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

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

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+

Real Steel (2011)

“Real Steal” is a deft genre mash-up: “Rocky” meets “Transformers,” with a heavy dose of “The Champ” tacked on for good measure, and Hugh Jackman in the lead. My film snob tastes melted away. The boy inside me cheered. The simple story: In the near future, human boxing is outlawed, replaced by a Michael Bay fever dream: Massive robot boxers going at each other like Ali and Foreman in the ring, no blood or brain damage, just busted-up (and recyclable) metal junk. Jackman is an ex-boxer named Charlie who has gone from dishing and taking KO’s in the ring to running robot boxers for hayseed crowds. Here comes the Underdog Redemption kick as Charlie has an estranged son named Max who, A) Needs a dad after mom dies, and B) Happens to be a junior engineer and avid gamer. Hokey? Much. So what. This is a CGI-heavy effects film that doesn’t let computer wizardly bulldoze story and character. During the climax, Shawn Levy’s camera pans away from the robot action and focuses on the human players instead. We care about these people, lead robot Atom is a blast, and as Max, Dakota Goyo upstages Jackman and the CGI. KO. A-

Warrior (2011)

“Warrior” is a two-for-one “Rocky” tale set inside the metal cages of Mixed Martial Arts. Tom Hardy is Rocky 1, a hulking slab of muscle and seething anger named Tommy Riordan, returned home to visit his Found Jesus father (Nick Nolte), a recovering alcoholic whose past sins run deep. In Philly is Rocky 2, Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton), an ex-MMA pro now teaching high school physics. The kicker: The men are brothers, split apart by the old man’s carnage. Directed by Gavin O’Connor, who made “Miracle,” the movie plays with every sport film cliché around from the loyal wife to the hero with a dark secret. Nolte’s listening to “Moby Dick” on CD pushes the edge of symbolism, that white whale being his sin. It could have been cut. But like “Miracle,” this is a go-ahead-and-cheer film with the brother-against-brother final bout dishing out drama that hurts. Nolte plays regret so well, and Edgerton (“Animal Kingdom”) is heroic as the underdog fighting to pay the mortgage. But this is Hardy’s film. He stalks and defeats opponents with a Raging Bull glare, and builds on the grisly prison flick “Bronson” and his scene-stealing from “Inception.” He’s up next as the steroid-crazed Bane in “Dark Knight Rises.” Batman better watch his back. 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-