Rocky (1976)

Thanks for the memories!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This film is total MAGA. We lvoed it. We insert it into the video player and watch it every month since Nicole baby and me got together. I bet if premeier Ford came and watched it with us he would love it too

I could go on for ages about this movie and why I love it so much, but I'll try not to bore you and keep it relatively concise.I first saw this film at the age of ten. I am aware that many children find this movie boring and prefer the more action-packed and exciting sequels. This was not my experience. I was instantly enthralled by Sylvester Stallone's lovable character. This truly is his movie and he does a wonderful job with it. He wrote a beautifully realistic script with characters that you truly feel for. In addition, his performance in the title role makes the audience instantly empathize with him through scenes such as the one where he refuses to break a man's thumbs for the loan shark he works for. You're constantly rooting for the Italian Stallion.The other characters are also great. Talia Shire's performance as Adrian is wonderfully shy and reserved. The relationship between herself and our protagonist is the heart of the narrative, and the two actors' chemistry is undeniable.Adrian's brother, Paulie, played by Burt Young, is another great character. He shows what someone like Rocky can turn into without a great deal of optimism and determination. Young's performance works especially well as he entices you into caring about him and liking him even when he is being rather unlikeable.Rocky's trainer, Mickey Goldmill, played by Burgess Meredith, is hillariously cranky and sarcastic. At the same time, however, he never lets you forget that he really does care about Rocky and wants the best for him. This father-son sort of relationship is an integral component throughout the series.The final main character is Apollo Creed, Rocky's opponent played by Carl Weathers. Weathers plays Creed as a celebrity as much as a boxer. He's a showman in the vein of fighters like Muhammad Ali. His charisma is what draws you to him and prevents him from being a supervillain.I mention the characters individually because they are what draws you into this movie's universe. You see them as people and you want to see them happy. This is an accomplishment not only of Sylvester Stallone, but of the performers who brought his script to vivid life.In conclusion, this movie not only presents an interesting story which you want to see through to its conclusion, it also represents the best of what a film can do. It can turn characters into real human beings and use them to tell a story that is nothing but just that: human.

Rocky is one of the best movies I've ever seen. The story is not about boxing it's a love story between ROCKY and Adrian at first that might disappoint some but once you start watching it it's really good and won't let you down on how great the story actually is even the main villain of the movie isn't introduce until halfway through the film it's a great movie and a must watch and if you like it watch the sequels!

