The Big Picture - ‘Creed III’ and the Top 10 Boxing Movies

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

The third film in the Adonis Creed story, and the directorial debut of its star Michael B. Jordan, is here. Sean and Amanda dive deep into the movie before rope-a-doping their way through the definitive list of the top 10 boxing movies. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's official. One Shining Podcast is back, and I am your host, Tate Frazier. And as March Madness begins, we're covering everything from Selection Sunday all the way to the Championship and beyond. We're going to have great guests that are coming through on the show. And look, if you're a friend of the program and you're already subscribed, you don't have to do anything. OSP is back. It's going to be right back in your feed. And if you're not a friend of the program and this is your first time on the rodeo, then let me tell you this. You need to go to Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts

and smash subscribe today because the OSP show is back. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Creed,

the third film in the Adonis Creed story. The directorial debut of its star, Michael B. Jordan, arrives in theaters this weekend. Amanda and I will dig into this eagerly awaited movie today, and then I'm going to share my top 10 favorite boxing movies ever with some notes from Amanda. Are you ready for this? And a positive attitude. Thank you. I appreciate you bringing in good energy. And some questions about the sport of boxing. Yeah, well, I don't have all the answers, but I have a lot of answers about boxing movies. Are they that

different? I believe so. Well, I think that's probably true, but the sport of boxing does have its cinematic and narrative devices as well. Yes, certainly. The poetry of pugilism is something that matters to me and matters to Creed, matters to Adonis Creed. This is, as I said, the third movie in this series. You and I are on the record as absolutely loving the first Creed. Won't be the last time we talk about that movie, which was directed by Ryan Coogler.

And I think after years of great work from Michael B. Jordan on The Wire, on Friday Night Lights, you know, of course, in Fruitvale Station with Ryan Coogler. Creed really fully announced him as one of our great movie stars. Creed II, less good. I thought not bad. I think some people had a very mixed reaction to that movie. What was your take on Creed II? I think it depends on your relationship to Rocky II, 3, and 4 because it is written, co-written by Sylvester Stallone and really has a reverence for what was going on in the late 70s and 80s and those franchise movies. It feels the most one-to-one. Yes.

It is deeply connected to 4. Like inventing anything new or or updating really so you know i have i have feelings and i also like it whenever dudes just go out into the desert and start you know lifting tires with their head or whatever the hell he's doing i guess it's a weight well once the music starts going i get really jazzed and we'll talk more about that but it didn't work it wasn't as exciting as creed to me it wasn't and you know when that film ended it ended with the sort of the defeat of victor drago the son of ivan drago who was the villain played by zolf lundgren in rocky complicated politics in creed 2 now given the current geopolitical situation was the fight in russia

yes at the end of creed 2 i believe it was, which would not happen today. No. Here we are. I just wanted to note, it's of a time that is no longer the time that we're in. Fascinating to think of 2018-19 as a time capsule, but it is a political time capsule. At the end of that movie, Creed stands tall. He is the victor. He is our reigning champion. And at the beginning of this film, Creed III, he is still the champion. And we sort of see him at the outset of the film winning one final victory and, you know, standing on top of the world of boxing. But the film doesn't open specifically with Adonis Creed and his, as we know him as the fighter, it opens in a kind of flashback mode. I will say, when I heard that Michael B. Jordan was directing the movie, I was a little bit concerned.

Actors taking on directorial projects, especially what could be considered at this point a kind of like movie star vanity project, you know, something that he is really the central figure in. Mixed results on that. Of course, Sylvester Stallone did it to great success in the past, but I wasn't quite sure. And then as soon as I saw the opening sequence, which is a flashback to Adis creed at a young age with a an older friend who is an aspirant boxer i was like we're in pretty good hands here this is definitely not going to be a disaster now that might have been the height of the film for me that flashback sequence because it had so much style such a clear sense of tone it opens with dr dre as the watcher i thought it was a really great little time capsule and there's

a part of me as i was watching the movie that's like, I actually want to see that movie more than the movie Creed III. But we'll get into that. And then the movie essentially pivots away from the past and it uses the past to show us where Creed is at now as he is getting ready to put down the gloves and focus on his family and his extraordinary home that he lives in and his grand wealth. And a figure from the past emerges. And it is, of course, the guy who he was in the car with and who grand wealth and a figure from the past emerges

and it is of course the guy who he was in the car with and who is the aspirin boxer from his past and he's played by jonathan majors he's a guy named damian anderson he comes out of prison and he wants a piece of what adonis has he wants adonis's success he wants to box he wants to rise to glory and fame what'd you think of creed? Had a great time. I sent you a capsule review that we will talk about later, but that has to do with the transition from this being a piece of the Rocky franchise to its own new thing that is related,

but is now the Creed franchise. And this notably has no Sylvester Stallone. Rocky is not mentioned. He's not. They just disappear him. I guess at the end of Creed II, he is in San Francisco with his son, played by Milo Ventimiglia. And that's nice. They have a moment.

So maybe we're meant to assume that he's just still there, like getting to know his grandkids. They don't go out of their way to explain it. And of course, Sylvester Stallone, who was originally, I think, conceived to be a part of the project, but then got into a skirmish with the producers, Chardoff and Winkler, about the rights to Rocky. And Sylvester Stallone wants the rights to Rocky, and he is not able to acquire those rights. And so he sat this project out. And so he is just, he is not even a ghost looming over the proceedings.

He's just, there's no Rocky Balboa here. Right. And in some ways you don't miss it. And in other ways, I kept waiting for the moment. It's just, it's an interesting thing where it's like trying to be its own franchise and standalone

and I think it works as a standalone movie again like had a lot of fun but there are enough callbacks where I was like but but wait or what about this and and frankly you know at some point the music isn't there and I just like absolutely spent the whole time being like but when are you gonna play the fucking song and that's that my thing. But what about the song? It's sort of my review, even though it was really fun. Yeah, I thought it was fun too. Its greatest strength is also its biggest burden,

which is that it is bound to one of the most, if not the most inspiring American movie franchises. And even just revisiting the Rocky films to get ready to talk about this, I was reminded of, even when they're not great, they're pretty great. Like the things that don't work about them, you're willing to forgive in an effort to get to the best parts. And I think of this movie in a very similar way. I thought it was very good and not great. And I thought for a first time

filmmaker was very impressive because there's a lot of work to do when you are carrying that burden and it mostly gets it across. This film also has a superpower in the name of Jonathan Majors that it is really reliant on. Yes. Though that almost becomes a little odd because I would say the middle third of the movie is, well, I guess maybe it's the first third of the movie, is really the Jonathan Majors story.

And he's amazing. And that is just like a presence and an actor. And like, he's incredible in the early scenes between Michael B. Jordan and Jonathan Majors when they're meeting and catching each other up on their lives, like hugely emotional, complex, really cool ideas. They both do it really well.

And, you know, you can feel the center of the movie going a little bit away from Michael B. Jordan to Jonathan Majors. And I think a little bit of that is intentional and an interesting choice. And some of that is just about, you know, acting star power and presence. And then Jonathan Majors disappears from the movie for like a good 45 minutes while the creed character ties up all his other emotional baggage and like then he comes back so it's a it's a double-edged sword it's the most exciting part of the movie but you can also feel i guess again it's transitional like they're setting all the pieces and in place and it takes a little while to get to the new arrangement. Yeah, these movies really live and die by their opponents.

