Creed (2015)

By God, Rocky is back and so is the gritty, haunted, beautiful city Philadelphia that I still call home –- though I’ve long been gone and live in the sticks –- in “Creed,” the seventh “Rocky” film. 

Let’s not talk about parts 5 or 6. This is Creed’s story, not Apollo (Carl Weathers), but his illegitimate son’s, Adnois, played by Michael B. Jordan (“FruitvaleStation”). 

Adnois was born after his father died (killed by Drago in “IV,” recall?) yet has the burn to fight, and as a child he does that in juvie cells until the wife of his father, not his mother (Phylicia Rashad), saves him. Now an adult, Adnois fights bloodspots in shit Mexican rings at night and plays L.A. banker at day.  Until he quits the legit gig and goes to Philadelphia. Money? Not interested.

He wants to escape his father’s shadow, but goes to the one man who knew his father best, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), the former champ, now a restaurant owner facing mortality.

Rocky refuses Adnois at first, but soon relents, training Adnois as Mickey (Burgess Meredith) did for Rocky 40 years ago. 

It all could be cliché, Ryan Coogler’s film, but it’s not. Coogler is a man who gets “Rocky,” never a film about the American Dream, but all those on the outside, the pissed upon in our Trickle Down Economy. I love the film “Rocky,” watch it yearly, and remember those Kensington streets well, my childhood church is there. I was baptized in Kensington. My grandparents are from there.

Rocky’s neighborhood. I know ’El, and Coogler knows Philly is as much a part of “Rocky” as the Italian Stallion, that the city is fucked and amazing, and that Rocky was a fuck up going nowhere until he found Mickey and Adrian (Talia Shire), the former who trained him, the latter who saved him. Otherwise Rocky would have ended up dead or in prison. 

Adnois is of the same cloth. A fuck up, stearing wildly who rejected easy success, he is trained by Rocky, and saved my neighbor Bianca (Tessa Thompson), a musician going deaf. That could be melodrama bullshit, but Coogler plays it real: No matter how hard you work, life will fuck you, that’s reality. 

I will not divulge the rest of the film. Yes, a big bout happens against a world-renowned portrait, but Coogler paints in all grays. Villains? None, just uneasy ethics and wrong choices, and men seeking redemption, fighting inner demons. 

Jordan is magnetic in this film, as he was in “Fruitvale.” And Stallone here is better than he has been in decades, back to the average guy in a rowhouse in “Rocky,” not the superhero bullshit that came in the later flag waver films. Fame, money, all the capitalistic is shit, fake, the golden calf. Adrian was Rocky’s life and glory.

That final scene in “Rocky,” him defeated, but defiant, kills me now, because all he wants is Talia. To hold her. 

She’s gone now, and Rocky is slipping fast, and those Philly Art Museum stairs are now near impossible. You have seen the trailers. You will cry here. (Stallone, you beautiful bastard, you are forgiven for “Grudge Match.”) 

This is the story of a rising star indeed in Jordan and Creed, off screen and on, but it’s also the story of one guy and one city that will cling on, and walk on. Grit and shit and beauty, and contradictions, and Coogler plays those contradictions beautifully, his hero a man who refuses his father’s name, but plays projected video of the man’s 40-year-old boxing clips, fighting him on screen, he in the place of Rocky, punching and lunging at his own past, his dead father. Best scene of the film.

What an incredible film. Ludwig Goransson’s score is riveting and borrows motifs beautifully from Bill Conti’s original. Coogler deserves all the credit. He’s made a film that’s no franchise reboot, but a love letter that floored me. Jordan will be a star. Coogler a legend. Stallone could retire triumphant, hands raised in the air becuase he has finally given his character eternal greatness. 

This is the series I love, the city I love, and damn it did my hear good t see this. I need to get back home. Coogler, thak you. Jordan, thank you. Cinematographer Maryse Alberti, I thank you. A

The Expendables 3 (2014)

“The Expendables” brings back Sylvester Stallone and his action pals (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jet Li, Jason Statham) for more grinding mayhem, this time against Mel Gibson as an arms dealer. After the improved sequel, “3” ought to be aces. It’s garbage. The film gets cut to a bloodless PG-13 to get the kids in, but it’s still far too violent for children, with hundreds of onscreen deaths. (Yet, “Boyhood” got an R!?!) But that’s nitpicking. The plot is shambles, bending backward to intro younger heroes, all of them a snore – especially Kellan Lutz from “Legend of Hercules.” The young lot get captured, forcing the older lot to stage a rescue mission. Why bother? Gibson proves again he’s wildcard actor, brimming with madness, but his role is a bust. Buying bad art for $3M is evil? Harrison Ford plays a spook subbing for Bruce Willis, who played “Agent Church” in parts 1 and 2, but quit this entry over pay. So Ford delivers the line, “Church is out of the picture,” and winks directly into the camera. I saw a tear in his eye. C-

