Rocky IV (1985)

I’m biased on any “Rocky” film. Back in Philly during the 1980s, when a “Rocky” movie was released, work, school, transportation, and pretzel-eating stopped. It was our civic duty in the City of Brotherly Love to watch the latest pounding and last-minute triumph of Rocky Balboa, patron saint of boxing, American flag boxers and Sylvester Stallone’s enduring career. Here, Rocky fights Russian behemoth Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) who towers over our hero like a father to his toddler son. There is death (so long Apollo), there is Survivor (“Eye of the Tiger” never gets old) and training montages galore, before the grand finale. Stallone, also writing and directing, serves up the best storyline since the First Chapter, I mean the 1976 and Genesis, and a kick-ass rock-hard Cold War flick that seems genius now. Lundgren by sheer force takes the film, starting when he throws Carl Weathers across the ring as if he were a grocery sack. A true jaw-dropper scene even now. The fight scenes are bloody fantastic. Stallone was a god of my youth, I cannot criticize him. Everyone together: “Aaaddrriaaan!” A-