Creed, Attack The Block and A Hologram For The King: Your Week In Film (May 16-22)

Stallone and Jordan fight for their futures in Creed

TV, Radio, DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and cinema picks for the next seven days...

Monday 16th: Like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Creed (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) has gone the 'requel' route. Ryan Coogler's film is part Rocky sequel, part reboot, and at times borrows wholesale from the original 1976 picture and its various follow-ups. That said, it's a definite cut above other recent boxing flicks, such as last year's Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Southpaw, while Michael B Jordan and Sylvester Stallone have genuine chemistry. Check out my original review here. When Animals Dream (DVD and VOD) is a Danish werewolf film that has been favourably compared to the likes of Ginger Snaps and Let The Right One In. Well, I'm sold. If you only see one film this week, you should probably make it The Master (23:10, Film4). Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson is at the height of his powers in a lengthy but powerful drama that sees Joaquin Phoenix's ex-soldier struggling to adapt to life, post-World War II. He soon falls under the spell of Philip Seymour Hoffman, the charismatic leader of a religious cult, known as The Cause. The writing is razor-sharp, the performances are pitch-perfect and any resemblance to the church of Scientology is fully intended.  

When Animals Dream: A werewolf movie from Denmark

Tuesday 17th: Attack The Block (21:00, E4) sees the denizens of a south London council estate fighting off an alien invasion. Luckily for them they have Finn from The Force Awakens (aka John Boyega, in his first movie role) to help them. Joe Cornish's film homages Walter Hill's The Warriors and John Carpenter's Assault On Precinct 13 to serve up a superior slice of sci-fi that is gritty, funny and surprisingly thrilling. MUBI have recently added The Hunt to their ever-changing but beautifully-curated catalogue of films. Thomas Vinterberg's excellent drama sees Mads Mikkelsen's nursery teacher accused of molesting one of the children in his care. He is quickly vilified and ostracised by the local community as his life falls apart. A fascinating, horrifying meditation on collective hysteria.

Attack The Block: South Londoners versus aliens

Wednesday 18th: The ubiquitous Oscar Isaac is the blue-hued big bad in X-Men: Apocalypse, which hits cinemas today. Amongst numerous new faces (including Olivia Munn, Sophie Turner and Kodi Smit-McPhee) are franchise regulars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Rose Byrne. Unusually for a Bryan Singer X-movie, the reviews have so far been a little underwhelming. To Rome With Love (Netflix) is typical late period Woody Allen - a likeable if hit and miss affair with all the substance of a soufflé. Rather better is Barbra Streisand's bravura debut turn as Fanny Brice in musical comedy Funny Girl (Netflix). Hello, gorgeous...

Barbra Streisand hits the heights in Funny Girl

Thursday 19th: Tom Hanks talks to Francine Stock about A Hologram For The King on The Film Programme (16:00, BBC Radio 4). Hanks plays a failed American businessman hoping to recoup his losses by traveling to Saudi Arabia and selling his idea for 3D meeting technology to a wealthy monarch. Director Tom Tykwer made the brilliantly inventive Run Lola Run back in the day, so I have high hopes for this culture-clash comedy despite its seemingly pedestrian premise. The trailer in which Hanks 'sings' Talking Heads' 'Once In A Lifetime' has certainly piqued my interest.

Hanks sings Talking Heads in A Hologram For The King

Friday 20th: Amy Schumer's US TV vehicle - Inside Amy Schumer - is one of the finest sketch comedies to appear on either side of the Atlantic in the last 20 years. Trainwreck (15:45 and 20:00, Sky Movies Premiere) was director Judd Apatow's attempt to refashion her schtick for the American mainstream and it smooths off far too many of the comic's sharp edges. In fact, the film's boozy, promiscuous journalist is like something out of 1990s Britain - a story about a ladette, only 20 years too late. Bill Hader, Tilda Swinton and Schumer herself are always worth watching, though. Tom Hanks pops up again on Kermode And Mayo's Film Review (14:00, BBC Radio Five Live), again talking about A Hologram For The King which opens in cinemas today. 

Amy Schumer deserves better than Trainwreck

Saturday 21st: In a fascist future America (insert Donald Trump gag here), Jennifer Lawrence is made to fight for her life in The Hunger Games (21:00, Channel 4). Yes, it's just 2000's Battle Royale repurposed for US teens but is hugely enjoyable all the same. Elena (00:40, BBC2) is the film Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev made before 2014's epic gloom-fest Leviathan. This time he focuses on an ageing Muscovite woman (Nadezhda Markina as the titular character) battling to protect her future after her businessman husband changes the contents of his will. An atmospheric and gripping drama.