Grudge Match (2013)

Who would win in a fight, Rocky or Raging Bull? Twenty-five years ago that would have been a semi-serious whisky-laced conversation among movie fans who like their heroes damaged but triumphant. Oh, times have changed. A joke gabfest has turned actual movie with “Grudge Match,” featuring Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro having signed on for what I can only guess are gold bricks. I knew “Match” could be bad, a desperate fan fiction nostalgia trip to make us Gen X’ers recall how great these actors were on screen, and how huge the dramas of Rocky Balboa (dark, with redemption) and Jake LaMotta (far darker, none) were, once. But I wasn’t prepared for how endlessly mediocre every single boring moment would be, right up to the final sentimental boxing match that lasts six years as two 70-year-old actors mock-beat each other, and I became physically angry watching it all turn shit brown. I hated every bullshit wink-nod-wink inside joke: Stallone’s working class stiff visiting a meat freezer, De Niro’s smirking playboy and his comedy bar entertainment. A bad film that dares shits on two classics. Fuck this. F

Escape Plan (2013)

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger headline “Escape Plan,” a prison thriller with the 1980s action stars stuck behind bars and wanting out, but I don’t mean that kind of “out,” I mean escape. See, there’s half the potential nasty fun gone. That would take guts. No sex here. This is bargain bin DVD fare with laughs galore for all the wrong reasons. Stallone is Ray Breslin, a guy who spends his career inside prisons, breaking out to teach wardens of their faults. So when the CIA tasks Ray with testing a black-ops prison for terrorists, he jumps at the chance. Sucker. The prison is run by Jesus –- Jim Caviezel -– and has the Terminator himself as an inmate eyeing freedom. Machine guns blast, explosions boom, threats made, and helicopters go low, but nothing can save the story’s eye-roll fake-outs from ridicule. Rocky and Terminator try, but no dice. The cliché where the nonwhite guy gladly sacrifices himself so our Euro-heroes can live … I wish it would just die. Just. Fuckin’. Die. And the guy is Muslim? Ouch. Long before credits rolled, I wanted escape. Dumb. C

Rocky (1975)

“Rocky” is near religion to me. No, it is religion. I grew up in Philly, and Rocky Balboa, played by Sylvester Stallone, was our god. These were not just “movies” to us kids back then. They were documents of our home. Rocky was one of us. Enough sentimentality, onto the film itself: Rocky is 30, piss poor, working for a “second rate loan shark” in Kensington, boxing on the side to make a couple bucks. He hates his life. Then he’s plucked from his rut to box Heavyweight Champ Apollo Creed for a set-up, bullshit New Year’s Day 1976 fight to marks the U.S.’s 200^th anniversary. The fight is fixed. Rocky does not stand a chance, and knows it. He cares not. He wants to prove to himself, his shy pet shop girlfriend Adrian (Talia Shire), and anyone who is ignorant of where Kensington is, that he matters, that he can go the distance, as he says. It’s hilarious that conservatives see “Rocky” as their film, when in fact this story is about the people left out of the American dream, pushed and punched around a boxing ring in a match where the rich always win. Always. One of my favorites. A+

The Expendables 2 (2012)

“The Expendables 2” is what the first outing from 2010 -– a surprisingly dull film recreating and saluting the 1980s action flicks of my over-stimulated youth that had its head stuck up the butt of the long-gone decade –- should have been. Teeth-rattling fun, mainly.

In that film, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis -– the Holy Trinity of the Action Film Genre -– stood around and made blowjob jokes. The talky give and take was so awkward, it sounded like an investors meeting at Planet Hollywood, and the scene had zero impact. Here, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis come together and blast apart an army of faceless villains, machine guns popping off endless amounts of bullets. They are joined by Chuck Norris. They’re all after Jean Claude Van Damme. Now, that’s star power beyond my 16-year-old dreams. (Chuck Norris!!!)

Let’s get it out of the way now: “Expendables 2” is ridiculous, from its opening scene to the last frame. It’s a joke. Everyone on screen has a goofy character name, but who are we fooling? Our heroes, joined by “Expendables 1” hold-overs Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Terry Crews, and Randy Couture are basically playing themselves, or at least, our collective perception of the myriad characters they have played on screen since the time of VCR as a common household item and Ronald Reagan as president. When Big Names mattered over the title on the poster, not just the name of the superhero that the film is about. Hell, these guys were superheroes, flat out.