And this movie in particular felt like a real clear fusion of what's happening in Rocky 2 and Rocky 3. In Rocky 2, you know, it's this rematch with Apollo Creed and we get more depth about Apollo Creed. And Apollo Creed's kind of vulnerability in the face of his effectively his draw with Rocky and how he becomes insecure and he feels he has more to prove and Carl Weathers gets more to do there's like just the depth to that performance in that character and then that transitions into Rocky 3 where um you know Mr. T portrays Clubber Lang who is just this like kind of killing machine you know he's's just like a hall monitor of violence, basically. And he's just constantly berating Rocky and it's leading to this epic showdown. And so Dame Anderson, the Jonathan Majors character, feels really like a fusion of both of those characters, despite the fact that Adonis is,

of course, Apollo's son. this idea of a complicated emotionally unstable person who's trying to figure out how to get everything that he wants with uh the kind of like intensity and violence and sordid history of a club or laying character and you're kind of smashing them together and so the movie feels like it is simultaneously riffing on its legacy while also as you say trying to get away from its legacy by not having sly but not having that music that we're so fond of and i'm a very big michael b jordan fan but he is a movie star and jonathan majors is an actor and there's there is a discrete difference when you're watching this movie that's no disrespect to either of them in either direction because i think they can both do those things i think they can both be powerful actors and movie stars but majors brings such a

kind of um unsettling presence to the character even from that very first sequence where he is leaning against his car and he's waiting for him to confront him after he's gotten out of prison you're like i i feel like something terrible is going to happen here it's really powerful and and you can almost watch michael be reacting to it not just as an actor in that scene being like, what's going on, but as a person, just the feeling of it, which is cool. It's a great scene and great energy. I think the other thing that stands out between the two of them, and it speaks to just everything that this movie is trying to do, is that poor Michael B. Jordan has sidled

himself with a tremendous amount of expositional dialogue. And like, that's just never easy for anyone. And Jonathan Majors doesn't have to do any of that. He just gets to be like the, you know, feelings and id kind of condensed.

And Michael B. Jordan has to explain, well, I was the heavyweight champion, but now this, and these are my business opportunities. You know, it's just like so much to rearrange the pieces. And you do feel that, you know, he has to do a lot in this movie. Yeah, I think actually losing Rocky removes a kind of active narrator

that I think helped the first two films in a lot of ways where you had somebody who could instruct Adonis Donnie in terms of what direction to go in. And instead he kind of is forced to in a lot of ways where you had somebody who could instruct Adonis, Donnie, in terms of what direction to go in. And instead, he kind of is forced to have a lot of conversations with Tessa Thompson's character, Bianca, his partner. And there is a kind of stilted quality to some of that. I did like the fatherhood angle. Like, parenthood is a huge part of the Rocky franchise.

And I thought making Adonis focus on his young daughter, surprise, surprise, I really enjoyed that. It was like the best part of the movie. It was so touching. So if you recall, there's a subplot in Creed 2 that is about Tessa Thompson's character, Bianca, who is a musician and she's losing her hearing. And then they have a child who inherits that condition and is born deaf. And in Creed 3, they just seamlessly incorporate that. And the way that they use the deaf culture and the sign language and the way that Michael B. is interacting with her, I thought it was beautiful. It's really well done. I was very touched by it. I thought he was really great in those scenes. I thought Mila Davis-Kent,

who played Amara, their daughter, was wonderful. I mean, they have Michael B. Jordan in a frog costume doing a tea party. Like, A+. I'll watch that every day. And I'm not a girl dad. Yeah. And so the movie is trying to spin those plates of family drama, a kind of great man in repose, and then this haunted past coming back to find him. And this is an interesting month

of franchises i'll say we have a new scream movie coming this month we have john wick for films that are starting to get sort of like long in the tooth and sort of how do you keep them fresh how do you reinvent them is always a complicated thing i'm very curious to know if this is the last creed movie that we'll ever see uh with I don't think that's spoiling anything to suggest that, but this felt like a graceful way to conclude the story. Now, if it's a huge hit, and it certainly seems like it's going to be a successful movie, I don't think that that

will be the case. You could make the case that there's more unexplored territory, potentially, but the film already starts with Creed retiring, so if he was already ready to retire by the time he gets to the conclusion of this movie, it certainly feels like that could be the case. On the other hand,

there are not a lot of franchises that are as interested in some of the ideas and some of the themes that Creed is. Like our modern, we were just bemoaning this recently on another podcast, but like, you know, all of the Rocky movies are all about class. And now the Creed movies even more so are about race.

And this idea of like survivor's remorse and survivor's guilt that kind of powers this movie and the relationship between Dame and Adonis is deep stuff, you know, is really powerful. And you hear that a lot from a lot of successful athletes. Like this is a common recurring theme. LeBron James produced a show called Survivor's Remorse, I think, or Survivor's Guilt, I can't recall. So on the one hand, I like the idea of like wrapping up this story. On the other hand, there's probably still more ground to cover. Like what's your gut on that? Do you think this will be the last one we see? Can we talk about the last scene? Or do we want to put it at the end? I think because you're asking me a question of like, did they set up, maybe not even Creed IV, but Creed something?

And they did. Right. Okay. So I don't, let's not spoil the movie, but people who've seen the trailer know that this film is ultimately culminating

in a showdown between Damon and Adonis. They're going to have a fight. In fact, they have a fight, a kind of fascinating set piece at Dodger Stadium. Michael B. Jordan

has talked a lot about how he really wanted to make an LA movie. There's no more LA final set piece as a Dodger Stadium. Michael B. Jordan has talked a lot about how he really wanted to make an L.A. movie. There's no more L.A. final set piece as a Dodger Stadium boxing match. Right. When will we fix crowd CGI shots? I'm sorry. I understand the pandemic. You know,

I understand budgets. Just a note that I'd like to... I have a lot of complicated feelings about all the fights and set pieces in this movie. Okay, great. And I'm happy to share those with you. You know, at the conclusion conclusion of the film there's this insinuation that his young daughter is has an interest yeah in the fight game and i don't think that's spoiling anything to say that's what i was referencing yeah yeah and so i you know i say that to say like is is the amara franchise taking place like is that what you're saying that's well i you asked me

will there be more movies and i'm like well I watched the last scene of this movie and I was like, I see what you're doing here. Right. But she's like nine years old. Well, you know, maybe everyone wants to take a break, go on vacation. Seven years later, maybe? Yeah, why not? Okay. Will Mila Davis-Kent still be into this? It's important to invest in your future, Sean. So, you know, you want to lay the groundwork now for a successful financial 2033 or whatever. Is this a 401k speech? I don't know. What do you?

No, I don't know anything about 401ks. So there is that one fight. There are kind of a handful of key fights. There's the opening fight that Adonis has before he, you know, puts the gloves down. And then there is Damien's rise. You know, Damien asks for a shot in the middle of the film to kind of get, you know, his chops up and to get in the gym and to be a sparring partner for Felix Chavez,

who is, you know, a very successful young fighter that Adonis manages. And then in a kind of, you know, highly unlikely movie magic kind of way, very quickly Dame has a fight with Felix Chavez and that is the

weirdly the most alive the movie was to me because it was when Jonathan Majors was like unleashed and he has in addition to being

I think a really captivating presence when he's being asked to give dialogue he made a choice here that as a boxer that kind of fuses

George Foreman and mike tyson's fighting styles where he's sort of like a charging bull and i've never really seen anything like it before and it's like amazingly effective for all of his fight sequences so of course he's in this fight with felix chavez and then he's got to fight adonis right and the contrast of styles between adonis and and and dame at the end of this fight is so fascinating, right? Because Michael B. Jordan is this sort of leonine, elegant, powerful fighter, kind of in the classic mold. And Dame is just bullcharging the whole time. It's great.

All strength and power. But he's a smart boxer. It's not that he's not a smart boxer, but he just keeps coming and coming and coming. And so it makes for great fight sequences. And that really matters for these movies. If those scenes don't work, the tricky thing is, and you may groan

because when I shared this with you, you were not stoked, but- I did read it, just so you know. The cinematography in the movie is really unusual because it's clearly hugely inspired by anime. And Michael B. Jordan is a huge fan of anime. I don't proclaim to be an anime expert.