Elena: Where there's a will there's a way...

Sunday 22nd: Hitchcock (23:30, Channel4) stars Anthony Hopkins as the titular director struggling to get Psycho made. The big Hollywood studios with whom he'd had such a successful relationship all passed on it so he had to finance the movie - now, of course, a classic - himself. Sterling support comes from Helen Mirren (as Hitchcock's long-suffering wife Alma Reville) and Scarlett Johansson (as Vivien Leigh). 

Anthony Hopkins is Alfred Hitchcock in, erm, Hitchcock

Last 5 Films I Saw

1. Mustang (2015): Deniz Gamze Ergüven's Oscar-nominated drama chronicles the lives of five orphaned Turkish sisters, imprisoned and forced into marriage by their conservative guardians. Its subject matter is harrowing but the film never slips into clumsy melodrama. Instead, it is hopeful, defiant and a real kick in the pants for Turkey's ruling patriarchy. Currently in cinemas and on demand.
2. Dazed And Confused (1993): Richard Linklater's coming of age comedy about a group of American high schoolers perfectly captures the aimlessness and madness of adolescence. His female characters are all a bit too low in the mix though.
3. In The Bedroom (2001): A New England couple (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek, both superb) struggle to come to terms with the violent death of their only son in this effective family drama. Takes an unwanted detour down Death Wish Boulevard towards the end.
4. Captain America: Civil War (2016): The opening sequence and punch-up at the airport are spectacular but, if I'm honest, I preferred the overblown silliness of Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice. Plus, The Vision and Black Panther are just very dull, aren't they?
5. Hot Pursuit (2015): I'd watch Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara in anything... apart from this disappointing chase comedy. Not so much a Midnight Run, more a mid-morning amble through a series of weak gags.

Turkish drama Mustang is hopeful and defiant

UK box office top 10
1. Captain America: Civil War R
2. The Jungle Book R
3. Bad Neighbours 2
4. Florence Foster Jenkins
5. Robinson Crusoe
6. Eye In The Sky
7. Zootropolis R
8. Bastille Day
9. 24
10. Friend Request

R = Recommended

Rocky 'requel' Creed fails to deliver a knockout punch but just about wins on points

New movie review

Creed
Director: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Michael B Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson
Running time: 133 mins

Rocky (Stallone) trains the late Apollo Creed's son, Adonis (Jordan)

Like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Creed has gone the 'requel' route. Ryan Coogler's film is part Rocky sequel, part reboot, and at times borrows wholesale from the original 1976 picture and its various follow-ups. That said, it's a definite cut above other recent boxing flicks, such as last year's Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Southpaw, which was horrible on so many levels even thinking about it makes me depressed.

Michael B Jordan (Fruitvale Station) is Adonis Johnson, the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, the Muhammad Ali analogue (played by Carl Weathers) who lit up the first few Rocky films before being punched to death by evil Russian Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) in the franchise's fourth installment. Rescued from 'juvenile hall' by Apollo's widow Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), he grows into a successful young man but the lure of the fight game ultimately proves too strong and he quits his day job to pursue it full time. Relocating from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, Adonis enlists former heavyweight champ Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) as trainer and begins his ascent to a shot at the world title.  

Adonis Creed in fight action against Leo Sporino (Gabe Rosado)

The main problem with Creed is that Adonis is a privileged rich kid - yes, he had it tough in his early years but ended up living with his adopted mother in a great big mansion. Therefore his successes don't seem as hard won as they were for Rocky, who, lest we forget, started life as a down-on-his-luck, has-been fighter who would probably have spent his life in total obscurity had not Apollo Creed come calling. You never doubt Adonis's determination or ability but somehow a feeling that he never really paid his dues takes hold early on and persists. Unfortunately, enlisting his dad's old friend and rival, 'uncle' Rocky, only reinforces this belief. 'Pretty' Ricky Conlan (real-life UK boxer Tony Bellew), the champion he fights at the end, might be a caricatured Scouser on his way to prison for "running around Toxteth with a gun", but he is far more authentic. With his background ("my old man worked on the docks"), you feel he perhaps has more in common with Rocky than Adonis does. And so, especially as a Brit, my loyalties weren't entirely with Creed in the final bout. Worse case scenario - he loses badly and goes back to his big-arse house in California. Rocky was the ultimate underdog story and this really isn't.

