Passing (2021)

Film: Passing (2021)

Stars: Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, Andre Holland, Bill Camp, Alexander Skarsgard

Director: Rebecca Hall

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I am less than 48 hours away from heading into my longest vacation period from work of the year, which will include at least four days of getting to do things around my house, and so we will also be using that time to catch up on some of the 2021 films that I haven't reviewed yet (that I need to get through before we can do our year-end lists, and maybe head back to reviewing some older movies again!).  We will start this conversation with Passing, a film that you can catch even if you're a bit leery about going out to a theater right now, as it's on Netflix.  Adapted from Nella Larsen's nearly 100-year-old novel, Passing is one of several auspicious directorial debuts from noted actors (here, Rebecca Hall), and features Ruth Negga in a performance that is getting a lot of critical attention.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on the strange friendship between Irene Redfield (Thompson) and Clare Bellow (Negga), who were childhood friends in Chicago.  Both women are Black, but while Redfield "passes" as white in the film's opening scenes while she's book-shopping, Clare has made this her life, marrying a bigoted white man who doesn't know the truth about her ethnicity.  Clare begins to visit Irene in Harlem, and while this feels innocent initially, Irene's obsession with Clare starts to manifest itself into a worry that Clare is having an affair with Irene's husband (played by Andre Holland).  Though Irene tries to rid Clare from her life, her husband invites her back, which just ratchets up her worry.  The film climaxes with an encounter between Irene and Clare's husband John (Skarsgard), who upon seeing Irene with a black woman who cannot "pass," understands that his wife has lied to him.  Before he can confront her at a party, Clare falls out a window, though it's not entirely clear from the way the film shoots the scene whether Clare falls by accident, whether John pushes her, or whether Irene does, trying to get her husband's mistress out of the way.

Passing is best when it's trying to keep the audience guessing, though that doesn't always work as the film continues.  The opening scenes are well-constructed, a look into the world of two women who grew up as light-skinned Black women in Chicago, but chose very different avenues for their lives, and each to some degree both covet & disapprove of the other woman's choices.  The cinematography helps to underscore this-choosing literal black-and-white for a story that talks so much about color might feel an obvious choice, but the way the film is lit you understand a lesser team wouldn't have come to this realization.

It's the performances that don't quite feel right to me.  I get the idea of having Thompson, Holland, & Negga all play characters with clear secrets and ambiguity, but so much left unseen by the audience makes the picture feel like half a movie.  Thompson, our eyes into both of these worlds, in particular feels like she doesn't give the audience enough of her opinions, of why she suspects the affair (that there's very little evidence of), and it makes the movie feel incomplete.  That said, Negga is excellent as Clare.  Unknowable is pretty much the definition of this character who has hidden herself so fully (but clearly understands her own motives quite well), and Negga plays her precisely.  Every scene you get to see just a little bit more of who Clare is, what she's trying to accomplish, but in doing so Clare hides another facet of herself, like a crystal twirling in the sun-you can never fully see all of who she is.  Best Supporting Actress is a tough field this year, but it's good to know she's in that conversation.

Men in Black International (2019)

Film: Men in Black International (2019)
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Kumail Nanjiani, Liam Neeson, Rafe Spall, Rebecca Ferguson, Emma Thompson
Director: F. Gary Gray
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I have always had a soft spot for the Men in Black films.  The first one was delightful, the second messy, the third convoluted, but Will Smith's performance in them remain the best thing he's ever done.  He can play a serious, biopic role as much as he wants to, but inevitably I'll prefer him here as a smart, star charisma superhero because that's what he's best at (Smith is one of those dramatic actors who thinks drama means less personality, and feels washed out-Jennifer Aniston is another actor who struggles with a similar condition).  I was curious, though, what this franchise would look like without Smith (or Tommy Lee Jones, for that matter) there to bring some sort of natural star charisma.  Still, if there's another actor working today who can match Smith's natural, likable star persona it's Chris Hemsworth, so I was willing to give this movie a pass.  Unfortunately, the movie continues the steep decline of the franchise since the delicious 1997 film, and considering the picture's box office, might well point to the end of a series that is clearly running out of ideas.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses not on Smith or Jones's agents (they are never mentioned, though there is a wink to their existence in Neeson's High T's office where they have a painting of them from the first film), but instead on two newer agents, a recent recruit called Agent M (Thompson) who finds the MIB after looking for twenty years, and Agent H (Hemsworth), a good-looking rogue who has started to indulge in alcohol and bad judgment.  The two are assigned to investigate two Twin aliens (Laurent & Larry Bourgeois, well-known French dancers who barely speak in the film), but discover as they're going that there might be corruption coming from within Men in Black headquarters.  All of this is happening while M is hiding a weapon she got after an assassination attempt that can harness the power of a star, literally blowing up planets with the click of a button.

