TBD | Adonis Creed is forced to confront his past when an old friend gets out of prison. Directed by Michael B. Jordan Starring Michael B. Jordan, Jonathan Majors, and Tessa Thompson Review by Jon Kissel |
After eight movies, a franchise synonymous with Sylvester Stallone is fully taken over by Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed. Creed 3 puts Jordan in the director’s chair and jettisons Stallone’s Great White Hope Rocky for a film that has one white speaking role. Thoroughly Black and completely Jordan’s, Creed 3 has minimal connection to anything that came before it, rooting the film’s conflict within the past of a protagonist who no longer has to share any narrative momentum with Rocky. The result is one of the best films in the franchise and another major achievement on Jordan’s remarkable resume. Creed 3 demonstrates how rich this world can continue to be without the Italian Stallion, providing Jordan with a blockbuster outlet that should sustain him for as long as Rocky sustained Stallone.
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Of all the movies to get a trilogy, Magic Mike seems an unlikely choice. Steven Soderbergh’s male stripper workplace drama/recession aftermath story/Matthew McConaughey revival ends with Channing Tatum’s dancer extraordinaire leaving the stripper life. Magic Mike doesn’t exactly take a negative view of his chosen profession, but it doesn’t imagine it as one with much longevity either. In both the first and second sequels to Magic Mike, Tatum’s Mike Lane fails off-screen and returns to the only thing the universe wants him to do. The tsk-ing tone of the original gives way to male strippers as vessels of female empowerment, rejuvenators for women who have ignored the part of themselves that’s confident and attractive. Middle entry Magic Mike XXL most embodies this idea in a plotless road trip, and Soderbergh returns to direct the final chapter in Magic Mike’s Last Dance, a film that dissolves the stripper gang and sends Mike to stuffy London, where he is enlisted to liven up the frosty blue-bloods with athletic dance moves and simulated sex. In a rare miss for Soderbergh, the trilogy limps to a conclusion, drained of most of the jovial energy that earned Magic Mike two follow-ups.
With his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck crafted a thriller with no easy answers and rooted to its location, but the film’s success was limited to the critical realm. For his follow-up, the actor-turned-director steps back in front of the camera for The Town, a far more conventional film whose safer choices paid off with big box office. No child molesters and thorny moral dilemmas here, just a straightforward cops and robbers story starring actors on the upswing of their careers, as opposed to the potato-faced goons who populated so much of Gone Baby Gone. Another book adaptation, Affleck moves from the well-regarded Dennis Lehane source material of his debut to a book from Chuck Hogan, who would go on to write the Michael Bay Benghazi movie. For twice the budget, Affleck makes a louder but not better film. The Town is a slicker production, but it represents a step towards the predictable from Affleck, who will be hoisting Oscars and putting on a leather bat suit a few years later.
If three is a trend, 2023 is turning into the year of the corporation movie. The upcoming Flamin’ Hot, about the pseudo-true story of how a janitor at Frito-Lay invented the Flaming Hot Cheeto, and the excellent Blackberry, about the tech company and their titular device, both praise the innovation of visionary employees and executives, though at least Blackberry isn’t a story with a happy ending. Ben Affleck’s Air is in the same vein, an underdog story about one of the world’s foremost apparel companies and the signing of their most famous client in Michael Jordan. Some amount of skepticism towards this kind of storytelling is necessary to make this project anything other than rank propaganda, and Affleck and writer Alex Convery, with uncredited script help from Matt Damon, supply the tiniest bit, allowing the viewer to exit the film in appreciation of a competent boardroom drama that’s ultimately about the rich getting richer.
Martin Scorsese, patron saint of the grubby Mafia movie, turned his eye to Boston with The Departed, the film that moved him away from the Italian Americans of his heritage and won him his Oscar under the premise that Irish Americans can be crooked bastards, too. Scorsese’s pull in the industry gave him access to top talent, Boston roots or not. The following year, legendary Bostonian Ben Affleck chose a similar setting for his directorial debut, and based on the aesthetic disparity in casting, it feels like Affleck took The Departed as a challenge. Scorsese can play in Affleck’s backyard, but can he bring the authenticity of a person who was raised in Boston? Gone Baby Gone is a strong start for its director, in no small part because the casting of major roles and insubstantial background players is considered and real, providing the viewer with a transporting experience to a place they definitely don’t want to go. Affleck clearly loves his hometown city, but maybe not this particular neighborhood. |
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