I'm not. In fact, I probably should have asked Charles Holmes to join us for 10 minutes to help explain what the parallaxing shots that Michael B. Jordan is trying to do. I watched a YouTube video. Did you? I didn't learn very much,

but I at least engaged with this because you sent me this link. I was at Whole Foods and just absolutely horrified that you just like with no comments, send me a link about anime and I was like, get off my phone, Sean Fennessey but then I read it and even though I am not familiar with the frame of reference I found the conversation incredibly endearing because Michael B Jordan is like I watch

anime every anime every day and it's just informs how I see the world and the the visual language is like what I use. And so he's kind of, and I wanted to at least know what he was talking about vaguely. I still don't totally, but I admire it. I think it's largely about the way that he is moving the camera during fight sequences and the kind of depth and focus that you're getting and the way that

the action from one punch to another might be surprising to the audience in the same way that when you're watching anime the quote-unquote fight styles are these sort of like outsized explosive moments that seem to be happening in both slow motion and fast motion at the same time okay so i will say this it's an innovation you know to be inspired by that and to try to replicate that um in a like this, especially in a boxing film and not in like a kung fu movie or like an action epic. I've never really seen fights quite like this. Whether it's like 100% successful, I think is debatable. And then there is a very distinct choice made in the big fight.

Yes. That, you know, let's not spoil it. Let's just say like, I think your mileage may vary. It didn't totally work for me. I think I liked the idea and I think the execution wasn't there yes agree and so the execution undermines or sort of like just draws attention to it in a way that you're like okay i get it yeah but i don't know if you're landing this making metaphor manifest in a visual medium is really challenging and he he makes a big decision here so i'll be i'm actually quite curious to see what other people think about that scene

because up until that moment, I thought it was working really well. And then there's a shift and it lost me a little bit. Nevertheless. Um, I think this is a successful movie. Uh, I like,

I liked it. I do too. I think that I maybe didn't communicate that as much up top. No, you didn't. You said you had fun. Yeah, I had fun.

It's good. I think I like it more than creed 2 i'm not sure yes i i think this movie has jonathan majors yeah that's true so it like totally works and it works as a movie there are weird moments of it we haven't talked about just like the product placement shots which are just really noticeable i mean making movies in America in 2022, like that's... I know, but I rewatched Creed and I have complicated feelings about the city of Philadelphia and my own familial relationship to it, but you just feel the groundedness, the sense of place, like the grittiness that, and, you know, I guess there was a high gloss element to Los Angeles as well,

which is where much of Creed 3 is filmed. But I just, I really paused on every one of those bottles. Like they wanted me to, you know, like, I was just like, yeah, I see it. Yeah. You got the shot. I mean, they just had, we got to pay for these movies. That's all I'm saying. How else these movies going to get made? Um, boxing movies. Yeah. Wait wait we didn't even get to talk about no no no i have some questions oh yeah go ahead so i i don't think it spoils anything to say at the beginning of the movie is as we've discussed adonis creed is retired and then he comes back into the ring and this necessitates an awesome training montage which i'm really excited about but it also necessitates um a distinct physical transformation from michael b jordan which is no judgment like

this is what you're supposed to do in a boxing movie but i want to know how do you think because at the beginning he's retired and at the end he is like mega swole. So does he start mega swole and then they film those things first? And then is there a break in between? I love that you think I have an answer to this. I really don't. What do you think? Were you not worrying about, were you not wondering about this? I think that movie magic means he's dressed a certain way to hide some of his strength

and indicate a retirement body. And then he's quite lathered up, greased up when he is in his training session, literally pulling a fighter jet. I know. That's amazing. It's so good. The training montage is the other critical part of any Rocky or Creed movie.

And this one is great. Literally 30 minutes left, just like light clockwork. And I was so psyched. And I didn't care about any of my notes on anything that had happened before. And I was so psyched and I didn't care about any of my notes on anything that had happened before. And I was amped the whole time. It works. It rules. It's the rare franchise where formula is beneficial. And you're right. It's a big overlook on my part. I don't know how he did what he did with his body. Jonathan Majors has talked

about this as well, where, you know, over the last five years, he has kind of transformed himself as he's portraying Kangna Conker. And then Magazine Dreams, which I mentioned during our Sundance conversation, which I think has since been acquired by Searchlight and now I think will be a big awards movie as we head into the end of the year. And even in Magazine Dreams, he's even bigger and even his musculature is eye-popping. I don't know what MPJ does. I mean, he's a specimen. What do you want? Of course he's a specimen,

and he works very hard, and it's part of his art. I'm actually just wondering about the timing here, because even at the beginning of the montage, where he's supposed to be a little, he's not in shape yet, it's just a remarkable transformation, and I would just like to know the how-to.

This is a cinema question. It's not a remarkable transformation. And I would just like to know the how-to. This is a cinema question, you know? It's not a weightlifting question. This is about how cinema works. I commend him. It was very effective. If you were making a film in which you went through a radical physical transformation, would you get super cut ahead of the film and then start there with that stuff? Or would you work through it the way that Shaq would play himself into shape during a season?

I didn't know that Shaq did that. Oh, yeah. He always came into the season overweight. And then, like, as he played, he would get into better shape. I mean, what a legend. I feel that it would be easier to start with, like, an apex condition. Okay, and then slowly just, like, eat Girl Scout cookies throughout the production. Guys, no, no, no guys you guys got it backwards i knew you were gonna chime in bobby because you have to build up the muscle and also like gain other weight too and then this is what

body but bodybuilders literally do this is that they bulk and bulk and bulk and then they like have an aggressive period of cutting to look toned for like eight hours for competition. So I assume that he bulked ahead of time. I will tell you, he's not bulked in the retirement phase. He looks smaller. And I know that camera, yeah, he looks skinnier.

And just like a smaller person. I understand cameras are powerful. You know, like I know that some of this- I think there's some costuming choices. Don't tell me about angles. You know what I'm saying i i got it but i bet he was like also just inhaling like nitric oxide supplements to make his vein pop more you know like as he was as he was bulking and getting more swole i i don't think bobby that it was like bulking and cutting in that order i it just doesn't add up to me. Maybe

when you see it, you can report back. Okay. I can, yeah, I can come back with my book report for you. Okay. Thank you so much. I know you'd appreciate that. Thank you. One day we will talk of the bulking and cutting lesson that Bobby and Craig Horvath gave to Chris Ryan and I in the courtyard at sunset hour. Not today, not today, But that will be a good pod one day. You want to talk boxing movies? Any other notes on Creed 3? The song. I mean, is it a rights thing?

What's going on? Do you think it's a deliberate choice to just not play the horns at any point? You know, I honestly hadn't thought about it. I noticed that the triumphant theme was not there. But I hadn't thought about it in quite that way until you just said at the top of this conversation. That this was an attempt to kind of distance to kind of create you know the creed universe as opposed to being reliant on the rocky narrative i think that's right i think that's insightful but they use the rest of the music or it's not the actual score but it's inflected but it's enough of a reference that i was waiting for it and i have

to tell you like you know spoiler know, spoiler alert, whatever. Cut 15 seconds. But I was just sure they were going to start playing it in that last scene with Amara. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, the tear ducts were like open and I was ready to start absolutely weeping. And then it just didn't happen. And I like, I like walked out of the theater and texted you angrily.

Like, what the fuck? Where's the song? so that's my note I had this interesting experience last night of re-watching the end of Rocky 2 and then starting to watch Rocky 3 forgetting that the beginning of Rocky 3 is literally just the final two minutes of Rocky 2 so I watched that twice but I bring that up to say that when when the Bill Conti theme drops at the end of Rocky 2 and Yo Adrian, I did it. First of all, I was just in tears. Yeah, of course. I was just like, this is an unbelievable movie moment.

And it's not even, the filmmaking is good but not great. But it is the music. It's the music. It is completely the music. I have just been walking around just singing the theme song to myself for a week. And, you know, just like punching. It's so powerful the best part of that though is when you re-watch rocky 3 and you get the final two minutes of 2 and then it cuts right into the eye of the tiger montage for the credits it's great stuff so good uh boxing movies

are not just rocky movies actually boxing movies are like one of the lynchpin storytelling modes of american movies for the last hundred years there are lots and lots of boxing movies not nearly as many i would say in the last seven or. There are lots and lots of boxing movies. Not nearly as many, I would say, in the last seven or eight years because boxing in our culture has been diminished pretty significantly since the early 2000s, I would say. There has not been too many very,

like, superstar heavyweight champions the way that we had certainly in our youth and, of course, going back to the, you know, 70s, 60s, 50s, 40 40s 30s um but a lot of filmmakers take a crack at boxing movies a lot of the great american filmmakers you know john houston and clint eastwood and john ford and ral walsh and barry levinson david o russell ron howard everybody kind of gets a turn on this because the story structures are usually pretty straightforward and navigable, and they're very easy to manipulate audiences' emotions around them.