The film's plot is ludicrous and unnecessarily repetitive, particularly since it's obvious from the get-go who the betrayer is.  Liam Neeson, other than Emma Thompson (the only human character that is featured from the initial franchise, and therefore, is above suspicion), is the only actor famous enough to make the double-cross work in a movie that is telegraphing a double cross almost twenty minutes in.  As a result, you're more than aware he's the bad guy, and so distractions involving the Twins or Spall's Agent C are pedestrian at best.  If you can't make the audience invest in a twist that's crucial to the plot of your film, you've already failed at like 70% of being an action-thriller, and MIB International decidedly can't sink this basket.

The other problem, though, is that the main characters aren't as compelling as the first three films.  Tessa Thompson & Chris Hemsworth are both fun movie stars, and have exhibited chemistry before, but it doesn't work here.  They banter, and it's fun because they're unnaturally beautiful and effortlessly cool, but it doesn't elevate the film and oftentimes feels forced.  Thompson's Agent M contradicts herself too often, being as John Mulaney puts it in his stand-up act "a busy businesswoman who only loves business" which you know the writers are going to say doesn't matter (despite it being the core ethos of Men in Black...there's at least one good joke between the two Thompsons about the organization's name that was by-far my favorite moment in the film).  Hemsworth is just doing more Thor here, with him trading on his supernatural human beauty and rakish demeanor, but not giving us anything concrete or distinctive about Agent H.  Making films rely upon the talents of movie stars is what made this franchise work in the first place, but the writers wrote a Will Smith movie for two actors who (while talented) are not Will Smith.  As a result, we get a snooze of a (probable) ending to this franchise.  At least Thomspon & Hemsworth have Marvel to rely upon to keep their careers afloat.

4 Mini Reviews

All right-truth be told right now, I'm in "list-finishing" mode, an article I might be writing next week if I can find the time.  But for now, I've decided that it's time to get 2018 done, and rather than just skip some of the movies that I've seen, I am going to instead do short reviews of a dozen movies that I saw in 2018, many even from that year.  I chose these movies because they were not Oscar-nominated (so they won't be referenced when we go back to those years in 2018) and because while I always find it cool to have a full review, I don't think it is as critical to give each of these twelve their own articles.  Don't worry-missing Best Picture nominees Green Book and BlacKKKlansman, as well as one of my personal Best Picture nominees (The Other Side of the Wind), will still get the full review treatment, but as I catch up on my reviews, sacrifices had to be made.  Don't assume this will be a habit-once I catch up, I plan on staying that way & we'll be back to one film to a review.  Until then, enjoy this look at some of the many flicks I saw in 2018!

(Note-I get spoiler-y about Early Man, Annihilation, Ant-Man, and I Feel Pretty-if you haven't seen them and are planning to, skip over those reviews and just read the other ones!)

Early Man (dir. Nick Park)

This was, sadly, the first movie ever that I watched entirely by myself...not just me going by myself, but no one in the theater, a record I enjoyed attributing to a movie but didn't like because I support movie theaters and because, despite its obvious flaws, Early Man has charm.  A movie depicting cavemen playing soccer, it trades a lot in the British humor that has made Nick Park a staple at the Oscars (Early Man is the rare movie that didn't compete from Park's Aardman Studios), and occasionally falls flat, but there's a lot of heart in this film, and some clever villainy as Tom Hiddleston embraces his dark side as Lord Nooth.  A passing fancy, but still pleasurable and worth a quiet night in if you've liked Park's previous work. (Ranking: 3/5 stars)

Annihilation (dir. Alex Garland)