Schwarzenegger drops his “I’ll be back” lines from “The Terminator,” Stallone is called “the Italian,” even though his Barney Frank bears seemingly no relation to a Philly boxer. Willis gets a “Yippe-ki-yay” in there, for “Die Hard” lore. Lundgren’s real-life background as a chemical engineer gets picked up for a series of laughs, right before a tip to the original “Total Recall.” Hilariously, Chuck Norris tells a Chuck Norris joke, and can barely keep a straight face when he dishes it out. 

It’s silly, bloody camp, a throwback film that winks back at the 1980s/90s, and knows AARP men of that era have no business starring in a modern action film, but doesn’t care. Yet, that is the kick. I saw this because of the cast, thinking back to the day when we saw a movie because it was Stallone or Willis or Schwarzenegger. Those days are gone, mostly. Now, we see the Spider-Man movie, not caring who stars, but only because it is Spider-Man. Schwarzenegger says, “We belong in a museum,” ribbing himself before the haters can write the same dismissive remark in a snide review at IMDB. It’s not as gloriously over-the-top singularly enjoyable as, say, “Flash Gordon,” but awful close, and as fully aware of its heightened life as a instant guilty pleasure, without the guilt. Chuck Norris!!!

The improvements are fast, and in the credits: Stallone starred, wrote, and directed the first film, and looked exhausted the entire time onscreen. Simon West, who directed “Con-Air,” takes over the reins here, and Stallone also had help on the screenplay. And the man looks looser here, focused on the subject at hand: Kicking bad guy ass. He’s having more fun, really.

The plot is easy, and -– to my surprise -– throws in what the first film sorely needed, a female protagonist. Yu Nan, new to my eyes, plays an operative of Willis’ shady CIA spook named Church. The mission: The Expendables take Nan’s Maggie to a downed airplane in Albania to extract a McGuffin disk locked inside a safe. What’s on the disc? Not important. A group of vaguely European creeps want it, and get it, and fight is on. It’s that easy.

Starring as the lead villain, Vilain -– yes, go on and laugh or roll your eyes, Vilain! –- is Van Damme, looking mean and scarred after years of drug abuse and a reported heart attack. As with Lundgren in the first film, Van Damme looks hungry for stardom on screen and he dives so fully in to his maniacal, over-the-top (I really cannot say that enough) bad guy, one can’t help but cheer on the actor, I swear.

As with “The Avengers” and its thin plot, the set-up of “Expendables 2” is a means to get to the final battle. Unlike “Expendables 1,” this delivers. No spoiler alert needed, if you have not seen this film yet, these words will make you jump: Stallone fights Van Damme, hand-to-hand combat. It is freaking awesome. Yes, Stallone versus Schwarzenegger might be better, but this is just too good not to witness. Rocky/Rambo versus the Muscles from Brussels is what define high-octane summer films, even purposefully goofy violent.

It’s not rock solid by far. Clearly Jet Li had better things to do, and drops out quickly. As well, Schwarzenegger may not have the big-screen chops anymore, his line readings are awkward, as if he’s pushing too hard to pull off the one-liners of two decades ago. Liam Hemsworth (“The Hunger Games,” and younger brother of  Chris from “Thor”) plays a young Expendable who gives this long spiel of an Army mission gone wrong and an adopted pet dog being slain. It may be the dialogue, it may be Hemsworth’s newness as an actor, but it falls flat. That aside is a rare turn here compared to the overly morose tone that dragged “Expendables 1” down.

A Part 3 is promised, and although the cast may grow even larger and even more starry, I’m happy with this outing. This is a self-aware and knowing go-for-broke blast of fun, a joke that works, by the muscle-bound actors who, for better and worse, defined a decade-plus of action genre filmmaking. This is all perfectly the right amount of too much, and there’s a difference between nostalgic road trip and a tired cash grab. P.S., Chuck Norris!!! B+

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-

The Expendables (2010)

If you have not seen “The Expendables,” stop reading now. I’m about to throw a snit fit about the ending to this rehashed 1980s brainless action flick that goes further retro with a 1960s “Dirty Dozen” suicide mission homage. But not a single one of Expendables is … expendable. None. This is a G.I. Joe cartoon, AARP style. A suicide mission flick without a suicide. Like porn without skin, useless. WTF!?!

Director/co-writer/star Sylvester Stallone is Barney Ross, leader of the Expendables, a pack of tough-as-leather American mercenary soldiers out to save a woman and topple an evil Latin dictator. Which they do. Quite easily. Like I said, they all live to clink beers, throw knives and assure each other that none of them is gay, despite the fact that none of them can live with a (eww, girls!) woman. And they constantly talk about each other’s bodies without end, cause all guys do that, right? We are talking “Top Gun” territory here, without the volley balls.

