You may not always like what I say....But it'll be the truth!!

Had some people upset with my review of  "John Wick Chapter 2" and my bagging on "Gator"-the "White Lightning" follow-up. What did you want me to do, lie and say I liked them?  Both the "John Wick" movies had plot holes you could drive a semi through. And I am sick of CGI. Guy jumps six feet in the air, rotates his body clockwise, kicks 3 guys in the face, does a backflip and lands on his feet. It can't be done, we know it can't be done, we know the actor isn't doing it, so why put it on screen?  Is the target audience 13 year old boys?  At least if Chuck Norris or Jean-Claude Van Damme, or Jackie Chan, did something even if it looked inelegant-you knew you had an actor / athlete doing something 99% of the rest of the population couldn't do. Classics like "Bullitt" and the "Seven-Ups" and the "French Connection" are still watchable today because you had brave stuntmen and actors- ( Steve McQueen and Gene Hackman did some of the stunt driving in "Bullitt" and the "French Connection" ) doing great things with great cars. Unlike the CGI dreck of the "Transporter" movies and the later "F&F" movies. ( The 4th one was the last one that had any remotely believable or do-able stunts. Like putting lead in the rear bumper of Vin Diesel's Chevelle to make it wheelie )  Anyhow-"White Lightning" was a good movie. "Gator" wasn't.  "Smokey and the Bandit" was a cute and funny, light-hearted car-chase comedy.  The second "Bandit" was awful-with the pregnant elephant and Jackie Gleason's Buford T. Justice having triplett brothers,-ugh!!  The Original "Death Wish" was a compelling commentary on crime in society, and one man's 180 degree reversal of his beliefs after his family's tragic attack. Bronson should have got an Oscar.  Bronson was also great in the original "Mechanic" and in the Elmore Leonard penned "Mr. Majestyk". The multiple "Death Wish" sequels that he phoned in in the '80's and '90's were terrible, even by mindless action-movie standards. If something's good I'll say it, and If something's bad, I'll say it. And you can have good and bad things in the same film. For example I liked "The Driver" with Ryan O' Neal and Bruce Dern for the most part. Except for the finale. O' Neal is driving a 2wd, stick-shift ( those '70's trucks were so awful to shift with those "granny" transmissions ) '76 Chevy Pickup. The guy he's chasing is driving a '76 Trans-Am. If the truck was a 454 / TH400 a drag race would have been competitive, but going around corners over city streets?  The T /A would leave him in 2 blocks!!  Ironically-earlier in the film, O 'Neal was driving a '77 Firebird!!  Now if he was chasing the T/A in that, it would have been believable!!  And as for the women in "White Lightning" and "Gator"-like I said-Jennifer Billingsley was sexy as hell and played her part perfectly. Lauren Hutton was as wooden as she always was, and at the time the movie was made-Burt Reynolds was 40 and she was 33. Both too old for the '70's "meet cute" "I hate you, now I love you" bullshit that was popular in the late '70's / early '80's. And her "Plucky Girl Reporter" schtick made me think-"Nancy Fuckin' Drew"-at 35!!  ( If you don't know Nancy Drew was a teenage-girl detective in several young adult books and a TV series starring a pre-Dynasty Pamela Sue Martin ). Anyhow-her New York TV Station bound city girl would have thought Gator was coarse and a hick, and Gator would have thought her stuck-up and longed for another roll in the hay with the barefoot "Shake a Puddin"!!  I just couldn't care if they had sex or not!!  And they could have really dug into "Bama McCall's" character-which they didn't. And the crazy lady with the cats?  Whose Idea was that?  Anyhow-hopefully the next flick with musclecars in it will be better written and directed. And I'll tell you honestly if it is, or if it isn't!!  Mastermind