Creed

Released:  November 25^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Starring:  Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad

Directed by:  Ryan Coogler

Written by:  Ryan Coogler, Aaron Covington

Personal Bias Alert:  never seen a Rocky film

7.8 of 10

            It seems that in 2015, the 7^th time’s the charm.  Furious 7 racked up money and praise back in April, and Creed appears to be going in the same direction.  Oddly, both films find their series at tricky crossroads, unable to continue as they had before.  The Fast and Furious series lost one of its stars.  Creed must admit that Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) can no longer box.  The magnitude of these changes cannot be understated, and if nothing else, both series have seized the moment and delivered a crowd-pleasing entry for their die-hard fans.

            In Creed, the baton is passed from Rocky to Creed’s illegitimate son, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan).  Adonis is trying to prove himself without using his father’s reputation, making his way under the surname Johnson.  Of course, the illegitimate tag gnaws at him, and he’s angered at the thought of taking the name of a man he never met.  This doesn’t stop him from taking advantage of the connection to get Rocky in his corner, though (a contradiction that is thankful acknowledged), and the two form a relationship far beyond that of coach and trainee.

            The formula for the Rocky movies have always been well-worn, and Creed does nothing to change that.  We know all along that Rocky and Adonis will form a close relationship, that complications will arise, and then a big fight will bring them back together.  Like all great sports movies, the winning and losing isn’t what it’s all about.  The fight is symbolic, and unfortunately for Creed, that symbol is its weakest link.  The film’s metaphor is too simple and too clean to knock you out, a misstep that is a holdover from writer/director Ryan Coogler’s previous film, Fruitvale Station.  Neither film is sunk by this simplicity, but it’s more apparent in this drug out behemoth.  There’s just too much tire-spinning, too many moments of macho men acting out, and yes, too many training montages.  If these moments had built on each other to complicate the core relationship then we’d be having an entirely different conversation, but the film uses them only to pound down the same points, leaving the middle section feeling a bit weary.

            Still, complicated is not a defining word of the Rocky series, and fans that are turning up for a good-ole underdog story won’t be disappointed.  Jordan turns in an effervescent performance as Adonis, showing that he’s more than capable of carrying the sweat and the charm of the series.  Stallone is as comfortable as he’ll ever be in a role, and even if he’s not your cup of tea (he’s certainly not mine), it’s hard to argue against such a solid performance.  You’re third lead here would have to be Tessa Thompson, another charismatic actor that, like Jordan, has unfortunately been held back by the color of her skin.  Both should be much bigger stars than they are, and perhaps the best thing about Creed is that the continued series should become a career stabilizer for both of them.  Thompson plays Adonis’s love interest, a role that starts out as touchingly well-rounded but unfortunately fades.  And yet, Thompson and Jordan give such excellent performances that their relationship always works, and it will be a pleasure to see where they, along with Sly’s Rocky, end up next.

            What separates Creed from the sports movie pack is just how well it’s made, partially thanks to the performances that have already been outlined and partially because of Coogler’s direction.  His faults as a writer aside, Coogler is an unusually assured young filmmaker, taking chances here that mostly pay off in a beautiful and moving film.  The camera swirls, ducks, and pounds with the fighters, and the score goes big and sweeping.  In spite of the film’s simplicity, Coogler will play your emotions like a fiddle, and that last fight will certainly leave you feeling something, even if it does fall short of the genre’s legends.

            Coogler has made Creed into a reboot worthy of continued entries.  There are aspects of these characters that would be interesting to explore, and Jordan and Thompson prove to be a duo that will be exciting to watch well into the future.  It’s a rousing success for a very simple franchise and a tantalizing taste of what it’s capable of becoming.

Other Notes:

Ø  Obviously, Rocky is not a series that speaks to me.  That I responded to this film as much as I did is pretty remarkable.

Ø  This gets my nomination for Funniest Performance by a Turtle.

Ø  I do sincerely applaud this series for willingly shifting its focus to non-white people.  I have full confidence that audiences will continue to shell out money no matter the color of the actors onscreen.

Fantastic Four

Released:  August 7^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Twentieth Century Fox

Starring:  Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey

Directed by:  Josh Trank

Written by:  Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater, Josh Trank

Personal Bias Alert:  haven’t seen any previous Fantastic Four movies, likes the cast

4 of 10

            It’s not often that this big of a film completely lacks a purpose.  Many things have to go wrong to get such a product (a wobbly script, a director failing to impart his vision, misguided studio intervention, etc.), and it’s bold of Fox to so brazenly try to pass Fantastic Four as a decent movie.  Then again, a big-budget superhero flick can’t be buried with a pushed release date and minimal marketing like Sony Pictures did with Aloha, this year’s other conglomeration of scenes that was allegedly a movie.  Of course, Fantastic Four isn’t as big of a mess as Aloha; the individual scenes do make sense, they just never really go anywhere.

