Pick Only One: Rocky movie

Can confirm this movie is awesome. Seeing it in a crowded, cheering movie theater is a lot of fun

This was pretty great overall. Some fantastic boxing cinematography, good performances, followed the Rocky tropes nicely without being too contrived most of the time. Premise was a little bit of a stretch but I was able to suspend disbelief most of the time. Kind of wish they went for a more Rocky (I)-like ending, was a bit hard to believe, including the fight itself -- I'm no boxing expert but it looked like both were taking an unrealistic amount of punishment.

Also some Hollywood moments I could do without (no pun intended) but Hollywood gonna Hollywood.

Surprised how little this is getting discussed. Is there another thread?

dont think so, one mid-'70s adolescent resurrection at a time i guess

Was teary-eyed throughout the last two-thirds of this.

I really think Rocky wd've heard "O.G." in Philly sometime in the last 30 years tho.

btw that first "one-take" (yeah right) fight kicks the ass of anything in MM: Fury Road.

was talking to my son about this and pondering why in the interests of realism there aren't any boxing movies where the title bout is terrible and ends with a bullshit points decision just like in real life.

to enjoy the Rocky movies you have to leave realism at the door, cos both Rocky and Creed would have had their heads knocked off 5 minutes into the fight IRL.

other than being annoyed a wee bit at how close this movie resembled the first Rocky at times, this was a solid film. Michael B Jordan carries it but I liked Sly as an elder statesman boxer.

the moment where he tapped MBJ on the shoulder so he could correctly answer the "how many fingers am I holding up" was ace as well.

This one isn't actually about boxing though, and I thought so before they hooked Rocky up to the same drip machine I've been on.

Tessa Thompson also had 10x more to do here than Talia Shire did in all her Rockys.

Cinematography by Maryse Alberti (Poison, Happiness, Velvet Goldmine, Crumb).

I thought this was pretty OK! Highlight for me was definitely MBJ running with the 12 o'clock boys. Meek Mill on the soundtrack was a nice touch, too. It was maybe 20 mins too long but that seems to be a prerequisite for these things

Loved it; as long as it had to be. Nice jokes throughout, like Paulie's old issue of Swank.

yeah this one didn't feel overlong at all

Great Variety intvw with Coogler

i got a chuckle out of Rocky telling Adonis doing pushups in the hospital "try that one-handed"

FWIW I think the Wepner-Ali fight, which was the loose inspiration for the original, involved Wepner taking a p ridiculous number of punches and standing up for a godawful long time.

the Bayonne Bleeder. also a forger.

and to be played by Liev Schreiber!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bleeder

from the director of Monsieur Lazhar and featuring an actor portraying Stallone - interesting!

first Liev played a hockey goon and now Wepner; must pay better than Shakespeare.

i had forgotten he knocked Ali down.

wepner was fat, ugly and sweaty. Schreiber is an odd choice.

Hollllywood

one of the annoying prosaic throwaways in Creed was TV commentary on how Apollo's love child would "damage his legacy." Marital infidelity and numerous baby-mamas weren't really a problem for Ali. I guess they just wanted to keep Phylicia Rashad vulnerable.

Ali claims he stepped on his foot

that's so racist, Oscar

Wow, yeah. A shut-out for everything but the old white dude.

It's boilerplate, but I thought "Creed" was great boilerplate. Might have made an even better Netflix miniseries, though, build up the relationships and romance a bit better rather than jam all that melodrama into one film, plus cancer. Stallone was great, I thought, the Oscar nom template (a la Paul Newman and a few others) of an actor returning to a role whose history and wrinkles dovetail perfectly with the actor's.

had a home rewatch of Creed, holds up nicely

plz don't do any more, tho

strange

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-23/turkey-orders-probe-for-banner-at-galatasaray-match-shares-fall

hmmmm, watch out for that well....

Steven Caple Jr. will direct Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in Creed 2, “with production expected to start in spring 2018.” Ryan Coogler, “who directed Creed [2015], is expected to join in an executive producer role . . . The upcoming installment follows Adonis Creed (Jordan)’s life inside and outside of the ring as he deals with new-found fame, issues with his family, and his continuing quest to become a champion. . . . Caple recently wrote HBO’s high-profile Emmett Till project, produced by Will Smith and Jay-Z.”

http://variety.com/2017/film/news/creed-2-director-steven-caple-jr-1202626542/

gotta think the SON OF DRAGO angle will sink this one

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/michael-b-jordan-risks-everything-avenge-dads-death-new-creed-ii-trailer-173440717.html

i dunno, feels like there’s enough anti-russian sentiment floating around the us right now to make it a slam-dunk hit

cant believe i never put in a stirring defence of iii itt

the only bad rocky is rocky v

yeah bg, i meant sink it for me

the villain will probably be trained by Jill Stein

I'm no boxing expert but it looked like both were taking an unrealistic amount of punishment.

One hallmark of boxing movies is that every punch is amplified to the point where it sounds like the sound effects were recorded by slamming the carcass of a walrus with a baseball bat.

