I am an unabashed Burt Reynolds fan. It started well before he starred in Boogie Nights (which is available on the Criterion Channel streaming service)in 1997. I became a fan when I was still a kid in the early ‘80s and saw movies like Smokey and the Bandit and especially Stroker Ace. Yeah, that latter one isn’t exactly his finest work, but I loved it when I was about 10 years old.
On the opposite side of Reynolds’ career achievements from that 1983 movie about a NASCAR driver is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. It’s Reynolds’ most acclaimed movie, and the only one for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Critics and fans alike love the movie and his performance as a porn director named Jack Horner. The one person who didn’t love Boogie Nights was Reynolds.