Creed during his world-title fight with Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew)

Jordan is a fine actor (anyone who can emerge from the Fantastic Four car crash with his dignity and reputation intact has to have something going for them) and he's totally convincing here, particularly in those moments when he opens up about the father he never knew. The same goes for Tessa Thompson (Dear White People) as love-interest Bianca, a hearing-impaired musician with a story every bit as intriguing as Adonis'. But, let's be honest, it's Stallone that really elevates this. The later Rocky films are mostly bilge but Balboa is nevertheless one of American cinema's greatest characters. Washed-up punchbag, turned beloved world champion, turned ageing restaurateur. He's a man who has seen and done it all - taken on the world and won - but was almost certainly happiest living a simple life with Adrian, the woman he loved, long ago lost to cancer. 

I love the fact Coogler, who also co-wrote the screenplay, stays true to Rocky's origins - no mansion for Mr Balboa, no glamorous blonde on his arm, no limo parked on the drive (no drive!). He is what he always was - a taciturn, hard-working stiff with a heart as big as a mountain. He's like a wounded old lion at times here - melancholic, nostalgic but still fighting; this time going glove-to-glove against cancer rather than a boxing rival. Stallone can do this stuff in his sleep by now but he does it beautifully. If people think Robert De Niro has sold himself short recently, with the likes of Dirty Grandpa and Last Vegas, they should take a look at Stallone's movie career and weep. He could have been a fine character actor but took the money and the fame instead, allowing himself to be lumped together with fellow '80s action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lundgren, who, frankly, were never fit to lace his gloves. Take another look at James Mangold's Cop Land, if you don't believe me, because he is terrific in it.

Adonis begins a relationship with musician Bianca (Tessa Thompson)

Stallone and Jordan have real chemistry and share several memorable scenes, particularly early on when they discuss the late Apollo (Rocky reveals who won their fabled third 'behind-closed-doors' fight), and later when they climb the 72 stone steps (the 'Rocky Steps') to the entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Both sequences gave me genuine goosebumps, as did the moment when Bill Conti's Rocky theme ('Gonna Fly Now') started up as Adonis prepared to enter the ring for his climactic fight. That said, respectful nods to the original movie and its five sequels are understandable but, just like JJ Abrams' clumsy Star Wars reboot, at times Creed feels just a bit too familiar. At one point, during training, Balboa even gets Adonis to chase chickens - just as Burgess Meredith's Mickey Goldmill did Rocky 40 years before. There's an awful lot of this kind of stuff and I hope any further sequels go off in a more imaginative direction, although Internet talk of Adonis fighting Ivan Drago's son in the next film suggests otherwise. 

The movie's trailer

Creed scores big with its fight scenes. One reason I'm generally not a big fan of boxing movies is the cartoonish way in which the bouts are too often portrayed. Dredging up the wretched Southpaw as an example, I frequently had to remind myself I was watching two men fighting, rather than a couple of CGI superhumans, as massive punch followed massive punch and horrible facial injury followed horrible facial injury. The whole thing was ridiculous. Boxing can be brutal, yes, but there's an awful lot more to it than pummelled noses and colossal haymaker punches. It's a hugely technical discipline in which employing a solid defence and avoiding getting hit are at least as crucial as socking your opponent on the jaw or in the ribs. Coogler's film embraces that notion as much as any Hollywood movie about the sport ever has, whilst delivering a couple of terrific fights. 

The final throwdown with Conlan - who I sincerely hope we see again - certainly gets the blood pumping but it's an earlier bout against Leo Sporino (real-life Philadelphian boxer Gabe Rosado) that is the stand-out. The frenetic two-round punch-up is shot in one take by Coogler and his cinematographer Maryse Alberti, and it transplants you from your cinema seat smack-bang into the ring amidst the action more effectively than just about any fight movie this side of Raging Bull. Coogler has likened the scene to a monologue - Adonis out on his own, truly expressing himself for the first time. It's a genuinely bravura moment in a film that doesn't quite have enough of them.

Rating: WW½

Creed is in UK cinemas now 

Ratings

WWWW - Wonderful

WWW - Worthwhile

WW - Watchable

W - Woeful