1998’s Enemy of the State was, for the most part, the first film that the movie studios relied on Will Smith to carry. This was Smith’s seventh movie overall and the fourth where he was one of the big stars in the film. The other three were Bad Boys (where he had Martin Lawrence), Men In Black (where he had Tommy Lee Jones), and 1991’s summer blockbuster Independence Day. This was certainly not a make-or-break movie for Smith, but a domestic gross of $111 million and favorable reviews from the critics helped cement him in the Hollywood landscape, where he has remained ever since.
Category Archives: Suspense
Buried (2010)
There were two movies released in 2010 about a single individual trapped in a circumstance that most of us cannot even fathom, much less be able to endure. One of those was the Danny O’Boyle/James Franco Best Picture Academy Award nominee 127 Hours. The other was a much lesser known and slightly lesser received effort by director first-time director Roberto Cortes and Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal, The Amityville Horror) called Buried. It’s hard to to know how Buried would have done if it had been released in any other year. Unfortunately for Cortes and Reynolds, it was released just months before the true story 127 Hours came out. It felt like there wasn’t a market for both movies in 2010.
The River King (2005)
Though I had never heard of 2004’s The River King, the DVD case piqued my interest when I saw it in the under $5 bin at Walmart one day. I purchased the movie, but it sat on my shelf for a couple of years before I picked it up again when looking for something to watch. The case once again got me interested. The movie hooked me within its first five minutes. While this was not a great movie, it was worth watching. The opening scene’s setting, a dead body discovered buried underneath a transparent sheet of ice in a narrow winding river in the middle of a desolated forest in the dead of winter, was perfectly shot by director Nick Willing.