I may sound like a bit of a fanboy when I talk about the Rocky franchise but I just legitimately love all these movies so much. This is a series which always inspires me and has aided me during my darkest days. Rocky was one of the first movies to have such a profound impact on me, making me appreciate cinema on a deeper level. I first saw Rocky on TV and week after week came back to watch the sequels; such joy I had and memories I never forget.I don't think there is a fictional character whom I've been more emotionally invested in than Rocky Balboa. Could there be a character who is more honest or down to Earth? A man who has next to nothing yet has such a positive outlook on life ("Naw I ain't got no phone, I had to pull it you know because people calling me all the time, and who needs the aggravation, right?" - such profound wisdom). The character is also a mystery and an enigma; who are his parents and what about his early years? Apart from a few brief snippets of information, it's up to the viewer's imagination instead of giving us a pointless origin story which Hollywood is so keen on nowadays. The character is biographical of his creator Sylvester Stallone throughout the whole series; his fictional alter ego. Just like Rocky, Stallone had next to nothing before making it as a star. Just like how the character rises to the challenge against impossible odds, the movie also beat impossible odds by becoming one of the biggest sleeper hits of all time. Likewise what movie or character is more identified with a city or has such reverence for the location it was filmed.All the films in the series reflect the periods in which they were made. It's 1976, America's Bicentennial year. Perhaps the country didn't know it needed an injection of optimism after years of cynical and pessimistic film as well as political upheaval. Don't get me wrong, there will always be a place for cynicism in movies but with such movies dominating the mainstream at the time it was clear that enough was enough. It seems like happy endings where against the law in the first half of the 70's, but Rocky brought them back for better or worse, and film snobs will look down on it for that. But yes, I do blubber away at this ending and Adrian's uttering of "I love you!" is the greatest "I love you!" in cinema history. The ending has that same feeling of joy and happiness as seen in the ending of many Frank Capra movies. Speaking of Capra, Rocky's response to being asked if he wants to fight Apollo Creed for the world heavyweight championship is like Gary Cooper in Mr Deeds Goes to Town when he is told of the vast sum of money he has inherited.As the filmmakers didn't get permission to shot for many of the on locations, guerilla film making techniques where employed in the making of Rocky; capturing the streets of Philadelphia in all their glory with that distinctive that gritty look of 70's films while aided with the use of the then new technology in the form of the steady cam. You'd be hard pressed to find a movie which is more naturalistic and unmanufactured as Rocky.It's astounding that such a low budget film could have had such a great soundtrack and score. Bill Conti's score to Rocky always makes me feel melancholic; the Rocky soundtracks have given me hours upon hours of listening pleasure. I even watch the end credits of all the films for the music (well expect the first one as the end credit music here is quite dreary). The Rocky movies are also responsible for my love of montages. I'll never forget the feeling of exuberance I felt watching the film's training montage for the first time and hearing Gonna Fly Now; we're talking the goosiest of goose bumps.Roger Ebert compared Stallone to Marlon Brando in his original review, and in 1976 no one could have seen this man being a future action movie star; but I maintain the man is more intelligent than people make him out to be. He's made a respectable career out of what he is capable of doing. How many people can claim to have been able to write installments in a film series which has lasted four decades and still manage to keep the long running story interesting. During the filming of Rocky he had to do script rewrites on the spot such as upon discovering the ice rink for Rocky and Adrian's was completely empty or the shorts on the giant poster of Rocky in the stadium where the wrong colour.When I watched this film at a younger age, I never fully appreciated the romantic angle, yet watching it from a more mature perspective. Rocky and Adrian are like two misfits who don't fully fit in with the rest of society. There is a goddess with Adrian, and only Rocky can see it. The scene in which Rocky invites Adrian to his apartment after their first date took my breath away like few other love scenes have ever done. The sexuality on display is immense with Stallone in a vest and the gradual build up to their first kiss, and I'm sure they did it.The world of Rocky is populated with such unforgettable characters. Rocky's trainer Mickey Goldmill is one of the greatest mentors in film history (either him or Obi Wan Kenobi in my book) with his grouchy and curmudgeon manner. I feel Burgess Meredith is an actor who got better with age, so no surprise his most famous role came to him at the age of 68. Paulie (Burt Young) is one pathetic hateful loser, abuses his sister, is violent and yet you can't help but feel sorry for him. Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) on the other hand, dam! What a showman with his charisma, confidence, cockiness and ego; the archetype of a leading man from a blackploitation film. Yet despite being a black man he is surely one of the most patriotic characters ever put on screen who shuns any left wing mentality of victimhood; sounds like a dam monster movie!One more recent viewings of Rocky I've also come to appreciate Tony Gazzo (Joe Spinell) more as a character. A charismatic loan shark who employs Rocky and has a real liking for him, giving him money for his date, attends his fight with Apollo and doesn't try to take over his boxing career where as many other mobsters would. Yet Rocky's lenient collecting style by refusing to break the thumbs of clients who don't pay up causes problems for Gazzo yet he treats Rocky almost like a brother. It shouldn't come as a surprise then that in the original script for the film, Rocky and Gazzo where brothers.When Rocky visits the empty arena before the fight you can feel the pressure and weight that bestows him. By the time the final fight comes around I'm so emotionally invested in this character that I'm rooting for him like it's a real fight. During the fight itself the punches look real and there's no sped up footage like boxing films of the past; while Bill Conti's score ups the intensity and suspense for some serious emotional impact.