So hey, I thought I must've seen at least one Rocky when I was a kid but I just blasted through 1-3 yesterday and I'm pretty sure that (aside from a smattering of iconic scenes that have seeped into the public consciousness) I've never actually watched any of them previously. They're great! There's obviously at least a whiff of fromage wafting from 3 but it's still damn entertaining (and like Weathers and Meredith and even Mr. T are all v compelling to watch). Maybe I've seen 4? I feel like I remember more about that one but I might be thinking of the Mad Magazine parody.

Also surprised to realize that Stallone actually directed most of them. He's not bad, that Sly! I wondered why he didn't branch out more and take advantage of the sequels' success to snag some more directorial gigs but then remembered, oh yeah, Stayin' Alive.

Never did make that stirring defence of iii but its legit a movie that stands up on its merits imo, the nutcase stuff with the hulkster os cut through p quickly with how badass mr t is and you just cant argue with weathers/stallone as a pairing from then on

The bros mac still use rockys ring banter from iii interalia whenever possible

so weird how the original rocky and the original rambo are both such small, character-based dramas, given what they both turned into

The more low-key character-based material in the first two helps lay the groundwork that lets 3 get away with being mostly fights and training montages and scenes of cutoff-clad Rocky and Apollo cavorting in the surf to the tune of 'Playing With the Boys'. Sometimes the meat is all you need.

I might have to give the Rambos a try after I make my way through this entire saga (have seen only my beloved First Blood a dozen or so times, expect to be thoroughly disappointed by the rest).

Yeah ive never seen a rambeau but have those and the new planet of the apes movies all lined up

nu-Apes are aces!

So Rocky IV is very entertaining but much less good. It's basically a Golan & Globus Rocky movie (it's surely no coincidence that the stars went on to Cannon's Over the Top and Masters of the Universe in subsequent years). I don't believe I have actually seen it before because I think I would remember batshit things like Paulie's robot and Rocky ending the Cold War with his boxing. I've been a geat fan of the 'montage anthem' soundtrack for some time but I had no idea that there was actually a montage for all eighteen montage anthems. Lotta filler in this thing. Lotta filler.

I swear to god, one of the sound effects used when Drago punches Rocky in the face was a frickin' bowling ball knocking down pins. If that isn't art then I'm gonna need someone to explain art to me.

Rocky V is the Force Awakens of the franchise (assuming a later entry doesn't wind up being even more Force Awakens-ish). After three installments of Stallone handling the reins himself (and rather adroitly, I must say), Avildsen comes back and spends the first half taking a 'hey, remember this?' tour as he recreates shots from the first film. And then the ending streetfight with Rocky's hayseed protege-cum-nemesis is just completely ludicrous. But it contained the seed of a better movie and it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been led to believe. Still, it doesn't bode well when the best scene in the movie is Burgess Meredith's flashback cameo.

Oi

TFA is great

at least Force Awakens was full of action scenes. the high point of Rocky V is a ......street fight?

the end of Tommy Morrison's life was pretty weird and tragic. years of allegedly denying he was HIV positive, until he finally progressed to AIDS, and his own wife denied that he had it until he died.

If you want to see Rocky's ten-year-old son engage in roughly 3x more fights than Rocky himself does, then this is the Rocky for you!

first 3 Rockys are v enjoyable, i love going back and rewatch

Rocky IV is what happens when a studio does not understand its franchise. Rocky V is ok but i feel like it’s not as good as I ~want~ it to be

i dont like Balboa

i heartily recommend Creed

Creed 2 is fine but it aint no Creed :/

I'm plowing through the whole shebang! Couldn't get my gf onboard for the straight-up Rocky installments (even though Karate Kid is like her favorite movie ever and I was all 'But Avildsen! And underdogs fulla heart fightin' their way to glory!') but I think she's gonna give the Creeds a shot.

Maybe Creed will be the thing that gets her to go back & give the Rockys another chance

Karate Kid 3 = Rocky IV but with like 50% ~less~ reason to watch. God it’s so terrible.

mr veg likes the rocky movies but cant get with the karate kid movies - but he does enjoy Cobra Kai

Rocky Balboa is the alternate universe Force Awakens of the franchise, featuring an aged Luke mooning around Tatooine and, because they couldn't manage to snag Carrie Fisher, they settled on bringing back...oh, let's see...Wuher the cantina-keep and Momaw Nadon Hammerhead? Which is to say its insistence upon referencing the past maybe outpaces its ability to reconstruct a past worth referencing. When it stops trying to shoehorn tertiary characters from the original film into the narrative and allows itself to be Rocky: The Retirement Years, it's fine if nothing to write home about. The fight at the end suffers a bit from being more obviously staged.

'That PS2 cutscene has got people curious!'

rocky 1 is s great film. the sequels cheapen it, but rocky iv is notable in itself as, like, definitive cold war kitsch

its insistence upon referencing the past maybe outpaces its ability to reconstruct a past worth referencing

Lyfe man

2true

All right, respect to Stallone, I read up and discovered that all the boxing was in fact real and not staged at all. I guess you have to stage a cinematic fight to make it look real.