            The truly frustrating thing about this film is how great we all hoped it would be.  The cast for the superheroes and villain is a delectable slate of youngish talent that’ve had integral parts in many massively successful film and television projects, and the writer/director (who’s younger than some of his cast) was coming off a small-budget flick that impressed critics and viewers alike.  But alas, young talent can be unstable, and while the cast holds up their end, Josh Trank dropped the ball in nearly every way.  There’s reports of poor behavior and squabbles with the studio, but the finished product shows flaws that can be traced directly back to his pre-production decisions.

            The storyline that Trank seemed to be going for is depressingly familiar, almost an exact rehash of what he did in Chronicle.  Some young people discover their power (here, it’s science), their powers build until they become abusive and start harming themselves and others, then one of them becomes a bad guy that must be stopped by the rest of the group.  The fun that set apart Chronicle, though, was the comradery between the boys and a well-plotted descent that drew from each character’s background.  Trank, who didn’t write the actual screenplay for Chronicle, fails to bring this plotting and character development to Fantastic Four, leaving us with a bigger but lesser film.

            What Trank does manage to get right, at least for a while, is the young characters’ naive enthusiasm.  To start Fantastic Four, the brilliant team works together to design and build an interdimensional teleporter.  There’s joy in these scenes, a sense of bonding, and even if this section does drags on too long and is hampered by poor dialogue, it’s still the section where the cast and the film shines the brightest.  Eventually, the group actually gets to the other planet, and that’s when the movie loses what little it had going for it.  It succumbs to Franklin Storm’s (Reg E. Cathy) moralistic grandstanding, and any sense of character, fun, or even narrative purpose is lost.  In fact, Cathy is so shrill in his terribly written speeches that his eventual fate made me cheer instead of sniffle, and that level of unintentional hatred is glaring evidence of just how bad this movie becomes.

            But hey, it’s a superhero movie, so at least there will be dizzying CGI action that sustains its clunky plot, right?  No, Trank doesn’t even give us that.  There’s only one small, poorly conceived, flabergastingly simple ‘battle’ in Fantastic Four, the failure of which seems to stem from Trank being unable to grasp the character’s new, superhuman powers.  Granted, several of the powers in this group are quite silly (one’s stretchy and another is literally a rock), but not only does Trank fail to come up with an interesting way to use these powers in a battle, he doesn’t even come up with a way to shoot them so that they look cool.  The Human Torch and Invisible Woman become distorted when they use their powers, losing all sense of facial and bodily expression.  They are reduced to blobs moving around onscreen, which Trank failed to realize and hence tried to sell a dramatic moment between Invisible Woman and Dr. Doom (whose stiff design is equally hampering) that ends up as one of the most emotionally inert moments on film in 2015.  As for everyone else, stretchy Mr. Fantastic just looks silly, and The Thing is never more than a side thought in the entire film.  Getting the superheroes right is key to any superhero flick, making Fantastic Four’s belly flop in this area one of its most glaring failures.

            All this being said, Fantastic Four isn’t quite as bad as everyone is saying it is.  It’s certainly not good, but its plot is coherent and the actors occasionally find some fun in the script.  My suggestion?  Keep the actors, but get a team that will make the script and visuals match their abilities.  Maybe then we’ll get a good Fantastic Four movie.

Other Notes (Ridiculous Superhero Version):

Ø  Why did Invisible Woman struggle so much with her powers while at the facility but seem to have incredible control once they started fighting?

Ø  Why did Dr. Doom run away from the world in the first place?  Is he just a jerk?

Ø  Where did the cloth for Dr. Doom’s hood thing come from?

Ø  Why is The Thing so powerful?  Rocks aren’t actually indestructible.

Other Notes (Regular Version):

Ø  Why did the boys not invite Sue when they went to the other dimension?  She helped build the teleporter too!

Ø  Like all good scientists, they immediately touched the thing they’ve never seen before.

Ø  Funny that this movie was made so that a company (Fox) could keep the rights to Fantastic Four when the movie rails against corporate meddling.

Ø  Boy was that ending line (or lack of line) gratingly obvious.