Rocky Balboa
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This is almost as good as the first film, there is more than a few similarities.
A few years after the last film, Rocko has a restaurant and is retired for good. Or is it? For reasons nobody understands, it’s YuGi-Oh again, all the problems in the world can be solved with boxing. At least this time is not Paulie spending all their money on stupid get-rich-quick schemes.
In fact, Paulie is moving towards humanity here. He is still a fucking moron, but there are some introspective moments, few and far between. Those moments are quickly interrupted by one of those trademark quips that kill any gravitas that might exist.
What else is new? Adrian has died, but she is replaced by a functionally similar character that acts as Rocky’s moral compass. Milo Ventimiglia plays Rocky’s son, who worked as a stock broker or something but gets tired of being unfairly compared with his father. He was too green for this role, but al least he doesn’t show up much.
There’s a big boxing match, but this time it’s one of those Vegas extravaganzas. The opponents name are usually cool, this is no exception. Mason Dixon rules. There’s also a random Mike Tyson cameo.
The entire Rocky series works on so many levels. There are obvious parallels with Stallone himself, but also on a meta level, it trumps most serious films about boxing such as the severely overrated Raging Bull.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.