Long before he was turning heads and receiving Oscar nominations for dismantling bombs in Iraq (The Hurt Locker) or playing Ben Affleck’s trigger-happy sidekick (The Town), Jeremy Renner was honing his craft with character roles alongside some of Hollywood’s most elite. Among these include roles with Charlize Theron (North Country), Brad Pitt (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), and Forest Whitaker in 2005’s A Little Trip to Heaven.
Category Archives: Genre
Into The Wild (2007)
The Sean Penn (The Crossing Guard, The Pledge) directed Into the Wild had all the promise of a movie that could have lived in the lives of high school students around the country for years to come. The novel of the same name, penned by Jon Krakauer, is part of the high school curriculum in many school systems around the country. The movie is rated R. I’ve seen it twice. Had a couple of scenes been toned down, the movie could have easily garnered a PG-13 rating, thus allowing it to be viewed in English class after reading the book. I don’t know if Penn thought about this when making the movie and, if he did, if he even cared. It is, however, food for thought.
Enemy of the State (1998)
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.
Up In The Air (2009)
The trailers for Jason Retitman’s (Juno, Thank You For Smoking) 2009 heavy-hitting dramedy Up In The Air make it seem like any corny romance, comedy, drama movie blend we’ve seen 100 times before. The trailer made me wonder what George Clooney (Michael Clayton, Oceans 11) was thinking about agreeing to make what I perceived as One Fine Day Part II. This movie had all the makings for a character so disconnected from the world, only to realize three-quarters of the way through that what they thought they never needed was what they felt they needed the most.
The Express (2008)
In the mold of Rudy, Remember The Titans, Friday Night Lights, and Brian’s Song comes Gary Fleder’s 2008 The Express starring Rob Brown as Ernie Davis, a Syracuse football running back from the early 1960s, and Dennis Quiad as Ben Schwartzwalder, Ernie’s college football coach. Ernie Davis became the first black athlete ever to win the Heisman Trophy. That is a considerable feat, but some people do not know that Davis succeeded Jim Brown at Syracuse University. Jim Brown is arguably the greatest football player and US athlete ever.