And they're also seemingly fun to make because there's a lot of choreography. They're often period pieces, and you get these really stark, hard, archetypal characters inside of them. Rocky looms so large, though, because there have been so many of them and they're so successful and so iconic. And so it feels like there's almost two categories in the

post-Rocky boxing movie where it's sort of like you're either doing a Rocky ripoff or you're doing a Rocky rejection. And it's hard to get in between those two things. So a lot of the movies that I'll talk about here are mostly older stuff because it's hard to do new stuff do you want to speak about why you're just going solo and presenting 10 well you tell me movies well no i wanted to ask you well i love boxing right that's yeah i i but what is it about them because you sent me a list and you were like, up to you. I can go for hours on this. Yeah.

And I was like, I don't have a list of 10 deep cuts to compete with you. But why do they speak to you? Well, I think when I was getting really interested in sports writing, when I was in my late teens and early 20s, there's just this huge wealth of incredibly poetic and deep boxing writing that is different from other kinds of writing. Baseball is also like this. There's this wealth of historic

hundred-year-old baseball writing that seems to be after something more ethereal, more intellectual, more socially-minded, more spiritually minded um and so if you're 19 and you read norman mailer writing about boxing you can roll your eyes now i would roll my eyes at my 19 year old self i both understand the significance in terms of sports writing in terms of literature but but also, you know, just a bunch of dudes poeticizing, punching each other, you know, which like is the thing of it. So, but okay. So that's one aspect of it that makes it a cultural force. And you combine that

with everything that a young boy in the 1980s and 90s is experiencing. One, Mike Tyson. Yeah. the 1980s and 90s is experiencing. One, Mike Tyson. Growing up watching Mike Tyson and begging my parents to get Tyson fights on pay-per-view was a huge thing. And I'm by no means a boxing expert, but I got much more interested in the sport because of that time. And then there's like a pop cultural aspect of it. Like Mike Tyson's Punch-Out is one of the video games of my lifetime. And so you put all of those things together in addition to, of course, Rocky. Right. Just sitting right on the surface of our culture for 35 years.

It's hard not to get interested in that stuff. Like it's a real convergence of things that I care about. And like, you know, in the same way that some of the great sports writers found it to be like this platform to explore their own feelings really i mean that's really what these writers were doing and to project their idea of humanity onto these fighters filmmakers are the same way and so a lot of the movies are really iterative and even some of the movies on my list are kind of iterative to each other so it's hard to make a list that doesn't just feel like a lot of movies that are only like one step removed from each other. But those small differences I think are also quite interesting because the world of boxing isn't just about boxers. It's about the world that the sort of like apparatus that surrounds them. And that's

usually a really good storytelling model too. So I don't know, like I don't really keep up with boxing anymore. I don't follow it closely. I probably haven't followed it closely since like 2008, 2007. And I probably won't again. And probably haven't followed it closely since like 2008, 2007. And I probably won't again. And it's not because I have changed my attitude towards it. It's just something that things fall away

as you get older. But I will watch every boxing movie. I have watched every, I don't know about every, a lot of boxing movies over the years. Now there are some

delineations here because boxing, even if it's not a true boxing movie, it really looms large in the idea of like american masculinity in the movies you know like um rocco and his brothers as i saw was like on a lot of boxing movie lists this visconti movie from 1960 which is one of the greatest movies ever made

but it's this big sprawling like chekovian three-hour drama that has a boxer in it and his ability to box helps his family but like it's not really a boxing movie it doesn't follow the arc in the life of a boxer or anything like that so i wouldn't include it so you're keeping like a tight definitional there is a boxer who's gotta win a fight against all odds pretty pretty much okay some the fight isn't always a physical fight oh okay but it is about it is centered on a boxer or a boxing world okay i respect this it's you know this is a genre like a romantic comedy yes thing right and so you want you're keeping the formula close i'll tell you what you always say like i don't like romantic comedies right you

bust my balls yeah but i do love like the 20 best romantic comedies as much as i love any kind of a movie if it's ernst lubitsch or if it's Billy Wilder or if it's Nora Ephron, I'm in. Like I'm just in on all of those movies. The same is true for boxing. If it's John Huston, I'm in. Like I will watch Fat City till I die. I'll probably watch it 10 more times before I die.

But if it's Southpaw starring Jake Gyllenhaal, you know, I'm like, why was this movie even made? Like, we've seen this movie many times before. And so I find it to be a little bit

more frustrating. It was made because Jake Gyllenhaal wanted to have his chance at like, there is like a Hamlet-like quality to this. It's a role that every single

actor of a certain type wants to, aspires to, because they get to explore their own physicality and masculinity and relationship to whatever. You nailed it. I mean, that's the other reason why these movies are so interesting.

And there are now increasingly more movies about the Amaras of the world. There are more female stories set in this world too, because there's, of course, a world of female boxing that has grown over the years. But these are stories about male movie stars figuring out how strong they are yeah you know

emotionally and physically and that's another reason why they're so interesting a lot of this is very much riffing on on the waterfront and terry malloy and brando's portrayal portrayal of terry malloy as like the palooka who didn't make it right and that even though there's not box really a lot of boxing in that movie, that also looms over a lot of these stories. So I really care about them and I think they're really interesting. And at their best, I think they are poetry. Should I do my list?

Yes. Well, speaking of poetry, like one of my favorite discoveries when I was in my 20s was the Criterion Collection put out a box set called The Golden Age of Television. Growing up as a huge fan of Twilight Zone, I'm sure I mentioned that on the show many times, maybe my favorite show of all time. And I didn't know that Rod Sterling had written all of these teleplays that were performed live on television. And Criterion boxed up a bunch of these, not just Rod Sterling scripts, but a lot of great scripts from a lot of filmmakers and writers who would go on to dominate the 60s and 70s in Hollywood. And Requiem for a Heavyweight, which went on to become a big movie starring Anthony Quinn in the 60s, but it was first telecast in the 1950s.

And you can find that version online, the Playhouse 90 version of it, and it stars Jack palance as um the mountain that's he's this he's this ex-boxer this sort of aging boxer who is because he's broke and has been manipulated uh by his manager and has brain damage to become a professional wrestler and it's about this like guy who's really been degraded and that that's a theme that will come up over and over again about these men who've just been abused by the system and degraded um this is a very very sad sad story about a woman who saves a man uh but kim hunter plays the woman in this in this version of the story most of the versions of requiem for heavyweight are quite good the anthony quinn one is quite good this is the one though that i like the best so if you can find requiem requiem for a heavyweight from 1956 i would highly highly recommend it. It's directed by Ralph Nelson,

who also directed the 62 version and went on to have a big Hollywood career. It's a little bit of a cool, it's like a puzzle piece. A lot of these teleplays that are shot live. Also, think about that. They do this every once in a while with a musical now or on NBC. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It'll be like The Sound of Music. Yeah. But they make it sound like this is the craziest stunt that they've ever pulled. They did this every week on TV. Did you ever watch the Mary Martin Peter Pan teleplay?

Oh, of course. Yeah, that was just on repeat. It's amazing. Me too. Yeah, I mean, we VHS'd that. Yeah. Say hello to Tim Selects, Tim's everyday value menu.

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Prices may vary at participating restaurants in Canada. It's time for Tim's. So number nine is Rocky II. Rocky II is a really weird movie because, you know,

one of the genius acts of Rocky I is the fact that Rocky doesn't win, you know, and we can talk more about Rocky as we go through the list. But Rocky 2 is like, Sly is like, okay, I've already directed a movie. It's called Paradise Alley. It's about professional wrestling. Nobody saw it. Nobody cared about it.

I have to go back to the Rocky. Well, I will not let anybody else tell this story. I'm going to write, produce, and direct this movie. And this is a movie much more than even Rocky, which he wrote but did not direct that pushes the sly mythology forward because of course he wins despite having a detached retina and changing his fighting style at the end of the movie and climbing the mountain of apollo creed to win the it's a it's a really well-made movie and but it's like corny as fuck. And a lot of the sly Rocky stories are super corny. And it's a little hard to rewatch at 40 with a siniest taste and be like, why do I love this?

