CREED 2 delves deep into Rocky’s mythology for the series’ latest nemesis.
Something even deadlier than Ivan Drago turns 40 in the re-released Alien and Timothy Spall delivers an oddball tour de force in Stanley: A Man Of Variety.
DVD OF THE WEEK – Creed 2
(12A) 125mins, out March 29
AFTER the first Creed snuck up and sucker-punched us with surprise awesome, this sequel labours a touch under weightier expectations.
Rocky movies have always fed on their own mythology and this leans heavily on past iterations for its resonance.
It’s hard to imagine series newcomers getting excited about Brigitte Nielsen’s cameo, even if she bears more than a passing resemblance to Red Skull from Captain America.
Michael B Jordan (The Wire, Fantastic Four) is as charismatic as ever as Adonis Creed, still amusingly called “Donny” by those who know him best but now heavyweight champ — and increasingly his father’s son.
Romanian pugilist Florian Munteanu is a convincingly animalistic Viktor Drago, whose dad Ivan (the returning Dolph Lundgren) killed Creed Snr in the ring.
If anything, Lundgren is even less likeable this time around. A clueless if deadly Politburo pawn in Rocky 4, here he emerges as the world’s pushiest parent and least effective man-motivator, slyly questioning his son’s manhood at every step.
Regret, responsibility and redemption are the themes in a movie as much about parenthood as pugilism. Feelgood sports movies don’t typically show their hero urinating blood.
Still, rehab here is serene, with the trademark montage held back for the third act, as Jordan turning himself in a black-clad avenger of Russian misdeed — less Apollo Creed than Polonium Creed.
The fight commentary is as tin-eared as ever but the action is dynamic and that final ring entrance is a genuine spine-tingler, voiced by Creed’s missus Bianca (Teesa Thompson, again excellent, though underused).
Even Drago and his dad get a degree of redemption by the end. Will there ever be a Rocky movie in which the star is courageous enough to say no to a fight? This isn’t that movie, though it might have been better for it.
Still, where further Rocky movies were once weary inevitabilities, Creed 3 is a prospect to get pumped up about.
★★★★☆
Stanley: A Man Of Variety
(15) 83mins, out now
TIMOTHY SPALL plays the title role, and several others, in this oddball one-man-show about a hallucinating psychiatric patient, seemingly the only resident of a high-security facility days from closure.
Spall is as compelling as always — a quivering, giggling, vaguely amphibious presence, a prisoner of his own fractured psyche as much as the white-tiled walls around him.
For company, he’s joined by idols of screen and stage including Noel Coward and Tony Hancock, all played by Spall, who also co-wrote and probably made the crew’s sandwiches too.
Director Stephen Cookson gives it the full David Lynch treatment, from forced camera angles to the dripping-tap soundtrack.
But watchable as Spall is, the comedy rarely lands and this feels padded at 83 minutes, like an intermittently clever short that simply forgot to stop.
★★★☆☆
Elizabeth Harvest
(15) 102mins, available on demand now
DAPHNE DU MAURIER meets Charlie Brooker as Rebecca does Black Mirror… or does she? Or doesn’t she? Or does she? Sigh.
Ciaran Hinds is the off-kilter Nobel laureate with an off-limits room. Abbey Lee Kershaw is the ingenue bride who doesn’t seem sure why he married her, or vice versa.
In fact, they barely seem to know each other. You can probably guess whether Kershaw keeps her promise to stay out of that room.
And you can probably guess how well it works out for her. From there, things veer into Argento territory, getting progressively odder and nastier.
If Kershaw’s performance is deliberately childlike and robotic, there’s no such excuse for Carla Gugino (missus of the film’s Venezuelan director Sebastian Gutierrez), coming off here like a Poundshop Rachel Weisz.
It’s mannered and shrill, stylish and ridiculous, oddly compelling and occasionally hilarious, though it just about pulls back from the complete-batsh*t-craziness that could have made it a camp classic.
“The only measure of an action is its consequence,” Hinds says at one point. That’s exactly the level of profundity you would expect from Gutierrez, whose credits as a writer include Motherf****g Snakes On A Motherf*****g Plane. Decide for yourself whether he’s in on the joke here.
★★★☆☆
Hell Fest
(18) 85mins, out April 1
FORGETTABLY dumb slasher flick notable only for a game cameo by Candyman’s Tony Todd and a brilliantly jarring final scene that throws everything before it into sharp relief.
If Hell Fest opened with that shocking coda — worth at least half a star on its own — you could have a very different, more interesting movie.
Otherwise, this as disposable as its cast of hyper-caffeinated teens, rarely weird or vicious enough to linger in the memory. Amy Forsyth is a likeable lead but the sacrificial snowflakes around her melt into the sea of gleaming neon and wallpaper EDM.
Equally underwhelming is the villain — a genuine psycho lurking among the ghost-trains and costumed walk-throughs of a sprawling horror theme park. A couple of wry lines raise smiles but there’s little in the first 85 minutes portending that unlikely finish.
★★★☆☆
MOST READ IN FILM
Alien 40th Anniversary Edition
(18), out April 1
ONE of the most influential, most imitated movies ever made gets a fresh repackaging to celebrate turning 40.
This edition brings together the cinema original with director Ridley Scott’s 2003 cut in a foul hybrid whose structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
Scott’s alt-cut is an interesting curio, worth a look for completists but hardly a radical reimagining. A 4k Ultra HD version, due out in a couple of weeks, promises a raft more bonus features and an even sharper look at cinema’s most terrifying extraterrestrial.
But do you really want a version that makes Geiger’s ultimate nightmare look more like a guy in a rubber suit? Stick with the original and, as Ian Holm’s Ash might say, admire its purity instead.
★★★★★
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News Photo This week’s top DVD picks from Rocky spin-off Creed 2 to the oddball Stanley: A Man Of Variety
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