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

After Earth (2013)

“After Earth” must be mocked. How else to react to a sci-fi survivalist tale from once-great director/writer M. Night Shyamalan that is set on a desolated/abandoned future Earth, but one that looks like a commercial for a tropical adventure? (Cities? There are none.) This is absolute unintended comedy, a wonder of miscalculation. Despite MNS’s name, Will Smith is the man in charge as producer and story creator, and it isn’t even his vehicle. The star is Smith’s teenage son Jaden, who had better luck and better support in pop’s “Pursuit of Happyness” and the recent “Karate Kid” remake. The syrupy story has a “Great Santini” father (Will) and his green horn son (Jaden) all angry dinner scowls and then later crashing their space shuttle on said Earth. Naturally, the duo must bond as son serves as the “avatar” hero of his father, whose legs are shattered. Also in the shuttle and now loose on Earth because no space cliché can go untouched: A slimy monster that eats people. I can take hodge-podge films that wink at their theft, but “Earth” is blindly, awkwardly convinced of its own “inspirational” Hallmark gruel. It's just gruel. Younger Smith looks miserable. C-

The Place Beyond the Pines (2013)

“The Place Beyond the Pines” is a rare piece of work, a three-act morality crime thriller heavy on family throes, modeled -– in scope, length, and music-heavy beat -- on “Heat,” but subbing tiny New York town called Schenectady (great name!) for sprawling  Los Angeles. Director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine”) casts Ryan Gosling as Luke, a carny motorcycle stuntman who learns that a one-night stand has produced a son. His jailhouse tattoos signify a hard-scrabble life, Luke but sees the Light in that baby boy’s face. But his way to get cash is criminally stupid, and with a crook, we must have a cop. Bradley Cooper is Avery, a law-school grad who drives a squad car. His story is Act 2. Act 3 jumps 15 years to the sons of cop and crook as the youth play out a track the other chapters deftly avoided: a finger-waving melodrama that fails against the previous action, including a true gut-punch shocker. Gosling and Cooper bring their best, and the actors playing the sons –- Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan -– leap over the cliché roles. “Pines” could have been massive, daring follow-up for Cianfrance, but his need to dispel lessons breaks the spell. B-

The Fly (1986) and The Fly II (1989)

David Cronenberg’s nightmare love story horror flick “The Fly” is mad genius, sickly twisted, and lets Jeff Goldblum spin gold as a loner nerd scientist named Seth Brundle who wants to change the world as we know it. He doesn’t, but sure as hell changes his own corner when a teleportation experiment goes wrong and he zaps himself and a house fly from one souped-up self-built transport pod to another, two go in, one comes out. Cronenberg fires on all bloody cylinders, starting with a romance between Goldblum and Geena Davis as a reporter, then sci-fi fantasy, then body horror as Seth morphs to a superman assured he has jumped the evolutionary ladder to mad man when his body starts falling apart, and becoming ... another. Twenty-six years on “Fly” still shocks with Goldblum’s transformation under makeup, and then the stop-motion creatures that replace him. The lines are cheesy – “Be afraid! Be very afraid!” – but the visuals burn deep, as does Cronenberg’s obsession with dying and disease. Last note: Mr. C must release a director’s cut soon: Check out a cut scene on YouTube, as Seth makes a monkey-cat as part of his own healing scheme shown later. Insane. A

In “The Fly II,” Cronenberg buzzes off to better films, and we’re stuck with Chris Walas – the makeup guy on the first film – as director of a “Like Father, Like Son” spookfest. Let’s give it points: “Fly II” flies in a different direction as Martin, the mutant flyboy of Goldblum’s scientist and Davis’ reporter, is raised inside a mega-corp lab, and as a 20-year-old (really 5) falls in love, all flowers and dancing sweet. Sure as hell, though, we get a grisly transformation and all goes to shit fast with bad visual effects and a LOL “Alien” rip off as Marty McFly (tee-hee!) goes on a bender against his surrogate Mr. Burns daddy, so boring bad, he could be a 1970s Disney villain. Lee Richardson is the old man, and Eric Stoltz – he did “Mask” before this – is young Martin. It’s all a maggot baby so unworthy of Cronenberg I wanted to take a rolled-up magazine and … well, you know. C

The Way (2011)

Emilio Estevez is a quiet and introspective writer and director of the self-funded “The Way,” a family drama starring real-life pop Martin Sheen (ne Ramon Estevez) as a grieving father coming out of his all-for-capitalism shell. It deals with fathers/sons and religious values, and not cheekily so. Sheen is Tom Avery, an aging eye doctor who receives a call while on the golf course: His son (Estevez) has died while walking the famed trail Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James. Tom goes to Europe to collect the body and return home. But, alone and openly weeping in his hotel, he decides to finish the son’s journey, one he openly mocked to the son’s face. So, yes, Tom will have his own awakening. His eyes (did you miss that symbolism?) will open. I wish we knew more of Daniel’s intent (why that trail, why not hike in Chile?), but the film is about Tom’s character, and stopping to see sunsets and going to church. Even if you don’t believe. Sheen is stoic in this quiet thoughtful tale. (He is just as stoic in person, I saw this screen in his presence at Virginia Tech. Amazing man.) P.S. I want to see Estevez cut as wildly loose behind the camera as he did on camera in “Young Guns.” That would be a freakin' blast. B+