But I do love it, and I was moved when I rewatched it. I think that's unfair to Rocky, too. You can't apply your 40-year-old siniest or just honestly even your 2023 brain to any of the Rocky movies. Like their appeal is that they are of the time and that they also reshaped not just our brains, but all movies' brains in terms of how you tell a sports story how you tell an underdog story i just you know michael b jordan's visual language is anime and ours is like rocky yeah so it really is yeah it really that's a it's a good way of putting it was it on in your house when you're growing up the rocky movies because it was on like tnt non-stop yeah really only just rocky i like i don't really think my dad was like a Rocky IV guy.

You know what I'm saying? I guess I should ask him. I'm just trying to think of what even would be my power rankings off the top of my head of the Rocky movies. At the bottom is Rocky V.

Rocky V is awful. A lot of this has got to be so informed by Bill Simmons too. Right. Who, you know, well before I knew Bill or worked for Bill was reading Bill on Rocky

and thinking about how he was thinking about Rocky. So he probably shaped a lot of my takes on that. But Rocky 2, I think, is the second best movie

in the series, but not necessarily the most fun one to watch. I think 3 and 4 are more fun to watch because they're more ridiculous. But I don't know. Rocky 2 has something special.

Actually, if people are really interested in some deep thoughts about Sly's filmmaking, I would highly recommend Tarantino's Cinema Speculation because he devotes a lot of time to Sylvester Stallone as a director and what he's thinking and how he makes his movies. So there's really good chapters on that. Number eight is Body and Soul. This is a Robert Rawson movie. It's a movie he made the system and money corrupts and destroys people and this features a great great performance by John Garfield nominated for an academy award for his performance Polanski script was nominated for an academy award um it's about a boxer like

going through all of the stages like starting out as a fighter slowly slowly getting bigger, having more success, accumulating more of an entourage, accumulating more kind of gangster figures in his world who are kind of into him for money, watching very, very methodically the way that his soul is being corrupted. Things don't end well in Abraham Polanski movies. This is a very dark stark movie really really good though um and there's another movie that i'll talk about in a minute that is somewhat

similar to it but like this whole little collection here eight seven six five four like things are bad yeah like life is bad sean fantasy signature list yeah just like something that people find like triumph and you know well inspiration in has been turned into despair and a comment on the dangers of capitalism and and success well here's the thing i don't really like i don't like the fighter the david russell okay i don't think i really do either it's's my favorite Amy Adams performance. She's quite good in that movie. Bale's quite good. It's not about the acting. I think a lot of people will look at whatever my list is,

and if they've seen all the movies or they haven't, they'll just be like, where's the fighter? Where's Million Dollar Baby? Where's Cinderella Man? Where are all these movies that I like? Remember the movie draft we did where Chris was waiting for Million Dollar Baby in the Grimm Oscar?

And then I took it in Blockbuster. I don't even remember what happened. That was really fun. It was a very good moment. Do you like Million Dollar Baby? No, of course not. But it was like we were all just assuming that it would be there because no one wanted it.

Well, I don't like... I like Million Dollar Baby personally, but I find it to be equally as manipulative as The Fighter in opposite directions. Million Dollar Baby is... brutally pulls the chair out from under you. And The Fighter just feels so dishonest from the filmmaker, for me. It just felt like a filmmaker who was trying to reset his career by using an old storytelling style and just doing the schmaltziest version of it. And it's not, it's well-made,

and it does feature great performances, but I just, to use a Wesleyanism, like, I just did not buy it when I was watching it. I was like, really? Really, dude? You made I Heart Huckabees. Really? The fighter? Like, this is what you think? This is what you think is a good yarn? Bullshit.

So it's not on my list. I'm much more inclined to be interested in movies like my number seven, Hard Times from 1975, which is a Walter Hill movie about bare knuckle boxer played by Charles Bronson, which is just a good fight movie. It's just really good fight sequences about a guy in the 1920s trying to make money

and stay alive by beating the shit out of people. And then the setup, my number six movie from 1949, which is a Robert Wise movie, 72 minutes long. If you're looking to knock out a quick one. Similarly about a guy who's a, you know, Robert Ryan plays an over the hill boxer who's like in his late 30s. Who is really trying to like fight the corruption of the sport. Corruption in boxing continues. This movie was made in 1949. Every single thing that happens to the boxers in the film,

the mismanagement of their health, guys dying or having brain damage from fighting, guys being screwed out of money, is literally happening right now, 75 years later. It happens in every movie. I mean, this is my note. Is this really how we're running things? This is all made up.

Yeah. It's all performance. Yep. It's all people. I mean, it all seems not like fixed in the sense of, you know, we have decided who's going to win or not, but it's all the stakes are arbitrary and made up and everyone's just in it together trying to win or not. But it's, all the stakes are arbitrary and made up and everyone's just

in it together trying to make some money. Mm-hmm. So, I don't know. You're right, but also that just seems like the nature of the sport.

It is. It is. It feels like it is corrupt by nature. I mean, it's a sport about people beating the shit out of each other, right?

So, what's meta is also actual in a way. Number five is the saddest movie on the list. It's what's meta is also actual in a way um number five is the saddest movie on the list it's called fat city it's from 1972 if you haven't seen this movie seek it out can't believe this movie is 50 years old um it's based on a novel by leonard gardner and directed by the great john houston and it's john houston in his 50s late 50s finding a way to completely assimilate with the new hollywood the way that none of his contemporaries were able to by making a character study a kind of like a movie about loneliness

movie about like aging a movie about the weird characters on the fringes of society it's about an over the hill boxer who's played by stacy keach who's 30 years old yeah and he meets a young pup in the training uh training room played by jeff bridges who's played by Stacy Keech who's 30 years old and he meets a young pup in the training room played by Jeff Bridges who's like a rising star in the boxing world and he attempts to kind of

like give him a break and give him some pointers and we see the ways in which their lives and love kind of diverge from one another just like an all-world performance

by Susan Tyrell who's this kind of lost woman who Stacy Keech's character meets in a bar and then they begin this very complicated, awful love affair. It's the most Cassavetes, John Huston movie. It kind of feels like it could veer off the side of the road at any moment, but also very beautiful and very controlled at the same time. Love, love, love this movie. It's a good boxing movie. It's a great movie so i i feel strongly about this one

uh number four is creed creed's good don't don't undersell it this movie rules it's so good are you kidding watch it again when he's racing the dirt bikes and meek mill is blaring like again not from philadelphia have to visit there every november could pick a better time of the year to visit philadelphia whatever i was just like cheering on my couch. Get out of here. I love it. It's number four. I love it.

It's great. And three, two, and one are really hard to beat. Yeah, those are kind of classics. How do you feel about Kugler right now? What is he doing next? I don't know. Yeah. So I'll just say he produced Creed 3.

He and MBJ still have this partnership. I think his brother co-wrote the screenplay and Ryan Coogler did the story. And then Zach Balin, who wrote King Richard, wrote the script for Creed 3. He's quite a good screenwriter, Zach Balin. So they're still enmeshed, the two of them. I don't think he has announced another feature project.

So, but as I look back on this movie... He was 29. Let me correct something. This is actually notable. I made the mistake of saying that Daniel Kaluuya does not make franchise movies on the rewatchables this week because, of course, he made Black Panther. But I don't think of Black Panther

as a traditional franchise movie. It is. It is in the MCU. I realize that. It is a comic book movie. I get it. I understand anybody who wants to tell me I'm wrong on a podcast. I get it every week. That one in particular, though, I find fascinating because Kaluuya did not make two. And one of my gripes with two, which you and I both discussed, is this felt like almost a waste of kugler's skills and power yeah to be a shepherd to a like a series of mcu strands as opposed to telling a story black panther felt like such a emotionally coherent story the same way the creed does and so singular even though it's part of this big universe so i'm i guess i'm thinking about him as i look back on creed and kind of what he is now as

a director black panther 2 was such a unique circumstance that i just and you could even see when watching it the movie that they had planned to make uh which i think really could have felt like the like the original black panther in terms of just fully baked and even if it was maintaining whatever mcu continuity like had its own ideas i think he's really capable of that and then of the original Black Panther in terms of just fully baked. And even if it was maintaining whatever MCU continuity, like had its own ideas, I think he's really capable of that. And then of course, tragedy.