Arguably the movie that I would have most liked to explore in a larger review (you're going to notice four 2018 movies that aren't Oscar nominees that I do give full treatment to, and if you play close attention you'll notice an odd one I highlight as opposed to Annihilation, so call me out for it when you do).  That said, while I adored Ex Machina a few years back, this one seemed to share that movie's ambitions, but not necessarily its execution.  The final third of the movie is gorgeous but makes little sense, and if the metaphor is what it's supposed to be (that we're constantly going to destroy ourselves), you can turn on the news and get that a bit more clearly.  Portman is fine, but there's not enough depth in her main character, and the same can be said for Oscar Isaac as her missing husband.  It's still got great effects (should have been cited for them with AMPAS), but there's too many moments where Garland steers into Christopher Nolan-esque "isn't this cool?" storytelling for comfort. (Ranking: 3/5 stars)

Ant-Man (dir. Peyton Reed)

The best of these four films, Ant-Man is actually one of the finest Marvel movies, period.  I loved the way that they don't necessarily feel the need to have a tragic backstory, and don't confuse comedy for weird like they did in Thor: Ragnorak.  Paul Rudd is flawless (and his abs are well-exploited in a way I wasn't expecting) as Ant-Man, a hapless loser who becomes a random superhero, but seems to genuinely enjoy his powers.  Evangeline Lilly matches well with him, but best-of-all is Michael Douglas as Lilly's father.  Douglas is one of my all-time favorite actors, and watching him latch into a proper movie star role in a genuinely good movie for the first time in (decades?) is an unabashed joy for me.  Add in truly innovative special effects, and you have the best Avengers film that doesn't have "Winter Soldier" in the title. (Ranking: 4/5 stars)

I Feel Pretty (dir. Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein)

Amy Schumer's career since Trainwreck has been, well, the obvious title pun seems fitting.  She cancelled her hit TV show, and had two flops last year (I think technically Snatched broke even, but considering her promise in Trainwreck that feels like a flop).  I Feel Pretty was at least a financial success for Schumer, ensuring a future paycheck, but she has yet to capture the magic she exhibited with her show and Trainwreck, and seems to be losing the "Rom-Com Queen" wars to someone like Rebel Wilson, who seems a better fit for her material.  I Feel Pretty has too many obvious jokes, and feels more like a lecture than a movie.  The body positivity angles are so overdone, particularly by someone who the bulk of America wouldn't even notice as being "overweight" unless they put her next to Michelle Williams, that it is hokey.  Michelle Williams' turn as a cosmetics boss with a bizarre, squeaky voice, is staggering at first, but I wasn't enchanted by this either-it felt just like a weird decision to make rather than finding something specific to say about her spoiled-but-not-dumb manager.  Still, she's the best part of a dull movie-here's to hoping that Schumer finds her mojo again soon. (Ranking: 2/5 stars)

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Film: Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Stars: LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun, Armie Hammer, David Cross
Director: Boots Riley
Oscar History: It's not that kind of movie
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Few actors working today are quite as exciting onscreen as LaKeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson.  Both are consistently excellent in the work they put to screen, but are in that sweet spot where you know a classic role is coming, something that will become a defining part of their career, but they haven't quite gotten there yet even if they're always memorable.  This was one of the main reasons I was excited to see Sorry to Bother You, a film that I had seen in trailers but was not mentally prepared for as I sat in a silent theater (fourth time this year that I was the only person in a movie theater, a trend I'm not enjoying at all as I want theaters to succeed even if I don't love all of the movies that come out), and while neither of them come out with an iconic role, it goes to show that the faith we have in them can ground even the most unusual of material.

(Spoilers Ahead) Sorry to Bother You is the first feature film from The Coup vocalist Boots Riley, and it has the intense freshness of a promising debut artist.  The film centers around Cassius "Cash" Green (Stanfield), a kind if down-on-his-luck young man who has just taken a job as a telemarketer, lives in the garage of his uncle (who is also about to lose his house), and is in love with a beautiful artist named Detroit (Thompson).  Stanfield's goal at his new job is to someday become a "Power Caller," a seemingly made-up sounding position that turns out to be all-too-real when Cash lands it, realizing that he will now be working for a company called WorryFree, a corporation that essentially provides slave labor to companies around the globe.  In order to become a Power Caller, however, Cash must adopt his "white voice," where he pretends to be a white man on the phone (he is voiced by David Cross while doing the "white voice.").

