nifty color schemes, our man is more in Alan J. Pakula territory here. Zodiac recalls films like The Parallax View and All the President's Men more than it does Se7en or Silence of the Lambs. But the director's got something more important than style on his mind. His newfound austerity is there to serve the film's single-minded fixation on the Zodiac phenomenon. Fancy camerawork — or, for that matter, characters — would just get in the way. — Bilge Ebiri

Perhaps the most tragic thing about Joel Schumacher's almost laughably awful thriller is that, every once in a while, you can almost see the film it might have been. To some, casting Jim Carrey as the average family man who develops an unhealthy obsession with the titular digits will seem like this bizarre film's greatest misstep. On the contrary, casting Carrey is the one thing they've gotten right. It's just that Schumacher appears to have no idea what to do with him.

It's not that Carrey gives a particularly good performance here (he doesn't), but rather that one can imagine how he might have, under the right circumstances. As Walter Sparrow, a shlubby, floppy-haired middle-class guy working in animal control, he starts off as his usual likable self, then quickly degenerates into an obsessive who'd make Richard Dreyfus's character in Close Encounters blush. You see, the book our hero starts reading at first appears to be a rather intricately plotted and slightly deviant handmade thriller, but is later revealed to be a confession to a murder that happened over a decade ago. Even stranger, some of the elements in the book appear to mirror aspects of Walter's own life. As Sparrow and his family (particularly his wife, played by a very able Virginia Madsen) get drawn into this sordid tale, dark secrets are revealed, even darker rooms are found, and we hurtle towards a bizarrely far-fetched conclusion that you'll still see coming a mile away. That is, if you haven't plummeted into one of the film's cavernous plot holes along the way.

It's hard for Carrey to shake free of his image as a goofball; his obsession doesn't really register as dangerous. But that's where the film just might have worked. One senses that The Number 23 began life as an offbeat, occasionally humorous thriller with outsize elements — something along the lines of A History of Violence, or even Memento. Carrey might have made it work. But Schumacher isn't able to deal with tonal delicacy the way directors like David Cronenberg can. He directs with a heavy hammer, flattening any hint of nuance with bombast and mismatched portent. The result is a disaster on practically all levels, but given the film it might have been, you won't know whether to laugh or cry. — Bilge Ebiri