And they had to remake the whole thing to replace Chadwick Boseman or not replaced, but to move the story forward after his death. So I kind of don't really hold it against him. Is there a certain kind of thing you'd want to see from him because the the energy of Creed you know the Meek Mill sequence that you're talking about the fight sequences the sort of like transformation of Adonis is is real pump your fist in the theater stuff right you know and there are parts of Black Panther that I felt very

similarly about where I was like this is really moving there were like Eric Killmonger scenes where I was like wow he is really bracing the audience with these complicated questions about what is the right way to live ethically in society exactly he can he can do big budget and even franchise but also grounded character so I mean I don't know I it seems impossible for anyone to get like a non-franchise big studio movie off the ground right now and I I don't think I would want him to go small again I mean you know if he wants to sure he should do whatever he wants he's a very talented filmmaker who is younger than both of us which is still I mean he made creep when he was like 29 years old it's unreal crazy like the the self-assurance and the just and the the vision and pulling it all off too

but something big i agree with you like i i no one else can really do these movies that understand and like pay homage both to you know the 70s and and rocky and their originals but also the the big 90s movies that you and i grew up with yeah while also updating them i it's a hard one it's hard to know like what like he because he so he produced judas and the black messiah right um and there's a part of me that wants him to go make whatever his reds or some you know some big three-hour historical epic or something like that. I don't know if that's even interesting to him. Or maybe something more contemporary.

Maybe something that could accomplish what I think we thought Queen and Slim couldn't accomplish. Find a way to kind of more coherently address the world now. Both of those things are really hard to do. And they're also very hard, as say to mount them in hollywood but it's hard to not look back on creed and feel like someone got subsumed inside of a machine for the seven years eight years since this movie was made now the black panther films i think the black the first black panther like changed hollywood in many ways it had huge cascading effects throughout disney throughout you know the whole of representation, what Bozeman came to represent to people.

So I'm not trying to minimize that in any way. But it's been a long time since Creed. It's been a long time since we got a Ryan Coogler directed movie that isn't an MCU movie.

So I hope that he is doing that next. I imagine he's okay. You know? He's great. I'm sure he's fine. He's doing great. This is my selfishness.

There aren't any other Ryan Cooglers. Yeah, no. There are no other Martin Scorseses either. Yeah. He has the number three movie which is Raging Bull

which is another movie about a person completely degraded by spending their life in the ring. Sure. Robert De Niro, of course, portrays Jake LaMotta,

the, I don't know, mid-tier 50s boxer who went on to ignominious end as a nightclub hosting comedian. And this is one of the most brutal and upsetting movies of all time. It's also one of the most beautifully shot films of all time that features some of the craziest fight choreography you'll ever see. Not necessarily the most technically accurate boxing movie, but that's not really the point of this movie it's much more in the spirit of the pugilistic poetry that i was talking about you're making notes on like you know score sheets and all this stuff when you're watching

no because i don't even understand it but i've read a lot about how people are like this isn't what this was like but you know it's it's a it's really like a horror movie and like engmar bergman you know, existential drama. And it's a lot of other different kinds of movies. But speaking of your MBJ transformation question also features one of the great body transformations in movie history. And Robert De Niro as the young, lithe Jake LaMotta all the way down to the broken-nosed, brain-damaged fat man who moved down to Florida. Where are you at on Raging Bull these days? Two stars? Three stars? brain damaged fat man who moved down to Florida. Yeah. Um, where, where,

where are you at on raging bull these days? Two stars, three stars. Raging bull, two stars. It's, it's obviously great. It's also not my favorite Scorsese movie,

you know, I, but, but it also in a lot of ways is like a great summary of what, what people like about Martin Scorsese and what people like about boxing movies, which is, you know, a man fighting the demons of life in the demons in the ring, you know? Where do you think this stands in his, in the lineup of iconic films? You know, he has between five and would say between five and seven iconic films, but just in terms

of pure rewatchability. Because he has, you know, he has, of course, Goodfellas, for example. That's like probably number one for people, you know, The Departed

is a movie that people will watch over and over again. I guess it's gotta be top five, right? I think. I don't know. What else are people, people rewatching

Wolf of Wall Street, probably that's the more recent one. I mean, are people re-watching? Wolf of Wall Street, probably. That's the more recent one. I mean, are people re-watching Taxi Driver? Well, see, I would prefer to re-watch Taxi Driver or Overaging Bull. But this has the boxing element. Yeah, I think this is... I wonder about that.

Yeah. I bet more people are turning this on. What about Silence? What about the Irishman? I would love to rewatch Silence soon. Okay. Silence watch along?

Jesus Christ. I saw Silence alone on Christmas Eve. It was a great time. I saw Silence alone like maybe the week after Christmas, you know,

that quiet week at the Arclight by myself. What did you think when Andrew Garfield saw God? Just spent a lot of time thinking about Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone's relationship, which was, I think, if you were reading the tabloids at that time, Andrew Garfield really committed himself to silence. And that meant uncommitting himself to the rest of the things in his life. Love is temporary. Film is forever.

Okay. Thank you to Andrew Garfield for his service. Right. And then we saw the results of that in the film Spider-Man No Way Home. Number two is

When We Were Kings. Yep. This is one of the best documentaries ever made. I also rewatched this this week directed by Leon Gast produced by Taylor Hackford in the midst of an incredible run

for Taylor Hackford who made Dolores Claiborne in 1995 When We Were Were Kings in 1996, and The Devil's Advocate in 1997, while also being married to Helen Mirren. Right. Legend. You went right past Devil's Advocate. I'm a fan of man. Okay.

Come on. There we go. I love The Devil's Advocate. Maybe for my birthday this year, Bill will let me do that on the Rewatchables. That would be an absolutely deranged podcast that i would enjoy that would be fun uh when we were kings it's also kind of a rewatchable it's a fairly standard documentary about the it was meant to be about the kind of festivities in zaire then known as zaire in 1974 in the run-up to the rumble in the jungle the great fight fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.

Muhammad Ali at that time thought to be kind of past his prime. Foreman was this kind of killing machine and not unlike Clubber Lang or Dame Anderson. I think this is a really fun double feature with Creed III, this movie. But part of the greatness of the movie is that even though it has this kind of conventionality

of talking heads, talking about an event that happened 20-some-odd years ago that maybe they were present for, maybe they were not in the form of George Plimpton and Norman Mailer, they were there and they were kind of chronicling this epic fight and the run-up to it. And then also folks like Spike Lee who were observing what a fight like this meant to the culture. But also it just has this wealth of archival footage of muhammad ali in the congo amongst the people and ali bomaye and that whole all of those sequences that you see represented in ali which is to me has always been a complicated movie it's

among my least favorite michael man movies um because when we were kings exists and so we there's so much. Chris Ryan is just like bursting into the room right now. I mean, like the siren went off. I think that's a fine opinion. Michael Mann's fealty to reality in that film, I think, really works against him. Whereas when one of his invented universes, like V for Heat, it feels like he's more in control. universes like thief or heat it feels like he's more in control and he feels like stuck doing what

when we were kings can do easily because they have the real deal there will smith is good in ollie um and he's working very hard sure to replicate what ollie did but but ollie is unrepicable on film yeah and and for those of us who are not alive in the 60s this is how we understand ollie exactly that's who lives in our heads i, this is how we understand Ali. Exactly. That's who lives in our heads. I think this is actually probably, there have been a lot of Ali documentaries since this documentary. And Ali himself appeared in films. In fact, he appeared in his own life story called The Greatest, which is a dramatized version of the Muhammad Ali story.