The film is sharp, particularly in its first hour, as we look at the complicated racial politics of Cash, and in particular take a look at poverty in America that you almost never see on screen or in print.  The New York Times is often criticized for fetishizing a certain kind of blue-collar worker (you know the articles, where they profile the straight, white, middle-aged male who has no college degree, lives in rural Pennsylvania or West Virginia, and uses his economic struggles to excuse the racial politics of a Donald Trump or Roy Moore), but here we see a truly ignored branch of blue-collar worker.  There's no glamorizing Cash's life-his existence is a series of truly dive bars, living not just paycheck-to-paycheck, but overdue notice to overdue notice.  He's smart, capable, but has never been afforded any opportunity and is dismissed by most of society as someone who can be used but isn't really important.  It's not an accident that Riley puts him into a job where he's doing something most of us ignore-a field where we're free to hang up on the workers, or just pretend they don't exist through screening their calls.  Cash is someone that at best is viewed by those in power as a cog to be exploited, at worst a person that doesn't exist.

This is what leads to the bizarre second half, where we meet Armie Hammer's Steve Lift, a coke-addled CEO who is the only person in the film who has actual power, and not coincidentally, is a straight, white, handsome male.  Lift makes Cash a proposition, and here's where we leave the heightened reality of this world and enter science-fiction.  Essentially, Lift's company WorryFree, which is a corporation where you sign a lifetime guarantee of three meals a day and a roof over your head to become a day-laborer (he sells it as "opportunity," but it's obviously blackmailing the working poor into legalized slavery), is a front for a genetic experiment where you combine humans with horses to make mutant creatures that can be exploited and have the strength of a horse but still communicate like humans.  It's weird, and so far out of left field you'll be forgiven for thinking this is a bridge too far.  The film ends with the horse people coming into society, and Cash eventually becoming one of them (having been tricked by Steve Lift into taking the cocaine to become a horse person), and taking back society.

The jolt here is that while Cash risks everything to tell the public about WorryFree's true intent, no one seems to care.  There's a running theme throughout the film of people assimilating and adjusting to horrors when they don't know how to fix them.  While the film will receive comparisons to Get Out that are pretty easy, that picture was a reaction to the racist fallout of President Obama's presidency, a precursor to Trump but not a byproduct of it since the film came out only a few days after the 45th president's inauguration.  Sorry to Bother You, though, is clearly a product of our current era, an acid-hazed study of how people will do anything to normalize a man who would side against America's interests, who would keep children in cages, who would brag about assault or embrace white supremacists or continually exploit the working poor in a way that borders on inhuman. Riley pulls no punches, frequently not only showing a real person's reality in Cash, but also showing what crippling poverty can do to people's lives and ambitions.  We see Cash's uncle willing to sell himself into slavery because he cannot put a roof over his family's head, and we see an interesting look at the "Uncle Tom" trope where Cash is willing to initially sell people out, mostly because he knows he'll be next if he doesn't (until he gets a rude wakeup to this reality when they start turning people into horses, something even his mildly elevated perch as a Power Caller doesn't excuse him from).  The film is damning, nasty, and frequently truthful look at the way that capitalism has exploited people, particularly people of color, in order to create wealth for the few (almost exclusively white men), and in many ways is the most important political film I've seen this year.

