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Reviews
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Feels Like An Action-Only Sequel More Than A Reboot
This movie felt like it was a sequel to a first film starring Tom Hardy that initially set up the character and the world he survives in, other than quick narration and flashbacks. Thus the bombardment of non-stop action would make more sense in a sequel than a reboot of a franchise from a really long time ago, that some people half-remember and others don't know of at all.
And Charlize Theron would be the one character brought into the sequel to make it different from the original where Hardy was the main character. Thus, FURY ROAD felt like a cannonball flying without the fuse ever being lit. Playing out like a sequel of itself more than a reboot of something else.
Original franchise director George Miller took this rebooted world seriously, a video game meshed into a melodramatic graphic novel where anything goes, so therefore, audiences got into the sheer craziness and epic style road rage. There just wasn't anything behind all the noise but more and more noise.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Dull and Bland, and Pointless
What made the original AVENGERS so good is the characters didn't know each other. All with various powers and skills, and personalities, they clashed.
That clash made for humor that had a logical place within the focused storyline: a problem that needed to be solved. Thus this sequel has the problem of characters getting along too well. Where they were once very unique and on their own having to join forces, they now sit around drinking like the actors who play them.
Meanwhile Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark, well, he's really good and funny, but now he can't be serious enough to deliver any lines that we need to listen to without giggling. The villain is beyond weak: a brooding robot created by Stark who tries telling jokes, and badly. Captain America and Thor are all but invisible this time around. Second stringers with nothing to add.
So in a nutshell, no one really shined here. A2 was just plain dull.
Stroker Ace (1983)
Coffin Nail
Oh man is this movie bad. It flows horribly. The story is about a race car driver who is in love with himself, and then has to promote a chicken fast food chain and while doing this, doesn't love himself. He tries getting out of the contract and horrible, painfully unfunny gags ensue. Jim Nabors seems as if he's sleepwalking, not acting. You'll miss such Burt sidekicks as Dom Deluise and Jerry Reed while watching this stinker. Loni Anderson's hair is downright scary, proving that tons of hairspray didn't go out in the sixties. Or maybe that was a wig. Speaking of, Burt's wig wasn't bad in this film. His worst "wig day" was in "Smokey and the Bandit 2". Anyhow, this movie is the worst Reynolds car movie, ever, ever, right up there with "Cannonball Run 2". The original "Smokey" and "Cannonball" (and "Hooper" which, thankfully, had no sequel) are great, funny films. This one isn't. Even Ned Beatty, who is a great actor, stinks. You'll long for a Jackie Gleason type villain who is fun to hate. And mind you, this isn't one of those fun movies to bag on. It's lousy, pure and simple. Even the outtakes at the end were tiresome and boring, and worst of all, unfunny. And least I forget, "Stroker Ace" was one of the first heavy nails to seal Burt's coffin before his somewhat-revival years later in "Boogie Nights", another film that, like "Deliverance" years earlier, shows that the man can act quite good when he has a decent platform to do so.