He is one of the most covered figures of the 20th century. One of the most important men that probably will ever live in America. But this is such a tight and focused story that that's why this movie works. It's only an hour and a half long, and it just focuses entirely on the lead-up to this fight and what this fight means to the culture. And it's a historic fight. And it features about 20 minutes of

analysis of the fight. But the rest of the movie is about the trip and Don King and how it came together and the performances of B.B. King and James Brown and it's just an electrifying movie

and it makes you feel like you're there. Not very many documentaries can do that. And so, it's kind of a perfect fusion to me of, sure,

some of the like Heart of Darkness stuff that I like in a lot of these movies but also with James Brown doing Cold Sweat. You know, like, it's a great, great movie.

And then number one is Rocky. Yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean, there's nothing else to put here. Nothing else really to be said except, yeah. When do you think

you'll show Rocky to Knox? We have already taken him to the Rocky Steps. Amazing. We went to the Philadelphia Art Museum when we were home for Thanksgiving because it's a wonderful museum. If you're ever in Philadelphia, the Cy Twombly Room is just absolutely life-changing and it was very exciting to take Knox there. So we did photos in the Twombly Room and then we went outside. It was freezing cold. It was like 18 degrees or something. It awful um and nox only east coast is

terrible and nox like he wasn't old enough to have real shoes so he had just had these little like fabric shoes you know that weren't really providing warmth but whatever we did all the photos uh so we have photos of i've never seen these oh yeah they're very i'll put one on instagram they're very cute of Knox standing. We faced both ways on the steps, sang the song. I had no idea where he was, what was happening. So soon, I think, whenever he's old enough to actually sit in front of a screen. I think he's really going to vibe with it.

You think so? I do. I know it's important to Zach that he understand his philadelphia roots is that a big rocky guy i don't think we've ever had that conversation well i i promised him that i wouldn't bring up creed anymore we've absolved him of this that's right um but you just did it and zach is a is a pro is pro creed and so i have to assume he's pro-Rocky. But we haven't spent a huge amount of time talking about the film. I think, you know, he grew up in Philadelphia and likes movies and sports movies. So, yeah, he loves Rocky.

What do you like about Rocky? Aside from the music, obviously, which we discussed. I like the music. I mean, this is where I learned about underdog stories. I don't know. I mean, this is just very classic, archetypal movie stuff that all the filmmakers we love were ripping off for 30, 40, 50 years.

And I like the lived-in-ness of it. I mean, it's pretty... If you were sitting down to watch Rocky for the first time now, it is slower than we make movies now. It is. It's a lot slower. The fights are slower, but also you just spend a lot of time with Adrian

talking about turtles or whatever. And I like that, but that sort of seems grandfathered in for me because it's like the kind of movies that my dad would put on for me. And then at the end, he has a great moment of triumph and punches some meat. And I don't know. It's rocky. It just is in our brains. Yeah.

This movie, it was released by a United artist, but it feels in many ways like an independent movie. Stallone was not a star at the time. He insisted that he star in the film. Right. That's a legendary trope at this point. It was made for $960,000, and it has made $225 million and launched one of the most culturally significant franchises

in American artistic history probably um despite the ridiculousness of many rocky movies um it's good continues to this day it's a really beautifully made movie i mean john avildsen who i think you know it was a kind of an unlikely choice for a movie like this like i think his probably his best known movie before this was a 1970 movie called joe actually also features prominently in tarantino's book but is um kind of an early counterculture movie starring peter boyle about seeing the eyes of like seeing the free love 60s through the eyes of a square like through the eyes of a father and like a blue collar middle-aged guy and how angry it makes him watching this generation behind him get to experience the world in a way

that they couldn't and it becomes a very violent kind of fantasia but that's a really intense odd movie that is much closer to the kinds of movies that i really like and so he's an unlikely pick for this and then he went on to make like the Karate Kid and The Karate Kid Part 2. And his career kind of changed after Rocky the way that so many other pupils did. But in addition to being a huge box office success, this movie won Best Picture. Yeah. Over Network and All the President's Men. And Taxi Driver.

Oh, that's right. And Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory. And so for me personally, this movie is in fourth place in that Best Picture race, which is kind of amazing. Now, of course, Rocky is Rocky. I'm not shitting on Rocky. But Taxi Driver, all the presidents been in network. For me, those are pantheon pantheon first ballot

in my top 50 ever movies. But Rocky is also pantheon. It is. It's our American cultural pantheon. Right. What are we doing if we're not acknowledging that along with Taxi Driver? Ableton also won

Best Director that year. Yeah. I mean, it is, it's Oscar success is funny. It's certainly a historical quirk.

It is a historical quirk. So that year also, Stolen was nominated for Best Actor. Burt Young was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as was Burgess Meredith,

Mickey. No Apollo Creed though. No Carl Weathers. That's sad. Was it, as was Burgess Meredith, Mickey. No Apollo Creed, though. No Carl Weathers. That's sad. It was also nominated for Screenplay. Anything else? Was it nominated for Score? It certainly...

Best Original Song, Gonna Fly Now. Okay. It was not nominated for Score. Wow. Wow. It was nominated for Best Sound. And it won Best Film Editing, of course. Sure.

Best Film Editing over all the president's men. Listen, I can't defend that, and neither can you. That's crazy, Tom. But Rocky's really good. I don't think we need to end this podcast by being like, but what about all the president's men? You know, like that's every other podcast that we do. We can just say Rocky is sick.

Can I say something about Creed III before we wrap up? Sure. I feel like movies are in a good place. Do you? I do. I know I've spent the last five years with you bemoaning where things are and where they're going. I'm really happy for you.

And that is like a, it is a weird time to be saying that. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like. Number one, everyone else is pulling their hair out. What do you mean by that? I don't know. We never talked about just everyone's collective meltdown about the Ant-Man movie.

You want to talk about that briefly? People were so angry. I know. I'm just like, I honestly got a little mad at some point because I was just like, where were you worrying about the future of fucking cinema when all I could see at the movies was your stupid purple, you know, caped movies? Like, God damn it. This is 18 years too late. I don't know about 18 years.

Okay, five years, seven years, ten years too late. This is, I mean, it's an interesting topic that is a little. You got what you wanted. You can't be angry now. You nerds. Shut up. It's not... I think there's two strains of this

conversation. There are people who are huge fans of these movies who are really let down by Quantumania and are kind of backlashing against it. But to me, that strikes me as an accumulation of mild discontent that was like with a protective shell

for the last five to seven movies that have come out in this world. And not to mention DC and all those movies and the Jurassic World movie and like a series of franchise movies

that have just been really rickety to mediocre over the last five years. And this sense that all of the things that we were quite angsty about on the show have really come to pass.

I'm kind of mystified by the Quantumania like hard backlash because I'm just like, is this really that much worse than so many movies we've talked about in the last two years?

That's what I have to say. I don't think it is and I know you didn't either, but I think I also took it a lot less seriously because I kind of punted emotionally on all of these movies like two to three movies ago.

I am proud of you. Thank you. Thanks for supporting that. I think that that's good growth. Thanks. But like even the movie like I thought the Black Widow movie was pretty solid but I was also like what is this is a B- movie. It's a spy movie with a horrible third act. Like terrible CGI.

And Florence Pugh just absolutely ate Scarlett Johansson's lunch that was fun there was some fun stuff in it but also it had the same problems that Shang-Chi had where it was like there were parts of Shang-Chi

that I really liked and then it was terrible and then the CGI was bad like that's been the same story that we've been telling like Love and Thunder you weren't around for that pod that was rough

that wasn't very good Eternals that was rough that wasn't very good all of these movies have kind of been mediocre at best and so I think that there was this accumulated feeling.

It built up. The movie had, it had a huge opening weekend and then very bad word of mouth and very bad reviews, at least relative to the MCU's past had this huge dip, the box office. And now everybody's like, Oh my God,

is the MCU in trouble? And all this concern trolling, all this stuff that we did right after end game, when we were like, when genres come and go phases of, of, of movie history show us that these kinds of things won't last the big budget mgm movie musical died like look just look at the history of movies this stuff is going to go out do i think it's going to go out right away no not at all yeah but what i will say is a lot of mid-budget stuff is doing pretty well this year you know the like the the megan's and

like i didn't like cocaine bear but cocaine bear success is a good thing for movies that is true um i just you mentioned the rest of our month which is i'm i'm looking forward to scream six we're gonna have a grand old time but i mean it is scream six yeah you mentioned john wick four huge respect to keanu reeve and all all his walks of life I saw the film okay well I haven't I'm restricted from sharing my takes sure but like you know there's a four

at the end of it so there's that yeah then I'm looking at our schedule right now and I already texted you about just like a

truly cursed episode that is like coming up in our future and that doesn't even involve the Super Mario Brothers movie which I see you've just written me off the episode well I assume you don't want to watch that that doesn't even involve the Super Mario Brothers movie, which I see you've just written me off the episode.