Unfortunately, though, it's kind of a mess.  While it's brimming with ideas, it takes too many left turns and frequently under-writes different characters or finds too many metaphors.  Perhaps because there are too many examples of ways the working poor are exploited to count in one film, or perhaps because Riley just wanted to shove all of his ideas into one picture, but the movie is jumbled, and the second half in particular feels sloppy.  In many ways he feels like a combination of Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, both directors with singular vision but who frequently struggle to pull together their narratives as they expand with ideas.  The characters feel underwritten, and the casting director does a better job of filling plot holes than the screenwriters (Detroit, in particular, feels like she could have been her own movie and oftentimes only exists to serve as Cash's moral compass, which I found a bit anti-feminist considering what a great actress you have in Thompson).  The best parts of the movie, other than the random asides and obvious metaphors (the punching people in the face show that is so loved is clearly a spoof on the NFL, right?), are Stanfield & Hammer, both continually excellent and bringing more depth to these roles than the writers give them.  Still, though, this is way too interesting of a film to ignore even if it feels too full of ideas to be coherent, and Riley has a guaranteed ticket from me the next time he gets behind the camera.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Film: Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins
Director: Taika Waititi
Oscar History: Marvel's not their favorite, so I'm guessing no even if VFX is theoretically a possibility.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Movies are supposed to be fun.  Like, genuinely a good time at the cinema, and I think that comic book movies have by-and-large forgotten that.  Think of the nauseating seriousness of some of the more recent Batman entries, with Christopher Nolan getting too bloated and with his inventiveness gone, the DC universe going largely to shit.  The Marvel movies have also struggled on this front, creating lighter heroes but ones still burdened by the world around them.  This occasionally can make for fine movies (Captain America: Winter Soldier still being the high-point of the Marvel universe), but it's also why people have responded so ferociously to Guardians of the Galaxy, a comic book franchise that doesn't take itself too seriously.  That was clearly what Taika Waititi had in mind with the latest installment in the Thor franchise, though I'm not entirely sold on the end result.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Thor franchise is arguably the least artistically interesting one of Marvel's universe.  One could argue that had Thor not been one of the original hits that eventually led to the Avengers movie taking over the globe, he probably wouldn't still be getting these stand-alone movies, but since he was and since Marvel essentially can print money with the Avengers franchise at this point, it's not hard to see why he's still getting his due.  Still, though, Thor as a solo character doesn't really work unless you can juxtapose him against other characters to show how preposterous he is, and Waititi certainly does that in this picture.

The film starts off with Thor (Hemsworth) returning to his home of Asgard after unsuccessfully searching for the Infinity Stones that have constantly peppered this franchise for the better part of a decade now.  We see that he no longer is with Jane, and that shockingly his brother Loki (Hiddleston) is still alive (albeit his father Odin (Hopkins) isn't long for this world).  He soon learns of Hela (Blanchett), his Goddess of Death sister, who destroys his hammer with her bare hands early in the film and slowly we watch as Thor is stripped off all of his iconography, with the hair and one eye soon to follow.   He inevitably ends up in a showdown with Hela, and proving that he has learned some humility, finally realizes that he cannot destroy her, only another demon can do so, and flees rather than stand to fight her.

The movie, though, will focus less on the fight for Asgard and more on the silly side distractions of Thor on Sakaar, a garbage dump of a planet (literally), where the Grandmaster (Goldblum) puts on massive battles that pit his Grand Champion, later revealed to be the Hulk (Ruffalo) against fighters such as Thor.  The movie stays extremely light and frothy in these parts, but I honestly wasn't feeling it.  Whereas Guardians was meant to be light, Thor has some very serious issues going on, and the Hulk in particular is played mostly for laughs but this is a deeply tragic figure.  Plus, Goldblum has used this schtick for so many years it's hard not to assume he's just playing himself onscreen.  Blanchett is better at delivering the camp as a woman who sports antlers for ears and can throw off a deadly bon mot better than pretty much anyone, but she's not central to the story-Goldblum is.  The entire movie is predicated on you just enjoying all of the silliness of Thor's compatriots, but it feels excessive.  Combined with unnecessary cameos (of course we see Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange, because that reminds people he's still around) and shocking, but then eye-rolling cameos (Matt Damon as Loki in a play...at some point we need to address that Damon has largely graduated from movie star to celebrity thanks to his string of middling movies & over-reliance on Jimmy Kimmel), the movie is reliant on societal pressure for you to love the Marvel brand so much that you're willing to dismiss the fact that the plotting here is bordering on garbage.  Chris Hemsworth has graduated into a movie star through these pictures, something we should be thankful for, and is arguably giving the best performance (give-or-take Blanchett), but movie star charisma and the face/body of an alien creature (seriously-how is it that one human being can be that attractive?) can't save this movie from being just, well, dull and pointless.  Marvel can have fun, but they need a plot and a point too.