I just sat dumb struck as Stallone missed the entire freakin’ absolute point of the iron-clad, Suicide Mission genre. Heroes die. I remember watching “Dozen” and “Bridge on River Kwai” plus “Predator” as a teen, gripped, thinking … Who will die next? (Alec Guinness! Noooooo! Run Carl Weathers! Run!) There are zero surprises. Zero reasons to pay attention. Zero reasons to call this “The Expendables.”

This is a dullsville. That’s wild to say, with Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Eric Roberts and Randy Couture among the beefed-up mother farmers, good and bad. (Steven Seagal, where art thou?) Look, it’s not a terrible film. The carnage is over-the-top 1980s bad. Meaning good and bloody. Of the cast, Lundgren has the most spark. A better word: hunger. The former “Rocky IV” boxer looks hungry for new stardom. Mickey Rourke wonders in as an ex-Expendable turned artist, and then wonders out, quickly. Why?

Teeth grinding abounds. We get the villain’s obligatory and endless half-mile run to the escape helicopter, helpless woman in tow, and, by God, did any one – CIA included – get a memo that it’s 2010, not 1984? No one even has a Word Processor. Motion sensors? Oh, wait, what, David Lee Roth quit “Van Halen”? Damn! You don’t say. See what I’m sayin’? And can we get a Linda Hamilton/Sigourney Weaver shout out? No. This film is Rush Limbaugh approved. Women are near mute with submission.

Now the worst part. “The Expendables” delivers a scene featuring the Holy Trinity of 1980s Action Stars: Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis. It falls flat. Set inside a church, Willis is another CIA goon, pitching the suicide mission to the former Rambo and ex-Terminator. The scene took months to schedule and film, by all accounts. Yet, it plays slapped together, uneven and meanders to a crap ending. Schwarzenegger plays it awfully sarcastic. Stallone appears exhausted. Lastly, Mr. John McClane suggests oral sex all around. (Huh? Oh, yeah, homophobic jokes were funny 30 years ago, too.) No one does it. There’s a sequel coming, though. Maybe one of our heroes will get blown away. One way or another. C

Mad Money and Rambo (both 2008)

At face value "Mad Money" and "Rambo" could not be any more different. One is a female-centered comedy about Federal Reserve Bank employees illegally taking home some extra pay. It stars Diane Keaton. "Rambo," of course, is another sequel in the hugely successful franchise about a real Army of One. It stars Sylvester Stallone. Yet, these films are exactly alike: They celebrate, grovel and re-live the excessive screw-you 1980s, when money was God and no explosion or body count was considered too high in film.

The kicker: "Rambo" is the better movie. By default.

What the hell happened to Diane Keaton? The glorious, supremely intelligent star of "Annie Hall," "Reds" and "The Godfather" is coasting in "Mad Money." The film is saddled with lackluster direction, a script uninterested in actual characters or logic, and terrible editing that repeatedly kills any momentum. I'm no champion of morality in film; heck, I love "There Will Be Blood" and "No Country for Old Men," but "Mad" actually demands us to agree that getting everything you want by any means necessary is every American's duty. By God, there are actual scenes where characters throw wads of money in the air and frolic under the falling paper. Maybe they'll show this to wild applause at the RNC or an oil speculator's convention. Rounding out Keaton's gang is Queen Latifah, who adds spark, and Katie Holmes, playing a ditz. Ted Danson plays the film's conscience, for a while. Then he's worshiping money. D-

"Rambo" is pure Stallone-American-red meat bravado. John Rambo, now seemingly in his early 60s, is living in Thailand, just off the border of Burma (now Myanmar). His existence is nil -- he tells anyone who crosses his path, "I don't give a funk," or something like that. Rambo is awakened from his, err, funk, by a group of sweetly seriously stupid Christian missionaries seeking passage into Burma. The group quickly is captured by the ruling junta once they reach their destination, and then tortured. And with that Rambo is back. The action is over the top: slow mo shots show Rambo mowing down soldiers with ease, they're heads, limbs and torsos flying apart like smashed strawberry jelly jars. And oddly, one hopes Rambo could pull the real Myanmar junta down. A character jokes that sometimes it takes the devil to do God's work. Sadly, he's right. Stallone is more spry here than he was in the "Rocky Balboa." But he's still 60, and the film never addresses that. Character development has never been high in the "Rambo" pantheon. Only the clank of a machine gun counts. B-