Well, I assume you don't want to watch that. You don't even want to hear my thoughts about Chris Pratt. That's the only video game I've ever played. That's not true. I also played Duck Hunt. Well, you're welcome to be on it, but you don't like animated films. That's true. But you see what I'm saying here?

Like, I don't know if I feel really excited about that. I'm excited about the summer. I think I'll say that I'm mostly talking about the business of movies. I think the business of movies, after all of the, oh my God, we lost 35% of the box office last year hand-wringing, seemed to be much ado about nothing to me insofar as they just released 35% fewer films. Now, there is obvious, like, the business itself is in some disrepair in terms of what the theater experience is like. In fact, Leighton Brown has a great piece in Vulture today about how movie projection is at, like, an all-time low, and it is damaging the ability to

enjoy movies for many common moviegoers, in part because so many of these big franchise theater chains are not well run, and they don't take care of their product, and they don't take care of their product and they don't take care of their customers. I think what I'm saying is more like seeing a movie like Cocaine Bear do well and making the act of going to the movie a fun thing that people want to do socially is very good for movies because that is the culture in which we were raised. In fact, if Ant-Man is struggling a little bit, there's upside to that. that this like televization of movie storytelling is not where it's at it shouldn't be that way there's a reason that Disney is pulling back from all of these Marvel TV shows and that they're not rushing out

to put out more and more Star Wars TV shows they fucked up the plan the plan was to get people excited four times a year about the thing that they were putting out in the world and I agree through the summer looks great. There's some things in April that I'm really excited about. We got air coming up. Bo is afraid is coming up.

Listen, you and I are really excited about air. I would like to reiterate, we are willing to host any and all content that the people behind air would like to participate in. I mean, that's a movie about a shoe, you know?

Yeah. A sneaker to be exact. I don't know what to say. I love Air Jordans though. Should we do an Air Jordans rankings where I go through all, every single sneaker that they've issued? I think I've owned 12 pairs of Air Jordans in my life. That seems like a normal amount, right?

Well, I couldn't afford anything until I was like 27. And then I was like, I got to buy a bunch of these. I mean, how long is a pair lasting if you're wearing them all the time? I think I wore it maybe like once every year year and a half.

Yeah. So you're old. So 12 years that's like one Jesus Christ. What are you doing? I don't know. I'm just saying

like you've accumulated a lot of shoes in your life. You know what I'm not that excited about is Fast X. I know. I wanted to talk to you

about the timing of this one actually. Oh yeah? You got some plans? I actually do. do like maybe a vacation so maybe they can show it to us early i don't know i'll see it i think i think it's gonna be a good year for the business maybe a solid year for movies we have a mission impossible barbie oppenheimer july coming i can't wait so there's no that's that's gonna be fucking magic i should make like 15 episodes that month i think we're going to and then once again i'm going on vacation we will

vanish in august but we have some things planned for august as well um how big do you think creed can be creed 3 that is medium but in a good way like hopefully in a sort of i mean i think it's a very different experience than cocaine bear for when I enjoyed Creed 3, but just that people will want to go see it. People are like, oh, it's an event, Michael B. Jordan, recognizable. I hope that it'll be, I don't know, 30, 40 million? Yeah, I think 40 million is where it's targeted at, which I think would be very good. I think that would be an all-time best actually for, for the Creed franchise, which is interesting and then takes us back to where we started. Okay, great.

Boxing movies? What's a boxing movie that's on my list that you're like, I gotta check that out? None of them? They all sounded pretty grim, I gotta be honest.

Like, I just want someone to, you know, win. You want a lighthearted boxing movie? Yeah, and have a nice time and some joyous music. Somebody up there likes me, maybe? The Paul Newman film from 1956?

Sure. That sounds great. I was thinking the Scorsese movies that people rewatch, Color of Money, is definitely one of them. Do you think that that is in the kind of, you know, tier one classics, though? I was thinking more specifically of the sort of like the most legendary Scorsese movies. Which of the most legendary do you think people are rewatching? That's what I was asking. Okay.

No, probably not. Nothing Against Color of Money, one of the greatest sports movies ever made. Right. But I think sports movies are inherently more rewatchable. So I bet Raging Bull is up there. Interesting. Okay. Amanda, thank you so much.

You're welcome. I want to thank our producer, Bobby Wagner, because he does a lot of great work on this show. He's coming to Los Angeles this weekend. And we're going to have quite an interesting week on The Big Picture next week that I'm excited to tell you about. This is psychotic.

We are officially, officially, officially doing an in-person watch-along, our first in-person watch-along about the film The Dark Knight Rises. I am doing no research to prepare. Can I just say, we are literally doing this during Oscar voting. Yes.

And we are just absolutely throwing away any chance that we have to influence anyone so that Chris can do Bane impressions. You know, I'm glad you put it in that way. So because of the way that I've been doing the show over the years, like a lot of people obviously want to book guests at this time of year because they're, you know, if you were talking about WTF recently, Austin Butler's appearance on WTF, which I can't wait to discuss with you further

on a future podcast, maybe on the Bane pod. Maybe on Oscar's night when he wins perhaps Hong Chao's on WTF today incredible everyone's out there everyone's out there everyone's doing their doing their last minute there's a part of me

that was like I don't really I don't really want to participate in that this year I had a lot of the guests on that I already wanted to have on I want to do something completely different

and that's what we're doing if someone wants to use us to win an award they should be willing to do the Dark Knight Rises watch along with us I love how you're thinking Bobby that's what we're doing. If someone wants to use us to win an award, they should be willing to do the Dark Knight Rises watch along with us. I love how you're thinking, Bobby. Bobby, that's beautiful.

That's a great idea. Who should we recruit last minute? Tom Cruise. Come talk about Tom Hardy. It's a great idea. Tom, if you're listening and I know you are,

hit us up, dude, because you are more than welcome. Honestly, who would be like an actual person we could ask who would do it? Like would Colin Farrell sit with us for two hours and 40 minutes and watch a Chris Nolan movie? That would make Chris nervous. And then the voice goes away.

And then why are we doing this? It's got to be someone where Chris will be comfortable. I mean, Daniels would do it. Oh, Daniels would do it. Jamie Lee Curtis, honestly, seems like she would be very available and that would be very fun. That would be really fun. Cate Blanchett.

I mean, honestly, I think it would be a great hang. I think so. Cannot rob Wall Street without me. Yeah. I think she would be unfiltered. Of course, after we do the Dark Knight Rises watch line,

which will be very fun, it's Oscars week. So we will do our predictions. I'm going to try to invent some prop bets, you know, just try to move the needle in Vegas a little bit, as is my want. And then that Sunday, we'll be coming to you live and direct here in the Spotify studios,

where we'll be watching the award show known as the 95th Academy Awards. You guys excited about the Academy Awards? Sure. Stunned silence. I love the Oscars. I honestly... Are you guys excited for the French Revolution?

Hell yeah, brother. I was thinking about some questions I wanted to ask about whether we're going to have a table to put our computers on while we podcast. A table? Yeah, that was the question I needed to ask you guys. So that's where my mind is with the Academy Awards. I'll have to talk to Sweden about our budget. I'm not sure if we can. A table. Yeah, that was the question I needed to ask you guys. So that's where my mind is with the Academy Awards.

I'll have to talk to Sweden about our budget. I'm not sure if we can afford a table. Sometimes there are tables. Barry Keoghan, if you're listening, come do the Dark Knight Rises watch along with us. It's a great idea.

Thanks, Bob. Thanks, Amanda. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week on The Big Picture.