Those are my (admittedly unpopular) thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok.  How about yours?  Anyone else find the movie to be over dull and forcing the fun, rather than seeming at ease?  Or am I just the spoil sport?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Creed (2015)

Film: Creed (2015)
Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Tony Bellow
Director: Ryan Coogler
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actor-Sylvester Stallone)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I'd be paying my hard-earned money, excitedly, to go and see yet another Rocky sequel, I would have laughed you into the next room.  Like almost every person who had cable in the 1990's (or went to the movies in the 70's/80's), I have seen multiple Rocky movies, catching them back when they used to be near-constant marathons on TNT, and we all knew the formula, frequently trading on the original Rocky, a major movie that won Best Picture in a field that included Taxi Driver and Network, and then went on to make Sylvester Stallone, "Adrian!" and those 72-steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art all movie lore.  And yet, Creed, after years of the franchise (which, like its star, became a bit of a pop culture punching bag in the years that followed) getting lukewarm reviews about how the myriad sequels have shaken the allure of the first film, has reignited the franchise in a way no one else could have suspected.  In a year where long-running series like Mad Max, Jurassic World, and Star Wars all made it back to the screen, perhaps no movie quite shocked this moviegoer quite like the kinetic Creed, an electrically fast-paced movie that features memorable long-take cinematography and proof that boxing movies, when done well, can still fire up a crowd.

(Spoilers Ahead) I think the thing that instantly started to set apart Creed was the way that the film, while obviously trying to find a place opposite that of Rocky, wasn't afraid to show the impact of Rocky and the ways that boxing has changed in the decades since.  Here we see both Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa not as characters whose heads we're trying to get inside, but instead as immortals in the world of boxing.  There's a scene late in the movie where Adonis Creed's (Jordan) opponent "Pretty" Ricky Conlin (Bellow) is fighting with Creed at a boxing press conference, and he points out that Creed is coasting on his name, whereas the man sitting next to him (Stallone as Balboa) is the "true" fighter on their team.  Creed, of course, eventually proves to Conlin that he can in fact fight, and that he isn't just a name, but it shows how immortal Balboa has become through the years-even his opponents can't help but respect him.

This is true in many ways of Stallone himself, who has started to gain Oscar buzz for this role, a career-capper after a few misfires in trying to cap his role in the Rocky sequels.  It's quite frankly hard to tell at times whether or not what Stallone is doing is truly great acting, or whether he's able to make decades of nostalgia and Hollywood iconography trick the audience into thinking that's what he's doing, but he's mesmerizing reprising his most legendary role.  Every scene, quite frankly, he seems to be in command of the screen, a magnetic force to be reckoned with; there's a naturalism here, as Stallone knows this character's every heartbeat, but with his age and our knowledge now of the effects of boxing on the brain and development, we see him in a different light as he speaks in short, gruff sentences, and his victories become us cheering on a childhood friend.  Michael B. Jordan, possibly the most exciting male American actor under thirty currently working, is also quite good and finds a wonderful balance with Creed (born in foster care, but eventually raised in intense privilege, his weird combination of entitlement and proving himself is hard act to create, but he nails it), also worth the price of admission but Stallone is the one you're begging to see.  When they finally show the "Rocky Steps" you're realizing what you're seeing is one of the best entries in this series.

The movie, of course, isn't without its faults.  The plot is intensely predictable, even the eventual outcome where Creed gets a technical loss like Rocky did in the first movie, setting up a theoretical sequel, and the film has no idea what to do with its female characters.  Talia Shire won an Academy Award nomination for the first film, but Phylicia Rashad and Tessa Thompson will just have to settle for another line in their SAG cards and hopes that they can command a bigger payday in the sequel, as they are mere window dressing, which is disappointing as a lot of care actually went into creating Thompson's character (whose hearing loss and burgeoning music career made for their own interesting subplot until the entire film dismissed it).  Plus, there's no new ground being tread here that the original film didn't already cross.  Still, the editing and direction are sharp, and the two leading men more than live up to the hype surrounding the performance.  This is a fight you should know you'll be in for a good battle, and you won't have to shell out $200 to HBO for the privilege.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Were you a fan of Creed, or is this the franchise that will never die?  Do you think Stallone can make Oscar history?  And for that matter, can Jordan finally break into the AMPAS club?  Share your thoughts in the comments!